CRM - November 2007 - (Page 38)

WORKFLOW AUTOMATION that didn’t yet have them because the relevant checks were not yet processed. Workflow automation is supposed to simplify and streamline business. “Historically, everything was date- and timebased for workflow,” Manias says. “There were built-in wait times at every step to allow people to account for problems that might crop up, whether they did or not. Now we can use events to trigger workflows, including triggering them on the completion of the previous step.” Technology lets us remove unnecessary waits and mismanaged handoffs. There’s more to WFA than just technology, of course, and thinking of it as such would miss the point, says David Straus, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Corticon, a “Previously, it was hard or impossible to carve off a subset of customers and test new offers and workflows in a real environment through agent training. Business process technology makes it much easier to create and run what-if scenarios, or subdivide a group and design a test offer for them.” WHERE WORKFLOW AUTOMATION WORKS One place where WFA can make a difference is in contract management. “It’s easier to automate fully with low-risk/highvolume contracts, since they require fewer touches and aren’t likely to get out of hand,” says Anthony Roth, senior director of product management for contract management vendor I-many. A contract that requires little personalization or alteration obvi- “BPM is a behavior, a discipline. It’s thinking about, in a structured way, how information moves through your company.” BPM vendor. “BPM is a behavior, a discipline. It’s thinking about, in a structured way, how information moves through your company,” Straus says. “There are tools for enablement, but it’s consciously thinking about how work moves, and how you can guide it.” The key elements of workflow automation are the decisions made regarding activities and tasks. “There are two ways to handle decision-making,” Straus says. “Either you give control to a person who reviews the company policies and clicks the approve/deny button, or you give it to a computer that has the policies programmed into it.” People cause problems, whether through misremembered training, simple errors in looking at data, or even through malicious intent. Computers drive down costs and are more reliable if programmed correctly, Straus says, “but they don’t deal well with sophisticated processes, or with change.” The best answer here is a combination: Automate decisions when doing so improves throughput, and make sure humans are handling anything that requires interpretation. This hasn’t always been properly addressed, in Pyke’s experience. “I’m oversimplifying things, I know, but it does seem that BPM is becoming a technology solution as opposed to the business process solution it was meant to be,” he writes. “Somewhere along the way, one of the key elements in a business process—a person—dropped off the agenda.” He quotes Forrester Research’s finding that 85 percent of business processes involve people—“carbon-based resources” is Pyke’s phrase—but that figure has been overlooked. “Many vendors will tell you that their BPM products support human interaction, but what they are talking about will be simple work item handling and form filling,” Pyke writes—features that are a long way from collaboration and interaction management. But technology remains critical, since it enables new ways of operating. “IT is beginning to realize the effect it can have on business; an example is testing a new process,” Straus says. 38 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2007 ously doesn’t differ from a standard and accepted document that a computer will handle efficiently. It would be a mistake, Roth says, to subject the result of hard-fought negotiations to a fully automated process. “Just because you can automate something doesn’t necessarily mean you should,” he notes. Straus has a similar case. “One of our customers, Precedent Insurance, is moving its application-and-approval process to the Web, putting the process into the hands of customers with a series of decision-making questions dependent on the previous questions,” he says. “But it’s the actual insurance underwriters creating the approval process, building in their understanding of health insurance. They weren’t retrained as Web coders, unless you count ‘writing formulas for a spreadsheet’ coding.” But automation can scare some people. “In contract management systems, workflows and lifecycles are built into the application. Salespeople can see this as a benefit or a hindrance,” Roth says. Nobody likes to feel that they can be replaced—certainly not by a machine—but there are some very good reasons to automate processes. “Companies put it in to control risks, through standardized language and structures,” Roth says, adding that they must work with the sales team, not around them, to create the contracts and processes. “That way,” he adds, “sales knows when they initiate a contract that it will go faster, reducing sales cycles”—and the skill of the salesperson augments the power of the computer. WHERE WORKFLOW CAN BENEFIT YOUR WORKPLACE Incentive management is another area where workflow automation has been important to industry growth. (See “Pay Day,” October 2007.) “Automated workflows are the foundation for effective sales compensation management, bringing visibility, consistency, predictability, and compensation accuracy and timeliness,” says Karen Steele, vice president of marketing at Xactly Corporation, a sales performance management www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2007

CRM - November 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Have You Caught It? The Mother of Enterprise Information Market Focus: Technology: The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing Q&A: Gianforte Talks CRM Required Reading Predicting Profitability Checking the Pulse of the Contact Center Cast a Narrow Net Modern Times, Modern Methods Primos Hunting Calls Snares Efficiency Nailing It Down Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies RDS Delivery Delivers on Service Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - November 2007

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