When originally putting this blog together, I considered the recurring discussion topics we’ve been hearing recently from our local government customers. There were some interesting contenders including:
How to do more with less - this is the sort of discussion I’ve been having since austerity kicked in back in the early days of my IT career, and more than likely since the dawn of computing in general.
Streamlining business processes to function in a hybrid working environment – The acceleration of hybrid working is providing an interesting twist on the age-old challenge of ensuring that organisations are working as efficiently as possible, without constantly changing. We have lots of experience in this area and have had some great wins for customers recently - look out for the forthcoming case studies on this for more details.
Understanding your citizen facing service portfolios and how multi-departmental teams underpin your most critical services – we will have a separate blog series coming out on this topic, so I won’t get ahead of myself. But if you’d like to know more, please do get in touch and we can arrange a chat about this with one of our experts.
This blog focuses on the employee experience when engaging with internal council services and how ServiceNow ties into it. Ultimately, the first impression lasts – I think we can all remember an experience where a website or application was so badly designed that we’ve physically tensed up and mumbled under our breath at the screen.
Over the last few years, as more councils have replaced their legacy systems with cloud-based services and applications, the user experience has been front and centre. However, new technology doesn’t automatically equal successful user experience; if the design isn’t well-thought-through for the various user groups this can then become a major sticking point in business change programmes.
In a 2020 report by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), results showed that 50% of those going through a technology transformation felt they needed more skills and knowledge to fulfil their roles effectively. Moreover, a staggering 80% didn’t even think the changes improved their business performance (1). One of the key issues highlighted in this report is that only 28% of respondents received some form of training in preparation for the change. The results of this survey strike an interesting parallel to our own customer engagements.
Many senior leaders, both within councils and elsewhere, have a misconception that users will be able to engage their services through new platforms with an “Amazon-like” experience. In other words, organisations expect to provide a slick, seamless user experience that requires no formal training and is entirely intuitive from the start.
There are many factors that will affect whether that outcome can realistically be achieved, and it’s not just about making sure the interface is in the correct corporate colours. These include questions such as:
Has the user experience been properly designed to meet the actual day-to-day working rhythm of what users need, and is there an allowance for different groups/departments needing different things?
Does the organisation have a clear suite of service offerings written in simple language that users recognise? Are they able to easily find information when using the new solution?
Is there an ability to publish and share information so that users can quickly find the answers to common issues and questions themselves? As in, this information means there’s no need for further engagement with subject matter experts or service desk resources.
Is there a simple way to initiate service requests to specialist teams when the self-service information doesn’t give users the required outcomes?
Can the user easily track progress of service requests in a real-time manner, with clear communications driven from activity on the request so they feel informed and engaged?
At Unifii, we work incredibly closely with our customers to ensure that the employee experience is a great one for both end users and the delivery teams. With the recent launch of the ServiceNow Employee Centre capability, we’re seeing a huge upswing in interest about delivering a single engagement portal. A portal like this can link information from multiple different service areas under simple topics such as onboarding, workplace management and finance.
As a result, ServiceNow customers gain a new capability that brings many of the functionality elements listed above together in a single product. As a result, their teams have time to focus on the actual information in the system rather than its scalability.
If you’d like to discuss how ServiceNow could improve your council or organisation's service engagement experience, then please get in touch with one of the team here.
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