The benefits of digital workflows

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to challenges for many industries, but fortunately there is help out there for businesses that are facing an increased reliance on certain solutions or the necessity of accelerating their adoption. An offering like ServiceNow provides a way forward for those who may be struggling to maintain and adapt their operations during challenging times. As smaller businesses look to move away from manual ways of working, utilising a digital workflow platform is just the tool to help them do it. By now, most people are used to using digital workflows for IT related tasks. The move now is to switch many other business processes to an automated system too.

Digital workflows are aimed at centralising engagement in a very structured manner – a flexible approach that can generate a workflow to handle any type of repeatable request. Generally, this will be assisted through the enablement of a ServiceNow Service Portal that can be navigated by the end user. This portal will be the conduit to engage either an IT or specific line of business team or teams.

How do they work?

Any given task or business process becomes a catalogue item and a taskbased workflow is built out to suit. The workflow will be configured in such a way that either single or multiple teams are engaged to execute work in a structured way to support efficiency through task orchestration Once the end user has filled in the particular form for whatever task they’re looking to digitise, and hit submit, this is when the workflow begins. Some forms may be pre-approved or some may trigger an approval model – needing sign-off from a line manager or other manager with a delegation of authority.

Once the approval is in, the workflow automatically engages the correct teams, assigning a fulfilment group, which has all the information needed to action any request. Tasks can be generated sequentially, or in parallel to optimise fulfilment for the requester.

Use case examples

As the first thing an employee usually does when joining a new organisation is onboarding and this is often a fairly standard process, it is a prime contender for digitisation of the workflow.

The end state would see a new employee sign their contract, kickstarting a workflow like clockwork. The teams that would be engaged would likely include IT, HR, Facilities and Payroll. Using a service provider like ServiceNow, you would set up a structured approach and workflow, engaging each of these teams to do what they need to do as part of fulfilment. Then the workflows can be triggered in a logical sequential fashion. Or, if there’s no dependency between tasks being executed and the order is not critical, it is possible to engage multiple teams at the same time. With, say, five different tasks all being completed independently, the process is sped up from the time the request is made to the time of fulfilment, markedly improving the customer experience.

Even with common processes, it’s possible to offer a bespoke solution, tweaking the digital workflow so it more clearly fits with customer requirements.

Other common repeatable candidates for digital workflows include reporting requests, system access, requests for information and project ideas. With the latter, a brainwave from one member of the team would be fed into the bucket and automatically directed to the team members responsible for reviewing and assessing the viability of such a project.

Benefits

A digitised workflow enables repeatable requests to be structured in a way that drives consistent engagement. Compared to an email sent to a shared mailbox, where there could be 10 different questions for 10 different people (often leading to a trail of emails, with replies to all, including unnecessary information for some of those CC’d and almost inevitable confusion), the digitised workflow enables the requester to see the information flow in a structured and seamless way. It minimises the amount of contact needed between the requester and the fulfilment team and the members of the latter are able to work solely with the information they require, enabling them to action that work quickly and efficiently.

Instead of reinventing the wheel every time a repeatable process is triggered, the result is superior engagement and reliable consistency every time.

The other great advantage of a digital workflow is the ability it gives to track and manage performance. With a detailed record of requests and how and when they were actioned, a manager is able to obtain clear insights into what type of requests their team members are handling and how much time they are spending on those requests.

For businesses, the benefits are plentiful as the customer experience of utilising a digital workflow platform is simplified and streamlined. They are provided with one centralised mechanism to engage a service portal – it’s clean, it’s structured and it’s consistent. This approach offers the level of data required to really inform decision-making. That insight into demand and delivery shows a manager whether they actually have enough capacity in their team to service the level of requests being received. The end user now is able to see every step of the process tracked along the way.

Layers of administration are removed as work does not need to be reassigned manually between teams, the workflow does all the heavy lifting.

Business optimisation

For organisations, it’s about understanding return on investment. If they have the ability to see how long certain tasks are taking and compare that to the opportunity cost of building an optimised digital workflow, they’ll quickly see there’s a lot of time that can be saved. Building a service catalogue is a journey of continual improvement in the way a business is operating.

Plus, there are further benefits beyond simple time and efficiency. There is the customer experience for people engaging in the system, but also the individual employee experience of fulfilling the work. A digital workflow removes some of the uncertainty around their job, bringing a level of structure that gives clarity and reassurance that nothing has been overlooked.

_Any digitised process is another tool for success in the new normal of COVID and post COVID operations. _