How to transform processes to drive positive customer experiences

Niamh Lordan00:00

Hello and welcome to today's webinar, How to Transform Processes to Drive Positive Customer Experiences. I'm Niamh Lordan, digital marketing manager at FlowForma, and with us today are Forrester's vice president and principal analyst Rob Koplowitz and Neil Young, CEO of FlowForma.

Niamh Lordan00:24

A few housekeeping points. This webinar is being recorded. If you have trouble with audio, email info@flowforma.com. Your lines are muted, but you can use the Q&A function to ask questions, which we'll answer at the end, and we'll send a copy of the recording to all attendees.

Niamh Lordan01:02

Neil Young is CEO of FlowForma, a provider of digital process automation tools for Microsoft Office 365, and is passionate about enhancing customer experience through no-code digital process automation. Rob Koplowitz is vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, serving application development and delivery professionals. His research focuses on digital process automation as well as artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. Rob, would you like to get started?

Rob Koplowitz02:04

Thank you, and thank you everybody for joining. I'm in charge of our digital process automation research. Process is nothing new, and many of you have been at this for a very long time. But something has been changing dramatically over the last few years, and it's the role of process in digital transformation.

Rob Koplowitz02:40

There's a quote from MIT Sloan Management Review, from 2015, that I keep coming back to: the power of a digital transformation strategy lies in its scope and objectives. Less digitally mature organizations focus on individual technologies and have strategies that are decidedly operational. More mature organizations develop digital strategies with an eye toward transforming the business. That's a great quote, and it's incredibly difficult to do.

Rob Koplowitz03:27

We recently fielded a survey to get to the bottom of what's going on. We asked people to describe the role of process improvement in their organization. 33% said it plays an important tactical role in reducing costs, cycle times and error rates: decidedly operational, and the roots of BPM. Almost exactly double said it's a critical part of business strategy, directly supporting initiatives like digital transformation and customer experience.

Rob Koplowitz04:33

We also asked what people's goals were two years ago, today and two years from now. Two years ago, almost a third said cost reduction was their top reason for process improvement; projecting two years out, it drops to 8%. Accelerating business transformation goes the other way: almost a third today, and almost half say that will be their focus going forward.

Rob Koplowitz05:43

The way we organize to do this is changing too. Lean Six Sigma isn't becoming less important; it's becoming more important, because end-to-end processes are getting more complex, not less. But look at customer journey mapping as a process improvement method: 57% plan to increase their use of it and another 26% to increase it significantly. Design thinking is similar, at 55% and 26%.

Rob Koplowitz07:27

I can reduce costs by automating and cutting cycle times, but I can't get to digital transformation unless I truly understand the customer journey. And when we say customers, that's a proxy for patients, citizens and employees too. You're going to roll these things out to many more people than ever before if you're going to automate the entire customer journey.

Rob Koplowitz08:30

This is my devil-lives-in-the-detail slide. Traditional BPM automated a small number of highly complicated processes. It didn't address the long tail of manual processes. Packaged applications execute processes very well inside the application, but not across boundaries, even between modules from the same vendor.

Rob Koplowitz09:17

Where the problems really lie is electronic manual routing: complex spreadsheets sent around by email, where someone runs a macro and moves it on to the next person. Half of organizations have many of their processes in that form, 18% have most, and 4% still have all of them. Add paper-based processes, and the implication is that I'm no longer looking at dozens of applications; I'm looking at hundreds to get to true end-to-end automation.

Rob Koplowitz10:25

How folks approach this is very different as well. Agile use is rising sharply: 54% increasing and another 30% increasing significantly. We automate quickly, side by side with the business, and iterate rapidly. Waterfall, the way we approached complex BPM applications with lots of upfront planning and long development cycles, is going the other way: 43% decreasing its use and another 19% decreasing it significantly.

Rob Koplowitz11:34

Low code is really well positioned for agile and for building lots of applications. In 2016, 57% of organizations didn't use low code at all. A year later that drops to 34%, while 31% are already using it and 12% are expanding their use. It becomes a really important weapon in your arsenal for the long tail of applications.

Rob Koplowitz12:37

About a year and a half ago, Forrester dropped the term BPM and replaced it with digital process automation. I'm not saying we're throwing out BPM; everything BPM did is still important. But three characteristics make the difference. First, it's faster: you can build smaller, situational applications that automate the operational things directly supporting the customer journey.

Rob Koplowitz13:34

Second, it has to delight users. A large organization might have had a handful, or a few hundred, core BPM users. Now you're talking about most of your employees, and increasingly your customers, and if it's touching your customer, it had better be great. Third, innovation: your vendor had better be thinking about what comes next, such as voice and chat.

Rob Koplowitz14:19

There are two different ways to drive digital transformation. Traditional BPM projects still live on the left: structured and methodical, with IT, a center of excellence and the business coming together over an extended period. IT owns the diligence: privacy, security, compliance and GDPR. The focus is generally cost reduction and compliance.

Rob Koplowitz14:59

The other model is very different. We're enabling a new class of business users to build things fast, and they're going to build a lot of them. They lead, and IT supports them by providing guardrails for security, privacy and compliance, with the focus increasingly on customer outcomes.

Rob Koplowitz15:27

Why can't we just do it the way we always have, only more? Traditionally we've had real problems with application development capacity. We built a limited number of highly controlled IT applications. Now we need thousands of applications to automate thousands of processes, and IT doesn't have the capacity or the business knowledge. Then it's the classic game of telephone: we develop requirements together, you build something, and it comes back as something I don't recognize.

Rob Koplowitz17:00

To add urgency, US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which I think is a good proxy for North America and Western Europe, says we end up half a million developers short over the next decade. So we embrace low code, one of many strategies but a really important one; the business increasingly leads development; and IT moves into a support role rather than a lead role.

Rob Koplowitz18:04

Now, all of that might sound like everybody can have their own low-code tool and it'll all go really fast. That's not going to work. We're trying to get to an end-to-end strategy, increasingly in the form of a customer journey, where all the pieces are aligned architecturally, people are trained the same way, and support and governance are consistent. This is not a moment to let a thousand flowers bloom.

Rob Koplowitz19:16

Digital transformation fails across organizational boundaries and across systems, so the platform has to integrate with your systems of record. It has to handle complex, changing processes, because process is hard; it isn't simple workflow. Governance and compliance matter more in this model: IT gives you a product and ensures you don't hurt systems of record, create privacy issues or let the wrong people see information. And you want a consistent approach to change management, training and certifying new applications, with production-line quality.

Rob Koplowitz20:36

A few points to leave you with. First, recognize that your business people know your business. They can look at what they do daily and understand how to automate it, and they've probably been asking for it for a long time; they're just number 3,000 on IT's list of priorities. IT has to release that iron grip and treat the business as development partners.

Rob Koplowitz21:13

Second, make the process predictable and repeatable, a factory-line approach you can run over and over, with the right skills in place. And last, the support organization is going to change: people who understand end-to-end strategy, an IT organization prepared to do change management, and new methodologies. With that, I'll hand back to Neil to show what FlowForma is doing to support this strategy.

Neil Young22:02

Thanks, Rob, and hello to everybody joining. Following on from Rob, I'll talk about what we see with our customers every day around enhancing the customer experience. We very much position FlowForma as no-code digital process automation, and we have a lot of proof points around that.

Neil Young22:46

We categorize the problems we solve into three core areas. Everyday processes are IT forms, HR forms and finance: capital expenditure requests, new joiners, leave and performance reviews. They're internally focused and departmental, but there are still a lot of problems to solve, especially in larger organizations rolling out something like performance reviews to 15,000 users.

Neil Young23:38

Moving up the value chain are organization-specific processes. They're still mainly internal but specific to your industry and need more business knowledge: worldwide disaster recovery, adding a new service to a service catalog, or internal audits in self-regulated industries like energy and engineering. Before, these often lived in spreadsheets and email, and everything slowed down when someone was away. Centralizing them brings the visibility and reporting people expect.

Neil Young25:00

The third piece is customer experience impact. Take a pharmaceutical supplier whose hospital customer wants to return a package that needs to be tracked and traced. You're not going to connect that external customer directly to your ERP, or your CRM. So you give them an external portal, with the right security, that weaves in and out of the ERP and CRM to get and update the right data. From the customer's side it's seamless, quick, clear and secure.

Neil Young26:16

If we put those into a matrix, the further up the value chain you go, the more ROI the processes provide, but the more business knowledge they require. Everyday processes solve administration issues, organization-specific processes solve problems in your industry, and customer experience processes solve problems for your customers. That's what Rob described as accelerating business transformation. Some customers start with organization-specific processes, then move into everyday ones, then up to CX impact.

Neil Young27:38

To reinforce the point: arm the technologies with the people who know the business best. We never bypass IT. We always connect with IT, and they provide the guardrails that make these technologies work. Customer experience processes we come across include product innovation at a large drinks company dealing with shortages of premium whiskey, aircraft leasing contracts that bring a law firm, a leasing company and an aircraft supplier together through one portal, and incident management.

Neil Young29:27

Briefly, on the efficiencies we see with customers: our customer surveys come back with 75% efficiency achieved from implementing processes. On speed, when we compete against an ERP system for a solution, we're going to be ten times faster to deliver, which has a huge impact on cost. Where a project through an ERP system might not show the ROI, with these technologies it's there.

Neil Young30:21

Another metric we talk about a lot: 92% of our customers have no-code deployments. When we survey them about the projects they roll out, that's what comes back, and it's a real testament to arming business developers in this digital transformation age. Rob, I know you've been speaking with one of our customers recently.

Rob Koplowitz30:46

Yes. Forrester follows up the data with deep-dive qualitative research, and we talk to a lot of the people actually doing this. One of them was Aon, and I think Aon's story is really interesting. Insurance is a really interesting area. Many of my inquiries come from insurers, because they have a lot of processes they've been allowed to run inefficiently, and the market isn't tolerating that anymore. What were Aon's challenges, and what did they tackle?

Neil Young32:06

IT managers and directors like Brian at Aon are progressive. They don't have the resources to do all these projects and aren't looking to keep everything within IT's remit, so they empower the business and provide the guardrails. Aon had a lot of process improvement ideas coming from four key business managers, all about improving the experience for customers, and clients were demanding it: why can't you send me that PDF tomorrow if I ask for it today?

Neil Young33:25

The first process was a fact-finding process for renewals. Finding renewal information for a general insurance policy meant going across several systems, bringing the data together and presenting it to the customer as a PDF or letter. They saw huge operational efficiencies in a technology that could do that. There was some complexity, so they wanted us to work with them first, then take over management of the solution and start building their own, which they did in phase two. Then came the contractor onboarding process, bringing external customers into the process with real-time data.

Rob Koplowitz34:50

Neil, a question for you. Brian's a good guy; I've talked to him. What would Brian have said a few years ago when someone from the business came to him with a great idea for automation?

Neil Young35:10

The answer was software development. They were assessing us against a software development consultancy, but they didn't want to get into high-level coding. They wanted to partner with the business and solve problems cost-effectively, and traditional software development was just too expensive. We did a proof of concept on the fact-finding process, and sometimes we build a POC on the fly over a WebEx, so getting people engaged can be really quick.

Neil Young36:28

What's interesting with Aon is that they started with a customer experience process with a big impact, and their second phase moved into everyday processes. They understood the technology and had the skills and licenses, so they didn't need to come back to us. That's part of it too: the pricing has to let you roll it out to the masses, and IT provides the guardrails. Pre-built accelerators helped them build onboarding, finance processes such as purchase requests, and IT forms.

Neil Young38:02

Some companies start with everyday processes, or with something like incident management, and then move up into customer experience. For Aon, exposing the system securely to external users was the next big challenge. After working with the technology for a year, it started with a phone call: can my customers access your application on an iPad? Then we opened it up with publicly accessible forms, security and digital certificates.

Rob Koplowitz38:38

I love the term everyday processes. We've had a tendency, even recently, to say most of these are back office and we really want to focus on the customer. That's where the customer journey comes in, and there really isn't any difference between back office and front office. If change requests, approvals or risk assessments aren't automated, they result in bad customer experiences and wait states for customers.

Rob Koplowitz39:30

That's where the first stab at digital transformation failed. It was so focused on the customer experience that it missed the journey and the processes. Insurers tell me their competitors aren't doing it the old way anymore; they're automated end to end, and if they aren't, they're in big trouble. So let's dig into the application that drove positive customer experiences.

Neil Young40:19

Again, the business managers identified the problem. Aon insures construction companies. When a construction company wins a large piece of work, subcontractors come on site, along with people who work for those subcontractors. How do you know they're insured to work on the new building? That wasn't straightforward.

Neil Young41:10

A new contractor would land on site and check in with the foreman and security. Then there'd be a phone call to the main office, which might call Aon to ask whether they had an insurance certificate for this contractor. It was breaking down to the point where people were told: we don't know whether you're insured, come back tomorrow. Too many layers of communication were impacting Aon's customers in real time.

Rob Koplowitz42:06

Can I jump in? I love this example. We're all very serious techies on this call, but we're increasingly focused on the emotional side of the customer journey, and there are two customers here. The first is the people at the gate who want to let the contractor in but aren't sure they're insured. They're Aon's customers, and if they can't get staff on site that day, that's a bad emotional journey, and they'll probably want an insurer who can do it better.

Rob Koplowitz43:05

The second is less obvious: the contractor. He or she walks up to do a day's work and hears, sorry, we have to make some phone calls and you won't get paid today. Tomorrow they'll go somewhere else that does it better. In both cases, if I don't do this well, my competitor will.

Neil Young43:31

That's a great point. Aon have been quite innovative. Where competitors may still be dealing with phone desks, they jumped the curve because they were familiar with the technology, and they rolled it out from start to finish in less than three months. Tech is only part of the solution. It's the emotional journey, the impact, retaining customers and winning new ones.

Rob Koplowitz44:46

Great story. Now they just have to do it a whole bunch more. If you take the factory approach I talked about, is that where they go next, stamping these out?

Neil Young45:11

They're rolling out quite a lot of processes, some more complex than others, such as managing subcontractors in real time on iPads wherever they are. Next is deeper insight from reporting and dashboards for process optimization, and proactive ways to deal with problems, such as a contractor who believes they're approved when they aren't yet. That's back to the emotional journey.

Neil Young46:19

On the original fact-finding problem, they've seen a huge increase in productivity. Like any good company, they keep looking at what they've put in, improving it and asking what's around the corner. That's a commonality across our customers: more people are adopting this technology, bringing the business in, and building better relationships between IT and the business.

Rob Koplowitz47:06

And this becomes their blueprint for moving forward, and your blueprint for advising the next group of customers. I love the Aon example, but you have a lot of customers doing interesting things in this space. What are some of the others doing?

Neil Young47:36

Every organization is different. NSAI, based in Ireland, uses FlowForma for different processes than their counterparts in New Jersey, who do a lot of ISO audits. They go out to customers, run surveys and questions, and output the documentation they need for the audit, all managed through FlowForma. There's operational efficiency internally, but it's about the customer experience, and if you can get that double win, it's golden.

Neil Young48:39

A recent addition to our customers is focused on incident management. They have a lot of contractors and customers on site, and people sometimes don't think incident management affects customers, but it absolutely does. They see it as a platform decision that will address hundreds of processes, starting with a customer experience process.

Neil Young49:11

Another, a UK oil company, has done a lot of work on the external side with suppliers, and we've trained around 12 of their staff. To become a supplier, you sign up through an online portal built in FlowForma and get approved. When they send a request for quote to suppliers in a category, each gets a unique link, responds with their attachments, and it flows straight back into the internal FlowForma system. Quick time to value, operational efficiency, and a better experience for suppliers.

Rob Koplowitz50:25

That one really resonates, Neil, because supplier onboarding is one you'd think has nothing to do with the customer journey. A personal story: my relatively new car had a broken rear window, and I literally learned the manufacturer's internal process for onboarding a new glass supplier. It was going to take a couple of days. My window was broken, and I ended up tweeting the CEO before I got some attention. That back-office process really made me angry as a customer.

Neil Young51:21

Absolutely. If you only look through one lens, it's not enough. What goes on internally has an indirect impact on your customers. One more quick story: the IT director at one of the hospitals we work with has a FlowForma team that brings business and IT together. He told them not to work on IT, HR or finance, but to talk to the white coats, understand their problems and come back with solutions. They meet once a month, and there's a queue of clinicians trying to get in with their process problems.

Rob Koplowitz52:41

The patient journey is a really important part of all this. It comes up over and over again.

Neil Young52:47

This is the only slide where I get to pitch FlowForma, so I'll be quick. Customers choose us for proven no-code digital process automation, and we emphasize proven: you can speak to our customers and read our case studies. They also value that we maximize what they've already invested in Microsoft, so they get more ROI from the platform. And time to value: how quickly you can get processes up and running, test, learn and improve, which fits the agile approach Rob described.

Neil Young54:09

If you'd like to see our case studies, the link is on screen; read what our customers say, not just me. And by all means sign up for a free trial to see how the product works, with no commitment.

Niamh Lordan54:39

Thank you both. We're running out of time, but we can fit in one quick question; we'll answer the rest directly after the webinar. Rob, this one's for you. Someone wants to automate processes in their business but finds it quite daunting. Where should they start, and do they need a level of process maturity before automating?

Rob Koplowitz55:19

I'd suggest you don't need a level of maturity around the process. The thing to do is start. Neil pointed to the trial link, and increasingly I tell clients: go try it. Automate something manual in your organization and figure out how this works. Eventually you need IT involved and a more strategic view, but don't boil the ocean before you start. Automate a small process, understand the art of the possible, then optimize it.

Rob Koplowitz56:06

The data shows people moving toward this lean, experimental mode: try something, see how it works, which may be fundamentally different from the manual process you struggle with today, and expand from there. It's a combination of grassroots, bottom-up adoption and, eventually, executive support from the top down. But start with the grassroots.

Niamh Lordan56:41

Great, thanks, Rob. For everyone else who asked questions, we'll get back to you after the webinar, and we'll send the recording to everyone who registered. If you have any questions, email us at info@flowforma.com or fill in the contact form on our website. Thanks for watching.