All companies look for more self-reliant employees, but new Web-based technologies are making a wider range of corporate services available, on a do-it-yourself basis, to an extent never before possible.
That’s because a wider range of company services – from making meeting room reservations to fix-my-computer pleas, to I-need-5,000-copies-pronto requests – are more easily initiated via smart Web-based software interfaces at the end-user’s desktop. All without a human intermediary, and minus the risks that might come from manual systems prone to cracks through which requests may fall.
The number of services available to users is limited only by the imagination of the companies who create and implement the software. The portfolio of possibilities can be managed to avoid unauthorized access through easily applied restrictions.
The fact remains that do-it-yourself (DIY) Web services are helping to improve company productivity and save money in a way that’s self-serving in the best sense of the word.
As anyone at a modern corporation has discovered, the search for meeting-room space and amenities can be frustrating, frantic and occasionally laced with expletives when room-scheduling conflicts are an issue. Those possibilities increase if you are heir to a human error-prone manual scheduling system or a computer-based reservations “point solution.” The latter may be great at booking a particular room at a particular time but usually can’t integrate with catering, AV or other support providers for streamlined services coordination.
That absence of coordination can be expensive for companies. But research by ARCHIBUS Inc., a Boston-based worldwide provider of software solutions, has found that, depending on the hourly cost of personnel and the lost time that can accrue due to scheduling disconnects, a well-integrated DIY reservations system can save a typical organization as much as $150 per employee/meeting-participant per year through effective scheduling.
Even a sophisticated communications company with massive meeting requirements such as Scripps Networks – the home of the Food Network, HGTV and other cable programming – wasn’t always adept at communicating who had what meeting room and when. As good as their meeting coordinators were, the company’s manual scheduling system would result in scheduling conflicts, room amenity disconnects and less productive meeting time.
A recently introduced automated system, however, made a noticeable difference at Scripps’ New York City, Los Angeles and Knoxville, Tenn., facilities. The company is now too busy producing shows to produce room reservation ROI statistics, but Director of Corporate Facilities Orlinda Gray is pleased. “We can’t yet quantify savings in time, money or aggravation,” said Gray, “but we do know that things are a lot better than they used to be.”
A mobile workforce doesn’t refer exclusively to those who are geographically flexible or eager to jump ship and join another company. As roles changes and dynamic workgroups shift personnel and locations to meet changing project needs, “mobile” increasingly means employees move within a company.
Whether it’s an individual, group, departmental or larger multiphase moves integrated with construction, coordinating the details can be a challenge but one that is helped by the growing sophistication of move-management software that can be accessed via corporate intranets.
With DIY moves made faster, easier and more trouble-free than in the past, self-service move-management software is increasing customer satisfaction while lowering the cost – and lost productivity – associated with the corporate moves/adds/changes process.
By freeing facilities’ administrative staff from processing the routine move-management paperwork, they have more time to use the trial layout, move analytics and intelligent dashboards that enable continuous process improvement. Leading-edge examples of the software can link to human resources and financial department systems for timely distribution of updated personnel and cost center information.
For the independent-minded who want to be masters of their own fate on a broader scale, there is the emerging “service desk” concept in corporate services software.
A service desk encompasses a Web-based application that provides a self-service interface to multiple services. In addition to moves and conference room reservations, those DIY tasks might also include maintenance requests, the placement of orders for document copies from the graphics department or from an outside service provider, project management inputs and other services limited only by corporate imagination, technology infrastructure or security considerations.
Service-desk technology automates the help-request cycle and routes requests via a computer using established business process logic until a request is fulfilled – or at least transmits it to the right manager for execution when only a human touch will do.
It is at this point that a manager might ask, “What keeps some company’s Merry Prankster from pinging the corporate caterer and ordering two dozen pizzas deliverable to a vice president for breakfast?”
As with any computer application, security is paramount. With service desk technology, security can be summed up in three letters: S-L-A.
SLA, or Service Level Agreement, is the set of rules that governs the authorization, prioritizing, routing and completion of requests of potentially every stripe.
In combination, service desk technology and SLAs present the requestor with only the relevant self-service fields for the request type. Based on who is requesting the help, the work location and the type of help needed, the system selects the appropriate options.
The result is a software solution that can provide controlled, 24/7 service-desk access that can dispatch requests to the service provider without the need for human intervention. It also defines when a service is available, the projected response time and the time to complete the task.
Most importantly, it delivers high ROI to organizations with large service catalogs and staffs by increasing utilization of available services, enforcing policy and liberating support staff to perform more strategic tasks.
Really smart service-desk products, furthermore, incorporate performance-measurement reporting to refine processes and increase customer satisfaction. For forward-leaning management, that may well be the icing on the DIY cake. Sweet.
