DPA expedition: tales from the start to the summit

Michael Hill00:03

Hello and a very warm welcome to this PEX Network webinar, Embracing Digital Transformation and Process Automation in Uncertain Times. I'm Michael Hill, editor of PEX Network, and I'm delighted to be moderating. A big thank you to FlowForma for working with us to bring this webinar to life, and to all of you for joining.

Michael Hill00:36

A few housekeeping points. Use the live chat to share thoughts or let us know where you're watching from, and use the Q&A function to send questions for our speakers; we'll save time to answer them. I'll also run three multiple-choice poll questions. There are no right or wrong answers, and we'll review the results before we wrap up.

Suzy Pinsent01:42

My name is Suzy Pinsent. I'm an IT systems consultant and I specialize in digital transformation. In other words, I help businesses that don't have the internal resources or expertise to implement a digital solution themselves. Recently I've worked with Coinford Construction, Gallagher Group and PJ Hegarty.

Paul Stone02:22

I'm Paul Stone and I work for FlowForma. I'm a product strategist, aligning our product to the needs in the marketplace. I work with many customers in different sectors, and I'll be contributing some of that experience today.

Pablo Ballesteros02:47

My name is Pablo Ballesteros and I'm a legal officer at the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking, a public-private partnership of the European Commission and the aeronautics industry that funds research into disruptive technologies toward net-zero aviation. I'm here to share my short but intense experience of the journey toward process automation.

Ryan Metzler03:22

Good afternoon, my name is Ryan Metzler. I'm with Vorea, a developer and construction company based out of New York, and I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with FlowForma and process automation.

Michael Hill03:38

What a fantastic panel. Before I hand over to Paul to set the scene, I'm opening the first poll: what results would you like to achieve from digitalization? I'll leave it running during Paul's presentation, and we'll come back to the results a little later.

Paul Stone04:26

I passionately believe organizations should digitalize, but not for the sake of digitalization. They should digitize for outcomes: measurable outcomes that show benefits to the business. Our market analyst Forrester says businesses must drive automation to levels that will stretch their creativity, and the effort will pay off for those who double down on automation, increasing their competitive advantage.

Paul Stone05:07

That's one of the benefits, but there are many others we'll be talking about today. I hope you'll be inspired by our speakers to think about the outcomes you can achieve in your own organization.

Paul Stone05:25

FlowForma is a digital process automation tool. It's been on the market since 2013 and under constant development, and over that time we've amassed over 300,000 users around the globe, digitizing processes and scaling up their automation efforts. We're an award-winning product built on Microsoft 365, so all of your information is stored in Microsoft 365 and all the communications are managed around it.

Paul Stone06:25

We're not focused on any particular sector, but we have a strong presence in construction and healthcare, as well as financial services and others. We work with customers of many sizes, from very large organizations like the NHS in the UK to smaller customers with as few as 50 users, who can still measure the benefits and see a significant impact from process automation.

Michael Hill07:25

Pablo, what do you see as the key reasons companies should, or might want to, digitize processes today?

Pablo Ballesteros07:40

One of the first reasons you always see is saving money; time equals money. That matters to us, especially time. But where I come from, the key is ensuring compliance. As a public-private institution we operate under a very complex legal framework, yet we need to stay flexible to get things done efficiently and effectively. It's a difficult balance.

Pablo Ballesteros08:52

We started looking for solutions to ensure compliance, then discovered other reasons to digitize: saving money and time, breaking down data silos, and creating new ways of collaborating that increase engagement between departments. Another benefit I'm experiencing is a single source of truth, a single place to keep, monitor and track information across departments.

Pablo Ballesteros09:47

Size is not an excuse. Any organization tends to spread all sorts of artifacts around. We're barely 50 people and we still face this complexity. No matter your size, process automation brings benefits quickly, but it's not an easy journey, because it's a cultural change. For any business with a complex legal framework, building in quality, compliance and mistake-proofing is fundamental.

Michael Hill10:50

Paul, on the same question: Pablo made great points about governance and compliance, and organizations often find themselves short of talent compared with the output they need.

Paul Stone11:15

We see a different focus from each company. For many it's cost control, for others it's compliance with procedures, and for others it's visibility of data and making better decisions. Cost control comes from different angles, such as removing paper so processes run more efficiently and savings can be measured. We also see many organizations that are struggling to grow because of a skills shortage, trying to expand without taking on new people. The only way to do that is to become more efficient.

Paul Stone12:31

There are compliance reasons too. It's an increasingly regulated world, and many companies want to show external auditors and their clients that they execute processes in a repeatable, controlled way; some are contracted to demonstrate it. And another big reason is consistent data: specifying and controlling the data captured at every step, storing it centrally, and using it to drive better decisions.

Michael Hill13:44

I'm closing the first poll now, with some interesting findings. The top result people want from digitalization is to improve process visibility, followed quite closely by saving money and resources. Creating a culture of innovation and aligning process and IT were quite close as well. Paul, are you surprised?

Paul Stone14:31

I'd totally expect it. One of the big advantages of tracking processes in a predictable way is visibility: you can see at any point in time who has the ball and where a process is stalled, so you can follow up and get it completed quickly. At higher levels, people want statistics on the number of processes executed and interactions with clients and suppliers, and external people need to be able to take part in processes too.

Michael Hill15:28

Suzy, what advice do you have for businesses planning and prioritizing the processes they want to automate?

Suzy Pinsent15:52

There's usually a sponsor: one department decides it wants to go down this road, and that might be accounts, health and safety or quality. You'll normally pick from their pain points. But the first place to start is to speak to a range of people across the business and find out how all the processes link in. Defect management, for example, also touches the accounts department and others, so you need everybody's input.

Suzy Pinsent16:46

To start with, it's the usual ones: high-volume processes that take a lot of people's time, especially where there's a filing element. You fill in the form, it's filed for you, the data is collected the same way every time, and you can report on it. Those are very high-value flows. In construction there are also the quality and compliance processes, which may not have the same ROI but are very important to how a business performs.

Suzy Pinsent18:08

A lot of businesses understand their own part of a process but not other people's parts. It's about bringing it together, seeing the whole process from beginning to end and involving all those people. You get much more acceptance across the business, because at the end of the day it's about empowering your employees to make their day better.

Paul Stone19:19

Almost everybody who comes to us comes with a specific pain point. They know roughly which area of the business is challenged, with inefficient processes looping around. Then it's a case of whether they understand them well enough to digitize them, and often one part of the business understands them differently from another.

Paul Stone20:06

One thing I always propose is to draft the process. With a digitization platform you can put together a draft quickly and try it in the field. You may find the draft is completely wrong, needs tweaking, or that the process wasn't what it seemed and needs more analysis. Being able to draft, get feedback immediately and revise is really significant, and it helps you build pretty much any process you want.

Michael Hill21:02

Ryan, how important is removing manual tasks through automation? Should organizations start there?

Ryan Metzler21:18

Any time you build out your processes, you start with your manual tasks, with where you are as an organization. I'm an absolute evangelist for automating processes as much as possible. Pablo touched on a single source of truth, which is only becoming more important as we get more data-centric. I learned an idiom a while back: a man with two watches never knows the time. So we try to eliminate manual data entry, and the errors that come with it, as much as possible.

Ryan Metzler22:06

Manual processes also make accountability difficult. When paper is passed between departments, things get lost and drop off the radar. With a dashboard like the one FlowForma provides, that's very difficult: when you start up your screen each morning, you see your priorities and what's overdue. With manual processes it's hard to know who your high performers are and where the pain points are without anecdotal evidence.

Ryan Metzler22:55

In the for-profit sector it's about gaining every bit of efficiency, and about retention: people want to work where they aren't forced to fill out the same form seven times with their address on every one. Automation propagates common information across forms. And it's about risk mitigation. The first process we built on FlowForma was about avoiding the liability of a sales tax audit, making sure a significant seven-digit liability would be resolved without difficulty.

Michael Hill24:09

Paul, removing manual tasks is high on the agenda. What challenges do organizations need to plan around?

Paul Stone24:32

There's a change management challenge. In some industries, construction for example, workers in the field have little experience of digital systems. You have to define the process, train people on the system so they're comfortable using it, and educate them on the new process. Companies shouldn't underestimate that. Building the process isn't too difficult if you understand it; you can build it in a digital process automation system really quickly. Then comes rolling it out and getting people to adopt it.

Paul Stone25:35

We focus on adoption because if a system isn't adopted and used, it has no value at all. Once people follow a standardized process, you can see what they're doing, you know who's accountable, and you have more accurate data. Digital processes gather so much: the data on every step, the full audit trail of who did what and when, and performance analytics over time, so you can see whether changes to a process actually generated gains. People often don't realize that side benefit when they start.

Michael Hill26:42

I'm launching the second poll now: what are your top drivers for process optimization and automation this year? And here's a great audience question: digitization also comes with some risk, so how do you mitigate the risks that arise with it? Suzy?

Suzy Pinsent27:32

The main risk is whether you have sufficient resources and expertise in the business to implement quickly and efficiently. A lot of time can be lost choosing the wrong processes to automate, or because the people given the job don't have enough time to roll it out fast enough, and then things lose momentum. The other is not having enough management backing to push the change through to everyone in the business.

Suzy Pinsent28:20

In construction that's a big issue, because many people out on site don't have the skill set, and as they keep telling me, I don't know what it's like out on a muddy site. But once you show them they can do it on their mobile phone, they become a lot more open to the change.

Pablo Ballesteros28:58

I actually learned the hard way. My first tip: if you have a good partner on the journey, as we have with FlowForma, listen to them. You may be tempted to go for the process that's giving you the most pain, but it may not be the best candidate for your first go at process automation. That happened to me. They gave me a really good piece of advice: get an MVP as soon as possible, so you can show colleagues and the business that it's possible.

Pablo Ballesteros30:06

Once I went through that first one, I got so good at developing other processes quickly that I now have many flows ready to go. So listen to your advisor, and give yourself room to fail. Reframe failure as a first attempt at learning. Nobody improves without some pain and some mistakes. It's not a rose garden, but it's really exciting, and every time I revisit my first flow I discover new things I can improve.

Michael Hill31:19

Paul, risk management seems key, and so much is changing on compliance, data security, data governance and data protection.

Paul Stone31:44

The data in a digital process is defined on the process steps, and the data relevant to each step is secured, stored centrally and aligned with the person or resource that did the work. In FlowForma's case, it's all stored in your own Microsoft 365 environment, an environment you already have and control. CIOs and IT managers love that, because with many process automation vendors the data sits in the vendor's environment, which raises additional control concerns.

Paul Stone32:58

Keeping data in your own environment helps manage IT and cyber risks, which are increasingly important; you wouldn't want to see some of the cybersecurity questionnaires that head our way, with many hundreds of questions. There are also data controls required by regulators and by standards such as ISO audits and GDPR, and all of that can be accommodated inside the process automation platform.

Michael Hill34:11

Let's move on to best practices for selling process automation internally: getting buy-in and support from stakeholders, and budget. Pablo?

Pablo Ballesteros34:39

I'm dealing with that right now. Today I ran user acceptance testing on a process, and I realized people don't have a lot of time. If they didn't buy in at the start, they don't know what it's about and it's hard to capture their attention. A sound change management approach is fundamental, so if you don't have that expertise in-house, try to get it. Even leadership support can be lukewarm at times.

Pablo Ballesteros35:27

What I find very useful, if you have time, is one-to-one sessions. Group sessions are fine for introducing the concept and general benefits, but then sit down one to one, simulate a real case with each person and accompany them. It shows commitment and lets you listen to their feedback closely. As a smaller organization we have that luxury, and I think it helps a process get learned and adopted more smoothly.

Ryan Metzler36:38

A lot of it comes down to engagement. Engage your stakeholders early and often, as Suzy said, and get off to a good start, because if you start slow, you finish slow. If people don't believe a process will improve their work, they're less likely to use it, and it's only as good as the people who use it. If folks keep relying on paper when an automated process is available, you're not achieving any efficiencies, and you won't have the data you need.

Ryan Metzler37:25

We rely heavily on graphical guides and flowcharts; FlowForma introduced me to Miro, which helps us plan a process and then communicate it to the people who'll use it day to day. Understand the technical skill levels of your people and don't give them too much at once. Some will jump right in, and others will need more help. And fill out your tooltips: document every step properly so anyone who gets stuck has the help they need.

Michael Hill38:29

That relates to another audience question about the growth of low-code and no-code solutions. Paul, it seems to be a democratizer, removing the need for deep coding knowledge and opening things up to a wider range of users.

Paul Stone38:58

It's had a very big impact and really come of age. We've been in this business for about ten years, but over the past few years it's exploded, and more and more people are using low-code and no-code platforms successfully, with a better understanding of what they can achieve. These platforms have different strengths, though. Low-code platforms often require some coding skills, while no-code systems are aimed at business users who don't code but understand their processes and want to digitize them quickly.

Paul Stone40:05

Some companies in the early days just want to get out of Excel and record information in forms. Others have grander ambitions: full digital processes that involve not just people inside the organization but people outside it too.

Michael Hill40:38

Here are the results of the second poll on your top drivers for process optimization and automation this year. The resounding top answer is improved productivity, quite a clear winner, followed by cost reduction, and in third place, improving customer experiences. Suzy, that's another element businesses need to consider, isn't it?

Suzy Pinsent41:19

It is, especially when it comes to quality. If a quality form needs to be signed off for a client, they need to see you're doing all of those things. When they get regular quality updates for each step of their project, they're very happy, because they have visibility of what's going on. It's not a massive scramble at the end of the project to pull all the documentation together; it's fed to them as it happens, so they can respond in good time, and you have a very happy customer who feels involved.

Michael Hill42:26

Another great audience question: telemetry, the ability to automatically measure processes end to end, is key, but some measures are more insightful than others. When evaluating tools for digital transformation, what criteria do you recommend for telemetry that leads to business intelligence? Ryan?

Ryan Metzler43:05

The primary way we measure is ball in court: the amount of time a particular task or phase of the flow sits in a particular person's court. That identifies accountability for that person, but also, organization-wide, where our pain points are, such as phases that take too long or aren't properly coupled with the phase before them.

Paul Stone43:45

You can look at resources and how long things sit with one resource versus another. You can also look at process consistency. When you digitize a process, you introduce standardization, so everybody follows the same process the same way and it should take the same time. Because you can see how long each step took every time, you can analyze the inconsistencies, and often discover that certain steps involve more actors than you understood. That helps you run processes more efficiently and consistently.

Michael Hill45:04

I'm launching the third poll now, on which next steps in your process automation journey you'd be interested in booking. As we come toward the end, I'd like each speaker's key piece of advice for developing a successful process automation strategy for 2024. Suzy?

Suzy Pinsent45:50

Know your processes and how you do things. I've asked five different contracts managers how they run a certain process and got five different answers. So first, know your process and make sure it's efficient before you digitize it. Brainstorm it and tidy it up, because digitization may totally change how it happens. Before you build a process, map it first.

Paul Stone46:41

I have a funny feeling we're all going to say something similar. You need to show results quickly to generate momentum, and you do that by drafting. Have your process map, but as soon as it's reasonably competent, draft the process and get people's feedback. Responding to that feedback encourages ownership, and people buy in and adopt the digitized process. The draft may be wrong, but you can refine it, and you should be doing that all the time.

Paul Stone47:45

I always keep a wish list running in a spreadsheet. Everybody's feedback goes on it, and we manage improvements from that list, so it drives continual improvement.

Pablo Ballesteros48:17

I completely agree with Suzy: you need to know your process first. Last year I led a business process improvement project in my organization, and you realize many things are hidden. People can be going through the motions, and those motions need to be surfaced, because they may have been lurking there, getting rusty and inefficient over time. You need a clear process inventory.

Pablo Ballesteros49:04

The more I get into process automation, the clearer it is that it has to be embedded in the organization's overall strategy. The organization has to be crystal clear about its digital strategy, otherwise your efforts may be scattered, yielding results here and there. Push for that definition and alignment, top to bottom and across departments. Then you can see the strategic priorities and structure your process automation strategy around them, and leadership buy-in is easier when you can show that alignment.

Michael Hill50:37

We had a comment come in as you made those points, Pablo, from an attendee who said this is the only way to succeed and keep momentum.

Ryan Metzler50:55

This is a tough one to be the last panelist on, because you've all covered the primary points: pre-planning, clear processes, and engaging and communicating with all the stakeholders. The one thing I'd add is to embrace innovation. Moving from manual processing to automated processing is an opportunity to clear off the cobwebs: understand why you do things, how best to do them and who needs to be involved. Create a process not because it's what you've always done, but because it's what you need to do in the future.

Paul Stone52:13

Digital process automation can be applied right across your organization. You'll want to start with a pain point you understand well and know will have a significant impact, but you should aim to expand across the organization, engaging stakeholders in different areas and showing them where process automation can bring value. The processes on this slide are just examples; the point is you can digitize processes across your entire organization to get the maximum value from your efforts.

Paul Stone53:27

A few key drivers. Digitalization will make a significant impact if you do it right, and with a no-code tool like FlowForma you can digitize at scale. Find a champion: someone has to start and sponsor these efforts internally, sell the idea to the rest of the company and become part of a center of excellence. Empower your workforce: you don't have to be a process expert to digitize a process with a no-code tool, as long as you know the process.

Paul Stone54:54

Start with the obvious, a process that's clearly a pain point today, so once it's digitized its success is easy to demonstrate and recognize. Get feedback, listen to the stakeholders and adapt the process to make it successful in the field. And focus on outcomes: you're getting new data that measures the success of the system, so use it and communicate it to your sponsors, so they can see the real, positive impact of digitalization.

Michael Hill55:41

That brings us to the end of our time. A huge thank you to all four of our speakers for their thoughts and insight on a topic we could talk about for some length, and thank you to our audience for being here. If you'd like to watch it back, it will be available on demand. Thank you once again to FlowForma for working with us on this webinar, and thank you very much, everyone.