Finding efficiency in every day process

Business process management can be applied to all facets of your business and doesn't always involve automation. There are tasks and actions that happen in your organization every day that if analyzed might yield some surprising results. That is what business process management is; mapping out current processes and analyzing them to see if there are more efficient ways of accomplishing the end goal. The efficiency can be gained through some form of process automation or by simply changing a small part of the process.

Check out this article about UPS and left turns, http://priceonomics.com/why-ups-trucks-dont-turn-left/. This is a perfect example of how changing a small part of the daily delivery process can make a huge impact. Who would have thought that avoiding left turns would have such an effect on fuel consumption? But when you have 96,000 trucks on the road making deliveries, a small efficiency gain on every left turn lost adds up pretty quickly.

Enterprise Mobility

Personal mobile devices in the workplace are very rapidly becoming the norm. Employees are not only looking to access email on their personal phone, but also want to engage with corporate applications and data. They don't want to carry a personal device and a corporate device. The expectation is to be able to manage personal life and work life with the same device, their own device. Not only do employees want to interact with the corporation through mobile devices, but customers do as well.

This puts organizations at great risk. They need to have a very concise mobile strategy in place in order to effectively engage customers and keep employees productive all the while keeping their sensitive data secure. This strategy must include a dynamic mobile app development framework, mobile device management including security features, app management and deployment framework, and finally analytics to track user engagement and experience. 

Here are some interesting mobile stats and trends from a McKinsey & Company survey of 250 CIOs:

• 77% of CIOs plan to allow staff to user personal mobile devices to access company data and applications
• 56% report strong demand from employees to support a wide range of mobile devices
• 41% cite cost as a critical challenge
• 30% say laptops could be replaced by tablets in the coming years
• Almost all said they expect to deploy more than 25 mobile apps in the next 2 years

Mobile Trends:

• 91% of mobile users keep their device within arm’s reach 100% of the time
• 75% of mobile shoppers take action after receiving a location based message 
• 96% year to year increase in mobile cyber Monday sales between 2012 and 2011 

Here is a great video showing how Comcast has excelled in the mobile space using some of IBM's solutions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YoW9X8jLag. 

If you would like to discuss your mobile strategy please contact WEVO Group.

The Mobile Invasion

I recently read a Wall Street Journal article by Anton Troianovski, Apps Reorder the Job Landscape.  The article cites how companies are using apps to streamline their offerings to their customers but the price of those app's is that we the customers are now doing jobs that the company used to do for us. In addition to the perceived redistribution of work the author believes that customer service and customer service jobs are also being negatively affected. This blog is going to look at the issue of using apps from a business process perspective and the potential customer service implications of apps; to pose the bigger question; what is your app strategy?

Distribution of tasks should be at the core of any business process management philosophy and app's help companies do this in a cost effective manner.  Doing business before the smart phone explosion of the last 5 years meant doing business with tons of process bottlenecks.  Process bottlenecks are not generally evident to customers as bottlenecks, they become evident to customers through their symptom's:  waiting in lines, waiting to get a response, limited hours of operations, not being able to get a product or service today, etc..  These bottlenecks end up costing customers time and occasionally money.  

One of the examples the author cites in the article is mobile check depositing.  I love mobile check depositing because it allows me to deposit checks from my house on Sunday afternoons in my pajamas.  Why am I in my pajamas on a Sunday afternoon you may be asking; because I don't have to leave my house.  The bank is saying use our app and we'll remove the bottleneck of you having to go to the bank when it's open to deposit your money.  The author is correct in that I have now taken over the job of the teller but the actual time spent depositing the check with the app is about the same as it would be to write a deposit slip and hand it to teller.  The obvious benefit to me the consumer is that I don't have to drive anywhere and wait on any lines to make the deposit.  In my opinion this is an effective redistribution of work.  

In another example of the insurance claim and the ability to take pictures and upload them when you have an accident, same thing.  The company is asking you to take your time to photograph the accident but the benefit you are receiving is quicker service.  If the company doesn't have to deploy a claims adjuster to your accident then they can start processing your claim faster which should save you time.  Not deploying an insurance adjuster also saves the company money, which eventually should trickle down to lower insurance rates for you, if you didn't have an accident and weren't a menace on the roads.  Once again they are distributing tasks to end users vs. sending all tasks to a claims adjuster who can only handle only so many claims per month.  

From a business process perspective this is exactly what  companies should be doing, distributing tasks and removing bottlenecks from service.  I reject the premise of the article that suggests that in the good old days when you drove to the bank or waited for an insurance adjuster to come and look at your damaged car that it was all peachy customer service experiences.  Every interaction you have with a company is a give and take.  The real question that we as customers need to be asking ourselves is, does the app provide enough benefit for me to use it or not.  Adoption is the only true measure of business process success.  

From a customer service perspective I do think companies need to be careful about going from a human experience to a app only experience in 1 jump, such as Westfield Malls with their concierge desk.  If your customers are used to interacting with humans and then one day those humans are completely gone you run the risk of losing those customers.  Now that may be ok based off of your business model and the cost of servicing non-app customers vs. app customers.  I can't imagine many companies making that jump in 1 move but I could see them being able to scale down human interactions over time and placing more functionality in apps.  Going back to business process management your apps should be designed to handle 90 to 95% of use cases but you need some human interaction to navigate those 5 to 10% of one-off situations that don't occur enough to justify developing an automated process to deal with them.  

What is your app strategy?  The mobile revolution has taken hold so quickly that companies are having to jump into the deep end of the pool with no real idea of what they are trying to accomplish.  Are you building apps in house to service your employees or customers?  Are you not building apps at all because you don't have the internal skill set to develop them?  Do you even need an app, is there business justification for spending the money on providing an app to your employee/customer base?  Is the app that you are building going to be helping your customers/employees do something better, quicker, faster or is it just going to frustrate them?  These are all questions that you need to answer for yourself as a company to determine how you are going to proceed.  

I would use the following Business Process Management guidelines to help guide your app decision making process:

1. Don't build an app just to say you have an app.  No project should be undertaken without a clear path to positive ROI.
2. Keep the first iteration simple, the beauty of these apps is that you can release updates so easily through the App Store and Android Marketplace.
3. Customer Data and Corporate Data has to be secured.  Insure that any valuable information being collected is stored appropriately through out the entire app lifecycle.  Don't let your app be the cause of a brand damaging data breach.  
4. Build something that people are going to use, I stated this earlier but adoption is the only true measure of business process management success.
5. Your app should support you customer service strategy, and any pull back of traditional customer service offerings should be done slowly and in conjunction with with App functionality insuring that there are no service gaps.

If you would like to learn more about how WEVO Group can help you with your mobile strategy from building apps, securing data, to securing mobile devices, please shoot me an email at tommy@wevogroup.com.

Revenue Generating BPM

Typically business process management results in ROI that is realized through gains in efficiency and cost savings. BPM ROI can also be acheived through improvements that assist in generating more revenue. Revenue generating process improvement usually involve proactive customer interactions. Here is a great example of a revenue generating process improvement:

Our client in the hospitality and entertainment business manages a number of hotel/casino properties. The goals of the process were to:

• Be able to send an intelligent/dynamic survey to every guest post check out
• Be able to quickly respond to every customer comment card
• To proactively follow up with every guest post visit to invite them back to the property and/or resolve any issues

The result was $1,100,000 in increased spend over 9 months by 500 guests that were run through the system vs. 500 guests that were simply monitored.

Check out this quick video summarizing the process in action.

As always we welcome any questions or comments below or contact us directly.

Thanks,
WEVO Group

HR Onboarding

Onboarding a new employee to an organization seems simple on the surface. Come to an agreement on compensation and a start date and you're good to go! But what happens after the offer acceptance? How do you communicate with the new employee during the "no man's land" period between acceptance and the start date? How can you ensure that your new employee will be welcomed properly, all the "stuff" they need will be ready and available on day one?

There are so many tasks, by many different departments, that need to be completed in order to get a computer, software, active directory account, email account, phone, mobile plan, office/cube, badge, etc. Some of these tasks are dependent on others. It can be a logistical nightmare with real consequences. If you've ever started a new job and the company seemed like they weren't ready for you, how did you feel?

The video below shows an automated process that allows for proactive communication during the no man's land period and organized task management with follow up and reporting. Feel free to share any questions and/or thoughts below.

Successful BPM Programs

If you are planning on implementing BPM at your organization I would recommend the IBM white paper, Eleven habits for highly successful BPM programs, as a guide and template.

I'll summarize the white paper below, but a few points to always keep in mind regarding business process management:

1. BPM doesn't always mean automation. We have seen up to 40% gains in efficiency by simply mapping out processes. 
2. Deliver business value through process visibility and control are the main goals of BPM. 
3. Remember that BPM is ever evolving and requires continuous improvement as the business changes for whatever reason. Common reasons for business change may include; a merger/acquisition, new or updated regulations for example HIPPA, SOX. 
4. Because of # 3 it's important to accept the fact that the first iteration of your process will not be the perfect ideal future state process that was mapped out. If you focus on implementing everything in the first iteration you will fail because you will never finish and most organizations don't have an unlimited budget and/or time. 

The white paper groups the eleven habits in to three stages; Successful Projects/delivery, Growing BPM team competency, and Leveraging BPM across the enterprise.

Successful Projects/Delivery

• Habit # 1: Prove Business Value First
• Habit # 2: Make BPM about Productivity and Visibility
• Habit # 3: Never "one and done"
• Habit # 4: Do not skip Process Analysis
• Habit # 5: Take the time to deliver value

 Growing BPM team competency

• Habit # 6: Build a complete team
• Habit # 7: Make self-sufficiency a priority

Leveraging BPM across the enterprise

• Habit # 8: Fund to value...not just first release
• Habit # 9: Force collaboration
• Habit # 10: Establish the owners
• Habit # 11: Market your work

As always we are interested in hearing your comments and/or questions so feel free to reach out or comment below.

Thanks!
WEVO Group