The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the civilian foreign intelligence service agency of the United States Federal Government. It is officially responsible for collecting, processing, and analyzing national security information from all over the world. Its intelligence is provided directly to the president to respond to threats to national security.
Although the agency is committed to collecting information from the dark corners of the world like most organizations in 2020, it is considering how to improve its processes and operate more efficiently. Part of this work is performed by the CIA’s Office of Business Development and Innovation, which is managed by Pamela Dempsey.
Dempsey, speaking at this week’s ServiceNow Now at Work event, explained that the CIA is considering the role of “digital labor” in the CIA-or more commonly the use of robotic process automation or robots.
For all coverage of Now Now Work, check out diginomica’s dedicated event resource center here. For the link to the event itself, click here.
The Business Development and Innovation Office is using ServiceNow’s knowledge and service portal, demand management and platform runtime, and integrating ServiceNow and UiPath to provide digital human services (robots) to CIA customers who wish to automate their processes. Essentially, ServiceNow is used to create a Center of Excellence (CoE) to manage the entire process, from initial interest to meetings, to fund management, and even to monitor return on investment.
Dempsey explained:
We help our customers by using a shared service environment to provide process conversion opportunities for them. What really means is that we help them use technology, improve their business processes and help them increase efficiency, and improve their relationships with partners and business customers. This also helps them reduce costs.
When we looked at our customers, we realized that we have many opportunities to help them automate simple routine tasks, so we decided to introduce robotic process automation to agents. How do we use this new technology through the Center of Excellence.
The role of digital labor
Dempsey and her team pointed out that instead of thinking about CoE products in terms of technology or robotics, use the term “digital labor.” She hopes that the CIA sees this CoE as providing a new category for their labor pool, namely digital employees, in order to make full use of the actual employees currently working throughout the IAEA. she says:
When we established this center of excellence, we were asking ourselves, what does this mean? The reason for becoming a “digital employee” is because we are automating routine, rule-based tasks that everyone can perform. We don’t want to have a master’s degree in finance. People with years of experience come in and are required to copy and paste or paste data into the enterprise system for hours at a time. This is not the best use of our most precious resources. Therefore, we provide them with robots.
Dempsey also hopes to separate CoE from the CIA’s corporate IT functions. She added:
Robots are our ability to deliver solutions to their current pain points very quickly and at a very low cost. The enterprise IT system is responsible for end-to-end processing. Similarly, we want to add this new category to our workforce pool so that they can understand the IT services we will provide and the services our corporate IT will provide.
To do this, we need them to understand that they will hire digital employees. So, how do you hire and manage digital employees? You can do it through the Center of Excellence. The Center of Excellence is managed through ServiceNow.
What is a center of excellence?
When considering how to establish a CIA CoE for digital labor in ServiceNow, Dempsey and her team outlined many key factors for success. The first is governance-being able to manage everything from the first interaction with the customer to the end of the relationship. she says:
All these meetings, all these documents and all content are maintained on our ServiceNow website. It allows us to provide this transparency to us and our customers.
In addition, change management is also critical, because any time there is a change in business processes due to robot automation, or if robots interface with enterprise IT systems, CoE needs to have a deep understanding of this. Dempsey said that being able to reconfigure the robot while maintaining documentation for safety purposes or future expansion is critical.
As Dempsey explained, tools and training are also managed within the ServiceNow platform:
We use standardized tools and standardized training for our customers and business partners. Because once you buy a robot, they will always come back and ask for more. Moreover, if you standardize this tool and training process, it will make the second robot, the third robot, and the fourth robot run faster.
Then there are best practices and lessons learned. This is where we come out and we share our knowledge and experience with colleagues. We learn from colleagues and learn from the industry to improve our processes. ServiceNow enables us to store this information and make it transparent and available so that our customers can see that we are in touch with cutting-edge technology.
The site and portal also provide performance management and reporting, enabling CIA customers to determine their return on investment. Dempsey said that if she can’t do this, she will soon become irrelevant. She added:
Our customers have to pay for this because it is a managed service. Therefore, they want to see a return on investment, and they also need to see this when asking their supervisor for money to buy the robot. ServiceNow provides us with a beautiful dashboard that can intuitively show me that any way I need to slice and dice it, the return on investment of each robot and the entire robot. I saw it, my customers saw it, and corporate IT saw it.
Finally, the platform also handles supporting robotics technology and supplier management. Deloitte works with the CIA on this aspect of the digital labor program to ensure that the most effective robotic technology is promoted to customers.
Valuable customer experience
The key point Dempsey is eager to convey is that in addition to the benefits of process automation brought by robots to the entire CIA, CoE also provides customers with a transparent customer experience and provides insight into the entire process. She explained:
ServiceNow gives us the opportunity to educate our customers. They visited the website, and there are videos, demos, knowledge articles and ROI on the website. Therefore, customers can understand what RPA is and what robots can do for them. If they decide to buy an RPA because they have tasks that can be automated, then they can view their business processes and determine which tasks can be automated, and then Through the website again, they can submit ideas and request a meeting with us.
We can track the meeting and these interactions. They can decide that this is what they want to do, and we give them a cost estimate. They can then submit funds and funds to us, and then track that funds throughout our relationship. They can see how much money they have invested in the process, and they can see how much money has been spent. Therefore, they can see the investment they actually purchased. Technology investment is not always the case.
The whole process is visible not only to our customers, but also to our corporate IT, and we can provide it to senior managers of agents. ServiceNow allows us to manage business processes flexibly, but it also allows us to establish new business lines. Therefore, this is a huge saving for the entire organization.
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