Improve work: Increase productivity through digital workflow

This is a paradox. Although the digital revolution is entering the fast lane at an alarming rate, productivity growth is still stuck on difficult shoulders. The effect is well-known: the victory of the PC in the 1980s demonstrated this for the first time-“computers are everywhere, just useless in productivity statistics” (Nobel Laureate Robert Solo)-and this is true today. Because True is rarely able to increase productivity in the 2020s. How can this be changed?

A 2019 OECD study on “Productivity in the Digital Age” (PDF) found that the productivity gap between market drivers and latecomers is widening when it comes to digitalization. Drivers significantly increased their productivity, and latecomers stagnated.

The study also shows that companies undergoing the transformation process suffer short-term productivity losses, but in the long run, they support the right horses. Because the full digital penetration of the economy inevitably ensures that only those organizations that embrace digitization with open arms can survive. The OECD recommends the following key to success:

• Strengthen the dissemination of technology and knowledge?Free access to knowledge promotes innovation

• Empower employees technically?Strengthen the ability to solve problems

• Intensified structural reforms?Open the system for new ideas, technologies and business models

The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that more structural measures are combined with the use of technology to achieve success, rather than blindly investing in new technologies. This directly leads to a dead end. Chris Pope, Vice President of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, is very clear about this: “True transformation is to re-understand problems and find new ways to solve them. […] In terms of digital investment, what matters is not the rate of return on investment in technology, but the rate of return on investment in innovation brought about by technology. “

In the context of global crises such as the coronavirus pandemic, or in view of the serious consequences of climate change, companies are beginning to understand that they must rely on long-term success strategies. Keyword sustainability. Therefore, the term productivity is placed in a new context and has a more or less extended meaning.

What matters is no longer just a purely quantitative output that can be measured by numbers. On the contrary, people are paying more and more attention to the quality of productivity. Companies must create technical prerequisites for this today so that they can work efficiently tomorrow. Employees play a central role here, because it depends on their ability to innovate. This in turn depends on some very human factors: are my employees more satisfied with their work due to digitalization? Will this automatically lead to better performance? For the benefit of my customers, will my workforce now become a mutually motivating network? How can technology help people understand their work as a place to work together?

Anyone who asks such questions is already mentally moving into the future-and increasing productivity.

Since the company was founded in 2004, the workflow expert ServiceNow has been asking these questions. the most important: “How to make work work better for people?” The leader in the US market is entirely the cloud-based Now platform, and the Quebec version will be launched in March 2021. The Now platform ensures that there are no digital silos in the company, but all business applications are connected to each other in the entire expected process-across all silos.

“On this basis, it is possible to establish and optimize the cooperation network between companies,” explained Andreas Weber, ServiceNow’s head of solution consulting for China Europe. His corresponding paper read: “Through efficient workflows, service desks, and automation, companies can help their employees focus on production issues. The logical result is increased productivity.”

A large number of studies have shown that when people can concentrate on work for a long time and are not distracted by clichés, their work efficiency is particularly high. This is where self-service (such as the one successfully used by ServiceNow) helps. For example, a fully automated onboarding process has reduced the time between joining the company and the time an employee goes to work by 25%.

These and other similar measures increased another productivity indicator (sales per employee) by 18%. Currently, 50% of ServiceNow employees’ queries can be processed using fully automated self-service. “Our goal is 75%,” Weber said.

Thanks to the self-service center implemented by ServiceNow, the productivity of ServiceNow customer SwissRe has increased by 3% every year. Of the approximately 660,000 queries, 66% were resolved through self-service.

But there are three other results behind these numbers:

• Improve quality and reduce errors

• increase productivity

• Employees have more time for value-added activities

When creating efficient digital and automated workflows, the focus is usually on the largest possible process-because this can greatly increase productivity. However, highly complex processes, such as onboarding processes that must create and connect numerous interfaces and interactions with each other, can also be mapped using digital workflows to increase their productivity.

The Swiss insurance and financial group Baloise Group used the ServiceNow application engine to develop a digital portal to provide complete claims processing for major customers in the transportation insurance industry. Prior to this, the highly complex claims process was entirely paper-based and extremely time-consuming. “The prototype was up and running within two weeks, and the process yielded results after only four months. The entire claim process has been digitized. The pile of paper on the person in charge’s desk is a thing of the past,” Andreas Weber reports.

“The Baloise Group has achieved a huge increase in productivity just by reducing processing time from days to hours,” Weber continued. Thanks to the positive experience gained, the product portfolio has also been expanded to include relocation damage, and it is currently being checked whether this portal solution can be provided to other Baloise customers.

In the Quebec version, ServiceNow added App Engine Studio to its App Engine. The low-code platform also makes the application engine available to citizen developers. “With App Engine Studio, the employees with the most expertise in the company can work. This allows them to fully contribute to increased productivity,” Weber said of a central point: the company’s employees can now, without in-depth IT knowledge, and without worry. If internal IT personnel worry, they can carry out digital innovation on their own-because the applications developed by Citizen Developers undergo strict quality and security controls in the studio and pass the approval process built into the application. software.