The evolution of speech in a small human is a wonder. Watching a baby speak her first words, then progress to broken sentences, bent vowels and skipped consonants and finally mature into flowing discussions of ideas and desires, while the technical aspects of speech, now learnt, become subconscious.
Is IT following a similar path? The signs of maturation in programming languages and approaches have followed a curve from technical detail to templates that can be quickly applied to business needs, an customised as required.
The development of language has certain markers in progress. Business technology feels like it has reached another marker, one defined by web-based APIs and the emergence of digital standards such as the Standard Business Reporting initiative driven by the Australian Taxation Office and the Federal treasury. For those unfamiliar with SBR, it aims to replace all government forms with standardised electronic versions that will auto-populate fields by connecting to the relevant government agency (and, for tax, cloud-based accounting software).
Talking to one enterprise integrator about business-centric approaches to systems integration shows how far IT services have moved. In the past, enormous technological effort was spent simply getting one system to talk to another.
Luke McCormack, vice president, Asia Pacific, for Pegasystems, says: “The traditional approach of writing reams of requirements, throwing them to an IT department for technical decomposition, coding and writing reams and reams of code, then a full test cycle and unveiling six months later if you’re lucky. This is what a lot of technology still has to do because they don’t have the ability to bring business people into the software cycle.”
The new take is process automation, which for Pegasystems’ enterprise clients means reducing operational costs, automating service provision and raising the speed of customer service. There are parallels in the SMB space too. Cloud software programs can reduce operational costs by targeting specific issues in an industry. For example the clutch of apps addressing invoice payable operations such as Invitbox and Invoice Smash reduces the number of bookkeepers required for data entry in businesses with a healthy variety of suppliers, such as hotels and restaurants.
Cloud apps automating service provision in the accounting industry include Workflow Max and Practice Ignition. The former is practice management software closely integrated with the Xero cloud accounting program; Practice Ignition creates templates for accounting firms so they can send out quotes quickly to prospective clients, and then flip the quote into a one-off or recurring job in the Workflow Max program.
Several apps and strategies can boost the speed of customer service for SMEs. User-friendly help-desk software such as Help Scout, Support Bee and Apoio.
While SMBs are building best-practice collections of cloud apps, enterprise is taking advantage of emerging standards to build highly automated systems that offer competitive advantage. Focused on customer service, they include self-service web portals, predictive and adaptive analytics, and integration with the back office. These are all technologies which are slowly developing for SMBs through the cloud app ecosystem.
When IT projects are rooted in discussions about business process then an organisation has a much clearer idea of what success or failure looks like. Business process must be measurable against factors that influence the bottom or top line.
These types of conversations are what business has always wanted. But instead they have too often found the agenda was dragged down into the technology building blocks behind the process – software tools, hardware, programming language and so on. Projects could be buried under their own weight, leading to the “reams of code” situation McCormack describes above.
McCormack says enterprises have matured in their attitudes to business process. Very large and complex organisations, such as Telstra, ANZ, CBA and QBE insurance, have vast customer bases and very complex internal operations. Improving business process often means bending technology to create a more automated internal system.
“We’re seeing organisations say technology is not their first decision. ‘Let’s just go buy something.’ Organisations are providing deep thought about ‘What do we want to achieve through automation of process?’”
Pegasystems claims to have adopted a more business-centric approach to achieving this goal than rivals. It uses forms and business-friendly metaphors, business rules such as a decision table, service level or user interface.
The upgrading of business players over technology has taken some changing. “In a lot of organisations it’s in their interests to disintermediate the business people from the statement of work. We are driven to make sure that business people are comfortable participating early and often. It’s a case of working collaboration,” McCormack says.
SMBs taking a business approach to IT projects often end up with similar solutions within the one industry. The competitive advantage of an SMB is either location, quality of service or expertise as much as the system they use to deliver it.
You just want a florist that’s down the road. It’s OK if they use the same system as a florist 10km away.
McCormack agrees this is true for SMEs – but the opposite is true for enterprise. A more automated system can deliver competitive advantage if you’re a bank that can approve an account or a loan faster.
“The idea of a business application fulfilling a particular need for a small business means they can focus on the things that they’re good at. The point of difference could be just goodwill which you could never put into a system,” McCormack says.
Common language
Reaching back to the analogy of speech: enterprise automation is happening faster and with better results through the use of common rules and systems - the grammar and syntax of software.
Pegasystems uses industry standard data models and its own business frameworks to map business process to technology. For example, retail banking clients use Pegasystems for process and exception management for global money transfers, which the integrator based on the SWIFT industry protocol.
“In retail banking we don’t have an off-the shelf package, it’s more like a set of best thinking of mortgage processing or credit card disputes,” McCormack says. “With Bitcoin the whole idea of arbitration is unclear, whereas SWIFT has very clear rules.”
The next technology wave will be predictive analytics, McCormack says. This field uses big data to change the way organisations interact with customers by improving their processes. Whether a customer phones the call centre, interacts with a broker or engages a salesperson, enterprises will use the power of combined data to select the next best action with that customer, McCormack says.
Predictive analytics will unlock the potential of social media. Most enterprises accept the need to engage with customers on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks, but have few ideas about how to maximise its potential.
“Social is great, but unless you have strategies to deal with it, it’s just data. Getting torrents of tweets from Indonesia doesn’t help you service your business in Sydney. The enterprises that have been making a difference are the ones with a clear strategy that is customer centric.”
What does a customer-centric strategy look like? For one thing, it recognises that a customer doesn’t see a company as a collection of communication channels, McCormack says.
“The word ‘channel’ frustrates me a little because it’s a way the business is structured rather than how the customer views it,” he says.
“Social has provided customers with a new way to interact with organisations. We don’t want that to lead to a different way of doing things.”
In an automated enterprise, a quotation created through Facebook automatically creates a case in the call centre. When the customer calls the agent can see what the customer has received and continue the sales process. Or the customer could go to a kiosk or branch and the same case should be available.
“I find it frustrating when organisations start building a whole new department around a particular technology such as Facebook,” McCormack says.
“You may want to personalise by channel and that’s a business decision. But providing different levels of service because you have different styles of technology is not a business outcome, that’s a technology outcome. And it’s typically not going to be in favour of a better experience for the customer.”
Sholto Macpherson is a business technology journalist and commentator who covers emerging technology in cloud software and services
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