Keep up with digitization demand: launch your process automation journey

Ursula Cullen00:01

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's webinar with FlowForma Process Automation and AFJ Solutions: Keep Up With Digitization Demand, Launch Your Process Automation Journey. The webinar is being recorded, your lines are muted, and you can use the Q&A function to send questions, which we'll answer at the end. We'll send everyone a copy of the recording afterwards.

Ursula Cullen00:44

Today we're joined by Shay O'Connor, Head of Solutions at FlowForma. Shay has more than 25 years of experience in the technology sector, with over 19 years in multi-sector consulting and business development. Mark Jenner, CEO of AFJ Solutions, also joins us. Mark has over 20 years of experience in senior management roles in IT, providing IT solutions to businesses of all sizes, from SMEs to large enterprises. Over to you, Shay.

Shay O'Connor01:35

For those who are unaware, FlowForma is a platform that digitizes your manual or inefficient processes using no code. We're in use across the globe, and a lot of very successful customers have shared their success stories on this digitization journey, some of them in case studies on our website. I'm hoping you'll get an insight into what other organizations have come across in their goal to digitize.

Mark Jenner02:33

Good afternoon, everyone. For those who don't know, AFJ Solutions is a specialist service management and automation solutions provider. Our core expertise is in IT and enterprise service management, AI, automation, integration and mobility. We work with a select set of no-code and low-code solution providers, FlowForma being one of those, and it's with these solutions that we enable our customers to drive their digital transformation.

Shay O'Connor03:24

A lot of organizations are looking into digitization at the moment, and they've come to us and AFJ at differing points in their journey, with different reasons and different priorities. The guys at Forrester Research were good enough to share feedback from talking to thousands of their customers. Mark, can you help me break some of this down?

Mark Jenner04:15

I'll start with the second point, because there's no doubt the last 12 months have been unprecedented for every business. There have been dramatic changes in the way we work, and businesses have had to put together some very powerful responses. They're all looking at their operating models: they know they need to be more nimble and more efficient, and automation and digitization are a major part of delivering that. Add the dependencies on paper and spreadsheets, and people weren't geared up for working remotely. Because of that we see a lot of broken processes, and a lot of sticking plasters, where people have done things just to get by. They need longer-term solutions.

Shay O'Connor05:59

Looking at the stats in the top right-hand corner, 77% of businesses still have some or all of their processes managed in the inbox and the spreadsheet. We come across a lot of that. Some of their core processes are, as you say, broken: there's a disjointed view of how tasks are progressing because of that over-reliance on the inbox or Excel. The Forrester guys said that if you've got a piece of paper in your process, you can consider it broken in some shape or form.

Shay O'Connor07:04

And the sticking plaster you're describing is often the conference call. We're all sick of online calls, but people use them to ask colleagues, did you get that, where are you with this, instead of it being fully visible. The drive used to be to minimize the emails in my inbox. Now it's also, can we minimize the calls? Can I get those questions answered just by looking at my dashboard?

Mark Jenner07:50

That's very much what we're seeing. Paper is still very prevalent in many of these processes, and those documents are emailed and scanned across, which is error-prone and time-consuming. Many of the customers we're talking to know they need long-term, sustainable processes that make the business agile, that the business can build upon, and that keep them competitive.

Shay O'Connor08:38

Let's take a little pause here. We're going to start a poll: has your organization faced broken processes since the start of the pandemic? It's our own independent view, to compare with the Forrester analysis.

Shay O'Connor09:10

Here are the results. 75% said they've faced broken processes, and 25% said no. That's a significant proportion of people, and it aligns with what Forrester found.

Mark Jenner09:36

What would you say are the primary focus areas for improvement that you're seeing with clients today, Shay?

Shay O'Connor09:48

Pre-COVID, organizations were focused on digitizing, and weren't saying they were too concerned about cost. They were quite measured about how it would be tackled. The desire to accelerate digital business transformation is still very relevant, with a slight dip in improving the customer experience. When the pandemic kicked in, businesses changed their attitude quite abruptly, to making sure we stay in business. Cost reduction came in big time and became one of the primary focuses. The question became, how is this going to hit me now, this year, rather than a big analysis of what happens down the track.

Mark Jenner12:45

We've seen exactly the same trends across all the platforms. Cost is always a consideration, but it now comes to the forefront of every discussion. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, which was moving at a slower rate, and one of its benefits should be an improved operating model with the cost efficiencies that come with it. Companies know they need digital solutions, but they also need to know they're getting value from them, so there's a lot of focus on time to value: solutions that bring value quickly, that they can demonstrate and build upon. Longer term, they want the savings to grow as the business grows, without having to grow IT teams at the same rate. We expect hybrid working to become more prevalent once the pandemic is over, so the customer experience is still very important.

Shay O'Connor15:22

One of the things that comes up a lot with cost reduction and the evolution of digitization is that many organizations are considering, or have committed to, their people becoming what they call citizen developers, so a lot of the responsibility goes in-house. Mark, I'm going to put you on the hot seat to explain this slide.

Mark Jenner16:05

In simple terms, for a long time processes were on paper. Paper is manual, time-consuming and prone to error, and it's surprising how reliant we still are on it. Then desktops, laptops and packages like Microsoft Office arrived, and people could work with and share information more easily. Today we have mobiles, which bring the digital workplace onto people's phones, and the demand for digitized applications and processes has rocketed. The challenge for IT departments is that they can't keep up with that demand using traditional tools, and the pandemic is driving more of it.

Mark Jenner18:18

This is where the citizen developer comes in. With the new application platforms, other people in the business become an extension of IT. They augment the IT department, building processes and applications quickly and delivering more of that digitization to the business. It's a relatively new term, but we see it as an increasingly important part of delivering digitization.

Shay O'Connor19:08

There's a lovely range of platforms out there, but you have to work out what you want. Often the instruction is, we need to digitize, let's evaluate systems. First ask yourselves who wants to be the owner, and whether you have coding expertise in-house. Coding systems have long project cycles. Now we have platforms that get a return a lot faster, using low code or no code, and there's a big gap between the two that's starting to be recognized.

Shay O'Connor20:43

Low code doesn't mean every process is low code. The really simple ones need very little coding, the complex ones need serious skill sets, so on average it comes out as low code. If you have plenty of developers and no issue with your project life cycles, you can consider low code alongside no code. No code lets you bring in business developers, the citizen innovators, as part of your team.

Shay O'Connor21:42

We've seen organizations do both. Once digitization starts, the appetite grows significantly: if those guys have this digitized, why can't we? That's where no code kicks in heavily. Departments get trained up in a couple of days, still under management, and start mopping up the manual processes we all come across: sign-offs for leave, expenses or requisitions. Digitized, they're simple and fully auditable. So it's very important to know who's going to manage what.

Shay O'Connor23:05

There are tons of examples of automated processes. These are some of the areas where clients have asked FlowForma to digitize processes that were manual or badly created.

Mark Jenner23:35

Many of these are processes we see time and time again. HR is a really good example. Historically it was a supporting function, but the pandemic brought HR to the front of the queue, because remote working brought real challenges, and HR has become a key adopter for many of our clients. Joiners, movers and leavers is one we see all the time, and many clients consider it a broken process: people start and the laptop isn't ready, the access isn't ready. When somebody's working remotely, that problem is even worse.

Mark Jenner25:33

With the process in place, people are productive on day one: equipment is there, security checks are automated, and the ID and Office 365 setup is done ahead of time. We have a case study with a housing association that could never get new joiners up and running on day one, or even day two, three or four. We put a joiners, movers and leavers process in place, and several months later they told me that, having monitored it closely, 100% of their new starters were working and productive on day one.

Shay O'Connor26:45

For me, customer service stands out: client onboarding and client engagement. Organizations a little further on their digital journey are comfortable creating internal processes, and now want to include third parties. And it's important for organizations to know they're not alone in all this.

Mark Jenner27:42

What would your tips for adoption be, Shay, from the organizations you've worked with?

Shay O'Connor27:49

Consider it a journey. Historically people bought a finance system and just got going. Now, just as manual and paper processes evolved, this is a journey that will keep evolving. You need a driver: a sponsor at a high level in the organization who says digitization is the way forward. There will be adoption hiccups. Some people will like it, some won't, and a percentage won't like change, which is why support from a high level matters. It's not just a short trip, it's a full journey.

Shay O'Connor29:13

Then start building your processes and improve them as the days go past. Keep an eye on them, identify bottlenecks or delays against your expectations, and react. People using the system see that their feedback has been listened to, and the whole organization sees you planning for the future, which is a boost. With no code, you get past the initial adoption hump with the first process, then the second and third, and when business people create their own, you get support at departmental level and a bit of a surge. So get a sponsor, a champion to support the endeavor, react to the changes required, and don't stick to doing it the way it's always been done.

Shay O'Connor30:57

A really good example is the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and there's a use case on our website. They started with one process, travel authorization. Tropical medicine takes people to far-off places, so their travel requests were quite complicated, and digitizing it would give visibility of what people needed to do across the group. They trained eight people, and after two years they had something like 60 processes created by their business users. Three and a half years in, the last time we talked, they had over 125 processes digitized, and they say they have a paperless finance department. They're the first organization I've ever heard say that. Mark, you haven't come across too many paperless departments, have you?

Mark Jenner32:33

No. That's the goal for many organizations, but I wouldn't say many have reached it. It's a fantastic achievement, and it shows they followed what you said about adoption. I imagine they put together a road map, knew the journey they were on, and developed in a genuinely agile way. The message about being paperless is a fantastic one, and with sustainability it's a message people want to hear more and more. For all we said about cost saving, sustainability is discussed a lot, despite the pandemic, and I only see that coming more to the fore.

Shay O'Connor34:06

That's a really good point. Sustainability came up a lot pre-pandemic, with energy-saving initiatives tied to digitization. The focus changed with the survival mindset, but it never went away, and once organizations are comfortable that they can digitize, they'll start getting stuck into sustainability.

Shay O'Connor34:57

I'm going to do a really quick creation of a process, just to give you an idea of what a citizen developer can do. This is a demo environment. I create a new process, call it New initiative, and make myself the owner. If you can document a process, writing down the steps, the data you want to deal with and the rules that govern it, you can create it in FlowForma.

Shay O'Connor36:16

Instead of a new step, I'm adding an existing step, because everything in FlowForma is reusable. I bring in an initial request step I built before for hiring new employees. Then I create two new steps: a manager sign-off and a finance director sign-off, each with an Approved yes or no question, and a wet signature for the manager. The point of digitizing is that you should only ever do something once: your documents are created from this and your databases are updated from it, so there's no duplicated work.

Shay O'Connor39:42

As I go, I can take a peek at each step to see how it will look for the person who receives it. Then I add a rule on the total budget needed: a show/hide step rule that shows the finance director step only if the budget is greater than 50,000. You can add more rules and groups for a complicated scenario. This is where screens become really dynamic, changing automatically based on people's selections.

Shay O'Connor41:55

Now I kick off my new initiative. The screens are rendered automatically. I put in an expected start date, the hiring manager and a total budget. At 40,000 nothing happens, but above the threshold the finance director is automatically required. When I submit, the manager gets a notification, can look back at the previous information, approve it and sign it off. It's automatically rendered for mobile as well, with validation throughout, and then it goes to the finance director.

Shay O'Connor43:25

That's a really simple sign-off process, reusing some components, and I can easily pop back in and edit it, making those steps visible, taking a peek at the new-look form and selecting roles. You can evolve the process really easily.

Mark Jenner44:27

That's very impressive, how quickly you can put those processes together and amend them.

Shay O'Connor44:35

One of our testimonials came from a manager who said they created a sign-off process at lunchtime one day. That immediacy of changing something manual into something digital gives you a mindset for the whole digitization.

Shay O'Connor45:16

These are some of our recommendations. Mark, you have experience of lots of different platforms. For success in 2021, what's your view?

Mark Jenner45:28

The willingness to adopt is very important: getting buy-in, with sponsors and stakeholders in place internally. And you need the right type of solution to develop and deliver rapidly. There's still a place in IT for heavy development platforms, but to augment the IT department and benefit from citizen developers, you need the mentality of rapid process adoption and no-code platforms, and that needs to become the normal if businesses are to be at the forefront of digitization.

Mark Jenner46:50

I expect sustainability to become a bigger and bigger topic. There's a push to be green and to reduce the paper we use. As you just showed, we can put processes together and capture signatures from whatever device people use, mobile, laptop or desktop, and all of that helps sustainability.

Shay O'Connor47:39

Something that came up with a client the other day is that you can now get software as a service, so you don't have to commit a big sum to a system when you're not sure of its impact. You can go at it on an annual basis and prove the point, and it gives you an exit.

Mark Jenner48:11

It's a smaller operating cost rather than a large capital cost. And by using resources internally, you significantly reduce the need for services from outside providers. They're still available to those who want them, but you can become a lot more self-sufficient and drive things forward internally.

Ursula Cullen48:54

We have a few questions. Mark, you might take the first: how do organizations and citizen developers work alongside IT when implementing a no-code solution?

Mark Jenner49:25

That's a very important question, because departments need to work together for the business to be successful. No-code platforms and citizen developers shouldn't be completely separate from IT; they should augment it. Governance should still come from IT, working with its portfolio. What it gives the business is IT capability extended significantly, and it lets the technical IT team focus on the more technical products while delivering a road map they've had for some time. We have customers whose processes sat on the road map for two years because IT didn't have the tools or resources. Bring in a no-code solution under IT governance, with citizen developers, and you extend what you can deliver massively.

Ursula Cullen51:08

Shay, you might take the next one: I'd like my customers and suppliers to input data into my processes. Is this possible?

Shay O'Connor51:21

It's possible, but it depends on what you're trying to do and how much you're willing to spend. In FlowForma it's a simple add-on that we call Engage. You decide which step in the process should be visible to a third party, and include them securely or anonymously. It generates a URL that can be sent automatically as part of the process to your supplier, a subcontractor or anyone you want engaged. In other platforms you'd have to build that.

Shay O'Connor52:35

Forrester said the customer experience had dropped off a few percentage points but was still a high priority. Once you've solidified what you do internally, why not include the customer? It gives them a nice warm feeling that the company they deal with is evolving and taking this seriously, without having to be there physically. Your data is clean, you know where every process sits, and you can send automatic reminders asking people to fill in information or attach documents. A lot of our customers include their suppliers and subcontractors this way, out of the box.

Ursula Cullen54:34

Thanks, Shay. If anyone wants to see a demonstration of that, Shay can show you afterwards.

Ursula Cullen54:45

We'll finish up the questions there. If we didn't get to yours, Shay and Mark will send you a response by email. Thank you to Mark and Shay, and to everyone for attending. You can download the Forrester predictions report the guys referred to from the resources panel. If you want to talk more to Shay or Mark, you can book a call with our process automation experts or book a trial on our website. Please fill in the short survey at the end, which helps us plan our events. Thanks very much, and hopefully we'll see you soon.