More firms are turning to automation for a variety of their operational and compliance functions to meet today's fast-paced business and regulatory requirements. Implementing technology helps free up professionals to perform other tasks, such as face-to-face communications, analysis of data, case management, sourcing and evaluation of customer opportunities. However, choosing the right IT solution remains a major challenge requiring a high level of due diligence and all too often the time taken to select the right solution extends beyond the originating business need.
It is important to use technology smartly; in many situations technology is allowed to dictate operational methods which can drive a wedge between the company, its staff and its clients. Any automated system should still allow people to work normally. IT vendors can also be too enamoured with their technology instead of concentrating on the ever changing customer needs. To achieve significant operational cost savings and become an efficient enterprise, I believe that the starting point is to understand the organisation, its customers’ needs and map its core processes accordingly.
Business process can be defined as a set of interrelated tasks linked to an activity that spans functional boundaries and which are generally repeatable. Business Process Management (BPM) is a field of knowledge at the intersection between management and information technology, encompassing methods, techniques and tools to design, enact, control, and analyse operational business processes.
Everyone involved in managing and improving operations needs to understand the existing processes and to collaborate on its improvement. Then look to leveraging technology in the parts of the process where it can add true value. Capturing unstructured data is only part of the answer; using business process automation to release the benefits of the stored information amongst user communities and host systems, distributed or centralised, has been, and will continue to be the real driver of the efficient and effective business.
One area where automating a business process can reap benefits is in the customer service environment. For instance, by offering customers the opportunity to choose how they would like to interact with the business allows you to then tailor your customer communications to the individual. This would not only improve customer relations, but also drive operational efficiency. In addition, a front end examination as to how your customers have interacted and how they want to interact with your organisation will also provide a clear view of the technology required.
An example solution for improving customer service is a Content Management System (CMS) which combines all the channels of customer correspondence and associated information into a single case based interface, allowing the capture, processing, resolution and management of all customer interactions.
Converting all types of customer, supplier and internal communications into electronic documents will provide a united single 'immediate access' view. Then with case based process management you can interact with all your customers, suppliers, internal staff and systems through the channel you consider most efficient (web, email, letter, fax, sms, call, work queue, automation & integration etc.). From a single view, your customer-facing teams can view all correspondence, retrieve documents at speed, work with templates, prioritise cases, see outstanding work and ensure cases are passed to the right person at the right stage in the process.
Companies are yet to fully harness the opportunities available via technology, but when it comes to choosing the right solution make sure that automation supports customer relations not customer alienation.
