How Grant Thornton unlocked a 60% efficiency gain across processes

Ian Hawkins00:05

Hello and welcome to our second session today at BPM Live 2019, the world's leading online BPM event. My name is Ian Hawkins, and I'm the editor of PEX Network, a global community of 160,000 process professionals from every industry.

Ian Hawkins00:52

If you'd like to ask a question, type it into the Q&A box and hit submit, and we'll ask as many as we can at the end. Don't panic if we don't get to yours: I'll pass it to our speakers with your contact details so they can follow up. This session is being recorded, so you can watch it back whenever you like.

Ian Hawkins02:17

Today's session is How Grant Thornton Is Unlocking a 60% Efficiency Gain Across Processes, with William McCann, IT manager at Grant Thornton, and Shay O'Connor, senior vice president at FlowForma. Gentlemen, the floor is yours.

Shay O'Connor02:43

Thank you, Ian, and thank you everybody for tuning in. Today we're talking with William McCann from Grant Thornton. Anybody listening wants to hear it from the horse's mouth: how relevant business process management and digital process automation are in a real environment. So we have a set of questions for William.

Shay O'Connor03:51

William, welcome. Can you tell us about your role at Grant Thornton?

William McCann04:03

I'm Will McCann, an IT manager at Grant Thornton in Dublin. Grant Thornton is a professional services firm providing advisory, assurance and tax services, and Grant Thornton Ireland is part of the Grant Thornton International network. I've been here 15 years, and over the last 10 we've developed our intranet on SharePoint. We now support more than 1,400 users across seven offices in Ireland.

William McCann04:44

Before FlowForma, I worked on the front end of SharePoint, building custom lists to handle staff queries, and we looked at InfoPath forms and other form platforms for building processes for internal departments.

Shay O'Connor05:13

In professional services, time literally equals money. Your people are out dealing with different clients all the time, so digitizing manual processes has a heavy impact.

Shay O'Connor06:23

What were the pain points that motivated you to look for an automation tool?

William McCann06:36

There were a number, depending on each department. One of the main ones was manual processes. We had a paper trail of requests, and when you have paper on a desk, it leads to problems: bottlenecks when people are out, a lack of visibility of where a process is or whose desk a form is on, and endless emails chasing it.

William McCann07:17

Very poor reporting on paper was another issue. Reporting was key for many of the forms we've created, and so was cutting down on paperwork. And because we're in seven offices, everything needed to be online and accessible by everyone at all times.

Shay O'Connor08:00

With a distributed workforce, different locations can end up with their own ways of doing things. I presume having one consistent way was a good knock-on effect for you.

William McCann08:26

Very much so. When we implement anything, we focus on the whole firm and how it benefits every office. We have a standard message for every office: here's the process and here's how you access it. Staff can transfer between offices and know the process is the same.

Shay O'Connor08:56

We hear that new staff get up to speed faster, because they don't even have to think about who's involved in the next step. They do their piece and pass it on. Have you found that?

William McCann09:39

Definitely. When we build a flow, we usually write a guide describing the process and how to access it, so people understand it and know exactly what to do, whatever tasks they have.

Shay O'Connor10:14

So you're not only getting efficiency gains, you're educating people about what a process entails. When they can see the steps, they know there are three or four more after theirs, instead of knocking on a manager's door asking what happened to their request.

William McCann11:15

Definitely. We've been using FlowForma for just over three years, and every time we add a new flow, more staff learn what it can do and request more. They see it out and about, see what can be done, and come to us asking, can you look at this for us as well? It leads to more projects being digitized.

Shay O'Connor12:06

An audience question touches on this: quantifying the level of pain. I presume department feedback on their pain points is how you prioritize what to do next?

William McCann12:34

It depends on which department is asking and the priority. Recently, a number of the things we've built online fit legal and company requirements, which has really helped departments. With forms centralized online and reportable, we can show people: this is the process, and this is what we follow.

Shay O'Connor13:16

What were your requirements when you looked for a process automation tool?

William McCann13:46

Ideally, to use what we already have. Grant Thornton is a Microsoft house with a global license agreement, and we use SharePoint heavily. So we looked for something we could develop in SharePoint ourselves, or an off-the-shelf package that does what we need.

William McCann14:14

Something that didn't require code was key. SharePoint custom lists and forms platforms that need code in the background can be quite expensive. We wanted something that streamlined the process and made it very simple to build forms, without code. We spoke to FlowForma, and took it from there.

Shay O'Connor14:55

Time was of the essence, too. The last thing you want is a long project where you spend ages building processes and see no return. Did you feel you could build something yourselves?

William McCann15:37

Building it internally wasn't an option; we didn't have the skill set. We looked at a number of solutions, and were pleasantly surprised by FlowForma and how easy it is to use once you get used to the platform.

Shay O'Connor16:05

There's a lot of misleading information out there, with plenty of platforms claiming any user can build processes. You can add code in FlowForma if you want to, but I presume you never have?

William McCann17:00

We've done a small bit of CSS, but literally just a small bit. Most of it is what the application offers.

Shay O'Connor17:08

We surveyed our customers across the globe and found that 92% had never coded. The no-code element is a unique factor, and you could use your existing environment, because FlowForma sits on top of SharePoint.

William McCann18:00

When we deployed FlowForma, we had recently moved to SharePoint 2013, so it was the right time to bring on a new platform.

Ian Hawkins18:58

A simple question for the audience: what's important to you when selecting a process management tool? Select all that apply: a tool that's intuitive and doesn't require coding, integration with Office 365, or the ability to engage external users.

Ian Hawkins19:57

Intuitive has come out top, at 77.5%. Integration with Office 365 and the ability to engage external users are joint second, both at 44.4%. Back to you, Shay.

Shay O'Connor20:14

That's interesting. A lot of people say they have no code, and we have none. William, tell us a little about the processes Grant Thornton has automated.

William McCann20:46

One of the first flows we created was trainee job appraisals for our audit and assurance departments across the seven offices. When trainees come back from an audit at a client, they fill in a form on how they got on, rating a number of core responsibilities and attributes. It goes to the manager, who reviews it and gives feedback, and it's filed in a report used for our trainee progression system.

William McCann21:46

It was one of the first to take off very well. It usually generates about 1,000 forms a year, and the feedback from managers has been phenomenal. They get reports at a better time, with more clarity on what's working and what's not.

William McCann22:18

Probably our biggest project to date is client acceptance, with our risk, compliance and professional standards department. This is how we onboard new clients, and it's the first time we built parent and child flows, given its complexity.

William McCann22:50

Parent flows onboard clients in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with child flows for the checks. When a request comes in, risk has to do up to five different checks, so that's five child flows going to different departments to work on at the same time, while keeping an overall view of where each request is.

William McCann23:38

To give you an idea of the impact, we launched it in July 2018, and since then 16,000 forms have been created. That's about four or five per request, so over 3,000 requests for new client codes.

William McCann24:30

Once a request is processed, it feeds into our practice management system. One of the main reasons for choosing FlowForma was SQL integration and talking to different systems. Once a request is approved, within a minute it's in our practice management system. It's instantaneous.

Shay O'Connor25:09

You should only ever have to enter something once. Otherwise you're wasting time doing it a second time elsewhere.

William McCann25:41

Our operations departments, finance, HR, IT and facilities, all have flows too. In IT, we have starters and leavers flows, tracking new staff coming on board. They tie into account creation, phone numbers, Skype for Business and asset management: here's a laptop, update asset management in the background. And they feed a database showing which jobs are complete.

Shay O'Connor26:41

With leavers, people still have their phone or a piece of equipment, or their login is still valid a week later. You need a checklist so no stone is left unturned.

William McCann27:20

If you do it manually, you're always going to miss one or two checks. With a form that says A, B and C need to be done, you do A, B and C before you progress. Before, we used SharePoint lists with so many moving parts, and a lot could be done out of order. Now there's a sequence depending on the area: asset management, account deactivation, mobile phone returns.

Shay O'Connor28:47

And as requirements change, you can alter that process yourself to keep up with your organization.

William McCann29:12

Definitely. Once people see a flow, they ask, can you also do A, B and C? Of course we can; just tell me what you need and we'll build it. It's been a learning experience for me getting up to speed, and for staff seeing what's possible.

Shay O'Connor29:56

What are your immediate next plans for processes at Grant Thornton?

William McCann30:20

We have requests from IT and finance, and from our favorite department, risk and compliance, a major project that's very exciting: letters of engagement. When we take on new clients, we send a letter of engagement, and we currently have 105 different types, depending on the office, service line, department and requirements.

William McCann31:24

We'll start with one service line first, iron out any kinks, and once it's working successfully, roll it out across the firm. It will cut down delays in getting letters out and partners signing off, because everything will be online.

Shay O'Connor32:39

The data you collect now has a great level of integrity, because you control the validation. Do you notice the data coming in is cleaner?

William McCann33:06

Definitely. In client acceptance, when staff enter details about the client, like entity type, that's pulled from our practice management system to give them a top-10 list, so it's correct when it feeds back in. It cuts down on mistakes, because the process is so linear.

Shay O'Connor34:17

How has user adoption been?

William McCann34:36

With job appraisals, trainees could go online instead of printing a paper form for every job. They'd been waiting three months and doing six or seven at a time, so managers got a raft of forms all at once. It streamlined the process. The more flows we used, the more staff saw how easy it was, all in the portal, with approvals going straight to the right person. Then departments started looking at their own processes, and more requests came in.

Shay O'Connor36:02

A consistent interface means the second, third and fourth processes feel familiar automatically.

Shay O'Connor36:20

Could you describe the results you've realized at Grant Thornton?

William McCann36:50

Departments get an overall view of where things are, with complete transparency. In client acceptance, we know exactly how many open requests we have, where the bottlenecks are, and how to relieve them by adding staff in that area. Processes are about 60% more efficient, and that's not far off the mark. And it's all online, accessible across all seven offices.

Shay O'Connor37:48

Different clients measure impact differently. Some, like Grant Thornton and several European agencies, look at a percentage efficiency gain. Construction customers look for a monetary return. In education, it's time saved: one college in the UK saved 5,500 hours a year with only seven processes, the equivalent of two and a half staff.

Shay O'Connor39:41

Thank you, William, for sharing those stats, and for being so honest about everything.

Ian Hawkins40:36

A question for Will: how did you quantify the level of pain in your organization? Everybody wants to know which bit to automate first.

William McCann41:00

Quantifying the pain was in the departments' hands. Risk, for example, came to us with a process they'd mapped out. When they mapped it themselves, they saw where the delays were, what was causing bottlenecks and slowing the process. So the department made the call: we need to get this online because of A, B and C.

Shay O'Connor42:00

Different organizations have different drivers. In construction, road builders were given a target to save money on the next project, so they quantified how long things took and what that cost in staff and contractors. After digitizing, they did the same check, and could report exactly how much they'd saved. If you look at each process step by step, and string the results together, the complete ROI becomes visible.

Ian Hawkins43:47

We'll have to leave it there. Thanks, Shay and William. My quote of the conference: education is a useful by-product of digitization. Thank you for your time, everybody, wherever you are.