Empowering Our Services Part 1: Process & Technology

Imagine a world where our PROCESS & TECHNOLOGY are simple and empower our SERVICES to create a great digital delivery.

When you say it out loud this sounds like a simple task however these functions operate in different areas and often, having a common goal or approach doesn’t quite happen according to plan- even with the best intentions. Why? Because each unique area has different objectives in what they need to do day-to-day. 

For our process friends, we have a goal to service the customer requests the best way we can. Linking the individual tasks that need to be done to deliver the product or service that they have bought. To do this we need to understand what we do and how we do it, we need to know the flow of the work and therefore the way we are set up to get things done. It’s about efficiency and making things as simple as possible whilst delivering great customer outcomes. Ultimately, we want to improve that process to deliver a consistent service every time.

In technology, we are responsible for ensuring that the technology which continually supports the service is up and running. We are in charge of the assets and making sure those assets are healthy. What does that mean? We need to monitor each asset and see how they are performing on a day-to-day basis, we also need to understand its life cycle and any upgrades that are required for either business or technology reasons-helping to guide when investment should take place to improve and meet the growing needs. 

These objectives whilst different are in essence trying to do the same thing.  They are both serving the customer request. However, we often get so stuck in our own details and requirements that we forget what we are trying to do in the first place: 

Create great customer services! 

So how do we bring this all together? We need to utilise our business architecture. Our business architecture is the link across the business. 

It starts with our customers and why people would come to us in the first place and from here we can start to layer in the different parts of the business that we need to make it a success. 

Our customer journey generates processes and those processes are supported by technology. This is an end-to-end view which looks at both our process and our technology, to compliment the service that we are providing. 

So for the process, we are no longer bound by team borders, and for technology, we aren’t bound by individual asset ownership. Having this view and therefore managing this view enables us to run our business in a manner which is aligned to what our customers are experiencing. It provides us with access to a whole new level of information and enables us to make decisions aligned to the customer experience we want. 

When there is a gap between our goal, customer experience, and what we are delivering, it becomes visible and is highlighted. Guiding us to make prioritised investment decisions across process and technology to meet those customer needs. With this information, we can start our transformation.