Service Management: SMEs' path to efficiency and cost reduction
Service management isn’t a tool for big corporations only. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can also harness service management principles to minimise costs and maximise efficiency. But what does service management entail for SMEs, and how does it contribute to improved business performance? Let’s explore.
Understanding service management and its importance
Service management represents a strategic approach to designing, delivering, managing, and improving how an organisation uses information technology. For SMEs, it encompasses every process and policy to provide customer value and maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. The results span far and wide – from enhanced customer satisfaction to improved internal processes and cost control for SMEs.
The role of service management in minimising costs
How does service management keep costs down? Operational efficiency and resource optimisation hold the key. Effective service management ensures that SMEs productively deploy their human, technological, or financial resources.
Consider incident management, for example. A well-defined process to handle IT incidents can dramatically reduce downtime, ensuring business continuity and preventing loss of revenue. Likewise, robust problem management can reduce recurring issues, saving the time and cost of repeatedly dealing with the same problems.
How service management maximises efficiency
Service management isn’t only about cost reduction. It’s also about maximising efficiency and delivering value. Effective service management allows SMEs to streamline their operations, leading to quicker service delivery, improved service quality, and, ultimately, happier customers.
For instance, the change management process ensures that any modifications to the IT infrastructure occur systematically and efficiently, reducing the risk of disruptions. Service level management assists SMEs in setting, managing, and meeting their customers’ expectations, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Implementing service management in SMEs
The journey to service management may appear daunting, especially for SMEs with limited resources. However, the right approach can make the benefits outweigh the costs. Start by defining your service management strategy, ensuring alignment with your business goals. Next, identify the fundamental processes that require attention – anything from incident management to service level management.
Invest in a service management tool that matches your needs and budget. This tool should help you automate, track, and manage your service management processes. Lastly, make sure to train your team. Everyone should understand the new processes and their roles within them.
Final thoughts from GWIT
Implementing service management in SMEs might take time, but it’s a journey that can yield significant cost savings and increased efficiency rewards. Where can service management make the most important difference in your operation as an SME? How can you start integrating service management principles into your business processes? Consider these questions as you evaluate your current operations and plan for the future of your business.
We’d be delighted to help, even to facilitate a conversation between SMEs to spread awareness of the benefits and some sharing of the challenges.
Whether you’re the lone tech guru in a small start-up or a part of the sprawling IT landscape in a multinational, you’ll agree that we’re constantly in the trenches, solving problems and quelling IT uprisings.
But, ever thought how much easier it would be if we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time? That’s where knowledge management enters the scene.
We often stumble upon the same issues, and without an efficient knowledge management system, we’re forced to solve them from scratch, like a hapless mouse stuck in a maze, repeatedly trying to find the exit. How about that pesky printing issue Mary from Marketing had? John from HR faced the same thing just last week. But, in the absence of shared knowledge, Mary’s solution took two hours, which could have been just a few minutes if somebody had documented John’s experience.
Let’s look at five key benefits of effective knowledge management, each serving as a guide to get us out of the chaos maze, saving time and money, and significantly improving the service experience.
The continuity chronicle
Knowledge transfer isn’t just for when a team member moves on. Indeed, you’ll save countless hours not having to play detective with a former employee’s cryptic code, but what about holidays, sick days, or when specialists are in back-to-back meetings? Knowledge management can be the user manual ensuring business as usual, even when key players are unavailable.
The time travel advantage
Remember how the last system upgrade took ages because the team was learning as they went? With knowledge management, you don’t need a DeLorean to travel back in time. Recalling previous upgrade protocols can slash the learning curve and project timeline dramatically.
The customer service champion
Imagine a frantic client calls about a lost file. With knowledge management, the support team can search the database, find a similar past issue, and restore it in minutes. The client is thrilled, your team shines, and your coffee is still warm. That’s the power of knowledge management in elevating the customer experience.
The innovation incubator
Innovation isn’t just about ideas; it’s about effective execution. By documenting the what, how, and why of past failures and successes, teams avoid past pitfalls and build upon previous achievements, freeing up resources to pioneer new solutions to new issues instead of repeatedly retracing old steps.
The risk mitigation maestro
Say a misconfiguration caused a system downtime last month. Without knowledge management, a team member could unknowingly repeat the same mistake. But, with an updated knowledge management system, this risk is significantly reduced or, ideally, removed.
Sounds fantastic. But how does it translate into actual savings?
Well, consider this – Gartner estimates that a well-implemented knowledge management system can reduce information search time by up to 75%. Let’s say your IT team of 10 spends 20 hours a week on information search and troubleshooting. That’s 800+ hours a month. A 75% reduction means 600+ hours saved. Time that can be redirected to critical projects. If we conservatively estimate the hourly cost at £50, that’s a whopping £30,000 monthly saving, every month.
As for service experience, Aberdeen Group states that companies with a formalised knowledge management initiative achieve an 85% greater customer retention rate. Happy customers equate to repeat business, positive reviews, and referrals – invaluable gains in today’s digital marketplace.
So, IT comrades, it’s high time we embraced knowledge management – not as a buzzword but as a trigger for efficiency, innovation, and growth. Yes, it demands an initial investment of time and effort. But once in place, knowledge management is the gift that keeps giving. From seamless continuity to stellar customer service, from nurturing innovation to mitigating risk – the realm of knowledge management benefits is boundless.
Turn those battle cries into victory roars with the power of knowledge management.
Can GWIT help you develop this secret weapon in your IT team and realise its benefits?
You drive your organisation’s success as a dynamic team that maintains and enhances ServiceNow for IT and various other core business functions. Within your team lie the unsung heroes: developers, solution designers, product owners, architects, and other skilled professionals.
This article emphasises the importance of effectively promoting your work, showcasing the innovative uses of the ServiceNow platform in service management, and personally introducing your team members to the broader organisation. By doing so, you create awareness and recognition for your efforts while highlighting your team’s valuable contributions to delivering exceptional service management solutions.
Driving innovation and collaboration in service management
By openly sharing successful projects and enhancements, you demonstrate the ServiceNow platform’s ability to streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and elevate the employee experience within service management. This motivates other teams to explore fresh possibilities and nurtures a culture where innovation and collaboration thrive, fostering an environment where ideas are exchanged, and collective growth is encouraged.
Highlighting cost savings in service management
By promoting successful projects and enhancements, you showcase the benefits of leveraging the ServiceNow platform and highlight the measurable cost savings attained. Through specific examples that illustrate the platform’s ability to automate manual tasks, optimise workflows, and reduce operational costs, your team raises awareness regarding the significant financial advantages that could be realised across other business functions through effective service management practices.
Sharing service management best practices and lessons learned
Through effective communication, your team can openly share valuable insights, best practices, and lessons learned from successful service management projects and enhancements. This knowledge-sharing approach prevents duplicated effort, expedites project delivery and ensures that the organisation benefits from the collective expertise in service management. By leveraging these shared insights, your team can continuously improve service delivery and enhance overall organisational effectiveness in service management practices.
Enhancing cross-functional collaboration in service management
By promoting your team’s accomplishments and showcasing the innovative uses of the ServiceNow platform in service management, you foster collaboration among diverse business functions. Increasing awareness of the platform’s capabilities and successful implementations inspires cross-functional teams to align their efforts and work together. This heightened collaboration improves service delivery and cultivates a sense of unity and shared purpose across the organisation’s service management endeavours, leading to enhanced outcomes and a more cohesive working environment.
Introducing team members
Besides promoting the ServiceNow platform and its innovative uses, it is important to introduce your team members to the broader organisation. Doing so creates awareness and recognition for the individuals behind the scenes who contribute to delivering effective service management solutions. This can be achieved through various engaging methods, such as short Q&A sessions or ‘Five minutes with’ discussions, providing an opportunity for a lighthearted introduction to the people in your team. Through these introductions, you highlight your team members’ key roles and expertise, fostering a greater appreciation for their work within the organisation and strengthening collaboration and understanding across teams.
Promoting platform adoption and enhancing employee satisfaction in service management
Effectively communicating successful projects and enhancements in service management significantly influences platform adoption and boosts employee satisfaction. By showcasing the advantages of the ServiceNow platform and the positive outcomes it delivers in service management, employees are encouraged to embrace and utilise its capabilities. This increased platform adoption leads to improved self-service options, reduced service response times, and enhanced employee satisfaction with service management processes. By effectively conveying the benefits of the ServiceNow platform, your team empowers employees to fully embrace it, resulting in heightened satisfaction with service management operations.
Final thoughts
The key to driving awareness, increasing collaboration, and maximising the benefits of the ServiceNow platform in service management lies in effective communication, promoting innovative platform uses, and introducing team members to the broader organisation.
Your team gains a reputation for continuous improvement, collaboration, and innovation in service management by actively showcasing successful projects, sharing best practices, and raising awareness of cost savings.
Additionally, introducing team members brings visibility to their invaluable contributions, nurturing a sense of recognition and appreciation. These collective efforts strengthen cross-functional relationships, enhance platform adoption and satisfaction, and ultimately contribute to the overall success of service management within the organisation.
Keen to learn more about how GWIT could help your team to communicate its successes? We’d love to hear from you.
In IT Service Management (ITSM), the ‘first-time fix’ rate often takes the spotlight as a key metric. Indeed, some outsourced IT contracts over the years have incentivised suppliers to deliver high and increasing incident first-time fix performance.
However, let’s explore a different perspective: why a low ‘first-time fix’ rate might be better in incident management. By prioritising root cause resolution, ITSM practitioners can uncover hidden opportunities for improvement and elevate their incident management practices.
Understanding the limitations of ‘first-time fix’
The ‘first-time fix’ rate represents the percentage of incidents resolved without further escalation or rework. While a high ‘first-time fix’ rate is often desirable, solely chasing this metric can overlook the importance of addressing the root cause of incidents. By fixating on closing incidents quickly, we risk perpetuating a cycle of recurring issues, which leads to frustrated users and inefficiencies within the IT support team.
Unleashing the power of root cause resolution
Instead of focusing on a high ‘first-time fix’ rate, ITSM practitioners should embrace a low rate as an opportunity for growth and improvement. By prioritising root cause resolution, we can address the underlying issues contributing to recurring incidents and create lasting solutions.
Consider a scenario where a user experiences frequent application crashes. A technician could quickly restart the application to achieve a high ‘first-time fix’ rate. However, a low ‘first-time fix’ rate would encourage the technician to investigate further, uncovering that the crashes are caused by compatibility issues with a specific operating system update. By addressing the root cause – updating the application to support the new OS version – the technician resolves the current incident and prevents future occurrences for other users.
Benefits of a low ‘first-time fix’ rate
Sustainable Resolutions A low ‘first-time fix’ rate signifies a commitment to long-term stability. Investing time and effort into root cause resolution minimises the chances of incidents reoccurring, resulting in improved user experience and reduced workload for the IT support team.
Continuous Improvement A low ‘first-time fix’ rate fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the ITSM team. It encourages technicians to dig deeper, analyse trends, and identify systemic issues that require proactive measures. This approach leads to more robust systems, enhanced service delivery, and increased customer and employee satisfaction.
Learning and Knowledge Sharing A low ‘first-time fix’ rate prompts knowledge sharing and collaboration among the ITSM team. By encouraging technicians to document their investigations, findings, and solutions, we create a knowledge base that benefits the entire organisation. This shared knowledge empowers team members to develop their skills and capabilities, improving incident resolution and fostering innovation.
Final thoughts
While a high ‘first-time fix’ rate is often considered ideal in IT incident management, embracing a low rate can unlock the power of root cause resolution. By prioritising thorough investigations and sustainable solutions, we create a culture of continuous improvement and drive meaningful change within our ITSM practices. A low ‘first-time fix’ rate signifies our commitment to addressing underlying issues, enhancing user experience, and propelling our organisations towards greater efficiency and success.
GWIT helped Veolia's service management experts to find the 'Why?'
Customer:
Headquarters:
Paris, France
Industry:
Energy/Utilities
Employees:
100,000+
GWIT worked with Veolia’s Digital Service Management team to transform messaging and communications to engage their internal customers worldwide.
It all started with ‘Why?’
Why do the team do what they do? The team know what they do and how they do it. They do lots of things, and therein lay the problem when it came to engaging the vast customer base successfully and succinctly.
Instead of focusing on what the team do and how they do it, we looked at why they do it.
Communicating ‘why the team exists’ became simple and straightforward. A message that quickly resonated with peer delivery teams and with business units across Veolia.
It isn’t just an IT thing either. The team helps legal, HR, finance, facilities, health & safety and other groups in over 65 countries make their work smarter. Some 80,000 Veolia colleagues worldwide have access to service portals built on the ServiceNow platform and maintained by the team.
Working with GWIT has changed the way our business and our customers perceive the DSM team and the value we bring daily. We are all very busy focusing on delivering quality services; there wasn’t much time left over for ‘marketing’. GWIT and Matt especially have bridged that gap for us in a way we couldn’t have thought possible 18 months ago.
Rob Gwatkin, Senior Service Delivery Manager, DSM CoE
Here’s some of what the transformation involved:
A website, reimagined
To increase engagement and to simplify the customer journey, we restructured the team’s intranet site. Information is now easy to find. The new site places emphasis on why the team does what it does. A concise message that customers can quickly relate to.
To reinforce this, the customer journey now gives easy access to success stories from other customers and the opportunity to register to attend events hosted by the service management team on a range of topics. There’s a library of previous event recordings for Veolia employees to peruse too.
The new site and its sympathetic design and ease of navigation quickly received praise from other Veolia delivery and support teams. Teams that are keen to copy and adapt the same approach for their own intranet site offerings.
Customer stories, retold
On behalf of the Digital Service Management team, GWIT now regularly engages with delivery teams and business units across Veolia. We help capture success stories where innovative use of the ServiceNow platform has already made measurable improvements.
Improvements that may include:
delivering consumer-grade experiences to employees;
realising financial or time savings;
increasing productivity; and
reducing digital carbon footprints by, for example, optimising resource usage via automation and integration.
One of the pillars of Veolia’s digital strategy is reuse via ‘copy and adapt’.
By capturing customer stories and communicating successes, innovative solutions that the Digital Service Management team has created with one business unit can be seen and deployed, by all.
Engaging events, scheduled
The team has regularly presented their work on the world stage at industry-led events. There was a need to do the same for the internal customer base.
As the health pandemic prevented gatherings in-person, Veolia’s internal customers from across the globe began taking part in interactive webinars and other events. Customers share knowledge, success stories and explore innovative uses of the ServiceNow platform.
Scheduling, hosting and promotion of such events remains a key part of GWIT’s ongoing commitment to Veolia’s service management success story.
A word from GWIT…
It is a pleasure to work with the team at Veolia. Their knowledge of the service management arena and enthusiasm to seek new and innovative ways of working with the ServiceNow platform is remarkable. The Veolia team treats GWIT as a partner rather than a supplier, something all too rare in today’s business world.
Matt James, GWIT
Ready to be our next success story?
How about an initial half-hour chat about your service management journey and some of the struggles and challenges you face? If we can help, we’ll recommend some next steps. If we can’t help, well, we will be honest.
Play your part in defining what happens next | Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The health pandemic has changed how we do business forever. What went before may no longer be fit for purpose so we must avoid recreating it.
So, what is relevant now? Here’s an approach to defining what comes next.
Things in the world of work are changing, fast.
Customer needs and expectations are not what they were before Covid-19, so the way your business operates needs to adjust.
Matt James, GWIT
Many organisations have started on their digital transformation journey over recent years.
Those that were ahead of the game found themselves better placed to change the way they operated as the pandemic unfolded.
Remote working, increased usage of digital tools, rapid adoption of new delivery methods and adapting to people not being in the same building: just some of the transformations we’ve all seen.
Almost without exception, organisations now need to adjust to whatever comes next.
Focusing on two key questions will help this adjustment:
What do customers need?
How can you show empathy as you adjust your business to meet these revised needs?
Here, we discuss the five-step process GWIT uses when approaching business and digital transformation.
Viewed through the lens of the coronavirus restrictions and learnings, we hope that this approach resonates with you and helps you play your part in defining what happens next.
Matt James
Identify purpose, value and challenges | Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash
#1 Assess activities to identify purpose, value and challenges
Over many years we’ve been under pressure to do things faster, cheaper and better.
Technology has been there in abundance but so have old-fashioned ways of working.
It might be the curse of the spreadsheet, the Access database back in the day, the bloated email inbox or of course, the filing cabinet in the corner, full of client paperwork.
If we spent a day in the life of one of your team, what activities would their day include and how would they typically go about those activities?
We’ve always done it this way.
The likelihood is that in recent months you have removed the daily commute, the office chit-chat and the lunchtime dash from desk to non-descript food chain outlet and back.
Maybe, you’ve been brave enough to question the value of meetings that are always booked in for an hour, regardless of the topic.
What remains?
Take a look at the activities that make up your working day, working week, working month, working quarter etc. How long do they take? Are they repetitive? How often do you do them?
Remind me, why do we do these things?
Do you do those things because you have always done them? What purpose does the activity serve? Does your customer care about the outcome? How do the activities contribute to meeting the needs of your customers? Could it be better?
Ultimately assess the value of each of the activities.
Do you do things that take a long time but offer little value in the eyes of the customer?
Do you do things that are fast and valued by the customer?
Could you do less of the former and more of the latter?
How do you test whether customers value the activities?
How easy is each activity? Is it easy because you have become very good at doing it over and over again? Where things are difficult or challenging, what are the reasons for this?
Look at what you do and how you do it. What activities do you or your teams carry out that are time-consuming or subject to other challenges?
Do you find that you struggle to find things when a customer queries or chases?
We know customers themselves are redefining their needs and expectations in a post-COVID world. Can you be confident that your work results in delivering personalised, next-level help and value to those customers?
Start to think about what might happen if you suddenly stopped doing some of the activities that take up the valuable time in your working day. For the things you don’t stop doing – might there be easier, alternative ways to operate that also improve the customer experience?
Devise ways of streamlining what you do | Photo by Med Bad Chemmaoui on Unsplash
#2 Devise ways to streamline what you do
Lots of people go to great lengths to avoid having to change anything. It can be quite exhausting.
But often there are significant benefits from making tiny tweaks to streamline what you do.
Are there activities you can just stop doing?
For activities that remain, because they add value, is there a better way of going about things?
Can steps be removed from your processes?
Could delays and ‘wait time’ be removed?
Is there scope for duplication of effort to be eliminated?
Might errors be removed by seeking to take out manual steps and introducing a level of automation?
As the world looks to define what comes next, be mindful that customer needs and expectations may have changed significantly.
Does your previous way of working cut it? What needs to change?
Removing any of these has the potential to make your business more efficient and importantly, to enhance the experience you offer your customer.
While DOTWIMP originated in the manufacturing industry, its adoption will identify savings and efficiencies for you regardless of the nature of your business.
Defects: When customers discover errors in your products or services, the cost of remediation is high, and there is a significant risk of reputational damage.
Overproduction: Do you make things before they are needed – leading to stockpiling / storage challenges?
Transportation: Does work move around your office or factory? Could this be made more efficient, particularly now that we are working remotely or in a COVID-secure way?
Waiting: From delays between departments to time waiting for an individual who may have become a single point of failure. Do you always need to chase that approval? Does everything stop until one person acts?
Inventory: Stockpiling materials and unsold products. Tying up capital expenditure but also risking damage and obsolescence.
Motion: Do employees have what they need in one place – or do they routinely need to seek information or materials from multiple sources, suppliers or locations? Do they need to log in to various systems to do their job? Do they struggle to respond to queries promptly because of this?
Processing: Are you using more steps and more tools than you need to? Particularly important if you’re using technology that you pay for on a consumption basis.
Spotted some things that might help your business if you made some minor changes?
Implement changes at speed | Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash
#3 Implement changes at speed
Adopt an agile approach. Make changes small but often and earn value every step of the way.
Bring the right people along with you. Enable your team to lead and manage the changes, learning from competitors and other industry leaders.
Make failure a valid option. It is the only way to ensure rapid, agile delivery but with the ability to learn along the way.
Fail fast, fix fast.
Measure and continually improve | Photo by Miguel A. Amutio on Unsplash
#4 Measure and continually improve
Monitor the effect of your changes and look to continually fine tune the way you work.
Give yourself the ability to ‘fail fast’ on the more daring of changes and to adjust your course quickly.
After just a short period, the way things work may be quite different from what had gone before.
Whether you have saved time, reduced costs or enhanced customer satisfaction, measuring the effectiveness of the changes is an essential part of maintaining control and building trust across your organisation and customer base.
Communicate success to foster further innovation | Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
#5 Communicate success to foster further innovation
Clients are shocked when they look back at their achievements over even a short period.
Not only have they fallen into the trap of delivering things so well and so fast that they consider it normal – they have missed out on the opportunity to celebrate their success and to share the good news stories with their customers.
A key part of the ‘measure and continually improve’ step that we covered above is concerned with having the ability to demonstrate the success of your change initiatives.
Significant time and financial savings can be realised even by introducing small changes. By being outcomes-focused, customer satisfaction levels improve.
Share your successes and encourage your customers to respond and contribute to future successes.
Keen to get started?
How about an initial 1-hour review of the way you work? If we can help we’ll recommend some next steps. If we can’t help, well, we will be honest.
Using ServiceNow to make business operations more sustainable | Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
During a session at ServiceNow’s global conference, Knowledge 2020, Veolia demonstrated how they use ServiceNow to govern global use of the Google Cloud Platform.
A consumer-grade service experience for employees and near real-time deployment of cloud resources, the solution encourages innovative adoption of cloud technologies.
Benefits include a 75% reduced risk of uncontrolled cloud cost coupled with high adoption and customer satisfaction levels.
Sustainability is a core value in Veolia’s business operation. This solution helps us significantly reduce our digital carbon footprint.
Martin Black,Veolia
Across Veolia the concept of digital sobriety is gaining increasing traction.
Digital sobriety reduces and optimises cloud resources so we only use what we need.
It is no longer OK to track costs. As an architect you’ve got to think about value and optimise solutions before even a line of code is written.
Martin Black, Veolia
We are able to deliver cloud environments to Veolia’s business units in 45+ countries in a controlled manner, fast.
Managing the lifecycle of those environments takes place using digital workflows within a single system of record, ServiceNow, including automated monitoring of budget and performance matters.’
In these remarkable times the article raises important questions about the future of work:
What is the future role of humans in a workplace where machine learning and AI is becoming more and more influential?
Why have people happily accepted the status quo for ways of working for so long?
Which businesses will thrive?
Which will not survive?
A few years ago, the thought of drones delivering medicine was the stuff of science fiction – now it’s actively discussed by government ministers.
Covid-19 has changed the world of work forever.
Chris Pope, VP Innovation at ServiceNow
This change should be celebrated.
Cloud-based services enable us to work in a very different but better way. Even in the companies that are ahead of the curve on this, there is huge untapped potential.
But to realise these opportunities, we need to change how we refer to work.
Like so many of us, Chris uses the phrase ‘working from home’.
To me, the key word is ‘work’.
Where work is done is of no relevance.
Matt James, GWIT.ltd
During lockdown we’ve seen a revolution, with technology enabling people to achieve amazing things without leaving their homes.
The sad thing is that it’s taken a global pandemic to achieve this.
Let’s stop using the phrase ‘working from home’ and focus on the quality of what we do.
Matt James, GWIT.ltd
Let’s build on the rapid innovation of recent weeks and accept that the future is not what went before.
Cutting through bureaucracy to help you automate what matters and stop doing what doesn’t can transform the way we work.
One of GWIT’s clients
At GWIT we transform manual ways of working into digital workflows that are loved by employees and customers alike.
Let us help you thrive during these crazy times. Message Matt if you’d like to chat more. Book a call with Matt.
Let’s start the conversation.
Matt
Here’s the original article from Chris Pope, VP Innovation at ServiceNow:
What on earth comes next for the world of tech? | Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
The BBC TV programme Tomorrow’s World fascinated me as I grew up. Many of their predictions have since become mainstream.
The science behind today’s technologies may be complex, but smart application results in straightforward, engaging experiences for customers.
At GWIT, we continually grapple with the marvels of today’s digital world. We encourage clients to question what has gone before and to move to digital ways of working. As one said:
I was shocked to discover tech such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing are already embedded in our everyday personal lives.
GWIT client
The pinnacle of the motorsport world is Formula 1. Here new technologies are developed that later enter mainstream motoring.
Away from the motorsport world, at GWIT, we keep an eye on what world leaders in emerging tech are focusing on.
These are the technologies that will next influence our daily lives, with or without us realising it.
Quantum technology is already being used in our daily lives, for example in the ultra-precise atomic clocks behind your car’s satnav system, and a vast array of other microelectronic devices. But that’s just a taste of what’s to come. Another revolution is already taking shape.
But in the context of savings from implementing digital workflows and questioning ways of working, it’s not very ambitious.
We know that a number of government departments now make use of cloud-based platforms such as ServiceNow.
But what’s not clear is whether there is a robust system for assessing whether work moved to digital platforms passes the, ‘why on earth are we doing this?’ test.
All too often at GWIT we see businesses wanting to replicate manual processes on digital systems.
We’ve always done it this way
… is a common refrain. It’s understandable because change can feel threatening. But taking such a stance is a wasted opportunity.
Implementing digital workflows is a golden opportunity to step back and reflect.
Why are we doing this?
What value does it add?
Can we automate this?
Done well this process always delivers significant productivity gains. Plus it frees people up to do more valuable work.
Culling ’10 projects’ per department is an arbitrary number. It certainly won’t be effective if the remaining projects all continue to run inefficiently.
Huge BAU productivity gains are there to be had across the public sector, from GP surgeries to government departments.
In a post-Brexit world, will there be innovation aplenty, along with better ways of working across our public services? Or just more of the same old done in a way Sir Humphrey would be proud of, but pretending to be 5% cheaper?
