Organization-wide digital transformation efforts implement and integrate new technologies to enable companies to automate, improve efficiency, and provide better customer experiences. But there’s another critical step to change that takes a more micro view of transformation efforts: business process transformation.
Optimizing business processes takes digital adoption to the next level. It’s about streamlining work through technology with frictionless processes and workflows that drive efficiency and enable organizations to achieve business outcomes and digital value realization.
Data supports this reality, as 69% of organizations define digital transformation as a tool for operational efficiency: taking an existing business process and seeking to improve or expand it with technology.
In this article, we’ll explore the concept of business process transformation and how to achieve it. We’ll also look at key metrics to measure the success of your process transformation efforts and how Whatfix enables organizations to drive digital transformation business outcomes by enabling employees and end-users.
What Is Business Process Transformation?
Business process transformation revamps an organization’s workflows and systems using digital tools and automation. The goal is to increase productivity and profitability through frictionless, efficient workflows.
Businesses of all kinds are looking at new software and platforms. Process transformation ensures you maximize those investments. It allows you to analyze current processes and identify bottlenecks, which allows you to find areas for improvement.
For example, an accounting department could transform billing processes by using e-invoicing software and automated payment reminders. Features like these cut down on the back-and-forth between parties, reducing manual data entry tasks.
Why Should Organizations Care About Business Process Transformation?
There are many reasons to transform business processes. Here are some of the biggest benefits that businesses see.
1. Cost and time savings
Automation eliminates many time-consuming tasks that workers do each day. That means employees can reallocate their time to higher-value work. All the while, organizations save money by increasing efficiency.
2. Higher employee satisfaction
There are more benefits for teams beyond saving time and money. No one wants to waste time on repetitive tasks. Employees who focus on meaningful, strategic work are often more satisfied with their role.
Nearly 60% of employees believe that automation can address burnout and improve job fulfillment, and 57% report that they view employers that use business automation to help support employees and modernize operations more favorably than those that do not.
3. Better customer experience
Seamless digital experiences aren’t just nice to have. Now, they’re the norm. Streamlined processes mean faster turnaround times and smoother transactions for customers. Options like self-service portals can also enhance the experience.
4. Increased agility
Optimization also supports business agility. With optimized processes, you can adapt your offerings more quickly, making it easier to respond to factors like market changes and customer feedback.
It also helps you stay on par with or ahead of competitors. For example, By 2025, 40% of service engagements will include GenAI-enabled delivery, impacting everything from contract negotiations to IT ops to risk assessment.
12 Steps in Business Process Transformation
Changing business processes takes time to happen. It requires careful planning and execution across your organization. Here are 12 steps to successful business process transformation.
1. Identify areas for transformation
Dig into current processes across departments. Try interviewing employees about their biggest pain points and what they think could change. From there, prioritize the most costly and outdated processes.
2. Define short-term and long-term goals
Get stakeholders aligned on the “whats” and “whys” driving transformation. Short-term goals may include quick wins. Things like reducing processing time by 25%. Longer-term, aim for bigger impacts. This could mean cutting your operational costs as you implement new solutions. Setting digital transformation goals like this establishes the business case for the change.
3. Establish baseline metrics
Before changing anything, record current performance metrics such as costs per transaction and customer satisfaction scores. Having this baseline data enables you to measure progress and ROI later easily.
4. Design transformation roadmap
Work with your ram to map out a strategy and roadmap for transformation. Identify process dependencies, timelines, and budgets. Then, document who is responsible for what and how you’ll manage the stages of change.
5. Focus on buy-in
Hesitation goes hand in hand with change. Get buy-in early to cut down on this as much as you can. It starts with transparent communication. Explain the “what’s in it for me” to leaders and frontline employees. This is also a great time to gather feedback and address concerns.
6. Find the right technology
Determine what technologies will support your new processes. Options include everything from workflow automation tools to CRM systems. Think through what your organization requires to make the progress you want.
7. Design and automate new processes
Once you transform your current processes, start thinking about new ones. Design for simplicity and great user experiences. If you aren’t sure where to start, research what others in your market are doing. This can give you ideas about what you may want to implement.
8. Keep your team in the loop
Share the new processes and let people preview the tools before launch. Provide resources so employees know what’s changing and why. Also, take this time to build excitement about productivity and experience improvements.
9. Provide training and support
Don’t just announce changes. Empower employees through hands-on training tailored to their roles and needs. Use a digital adoption platform (DAP) such as Whatfix to enable business process transformation via intuitive, in-app guidance and real-time support.
Through interactive walkthroughs, step-by-step tutorials, and contextual help, Whatfix ensures that employees can seamlessly navigate and utilize enterprise software, reducing the learning curve and minimizing disruption. This immediate assistance helps users understand and integrate new processes into their daily routines more effectively, driving higher adoption rates and ensuring that the transformation initiatives are embraced across the organization.
10. Test until processes are functioning
Remember that you shouldn’t rush to launch your new processes. Use a gradual and careful approach with these initiatives. This will help you uncover potential problems before they wreak havoc. Then, you can iterate and refine processes before your rollout.
11. Implement process transformation
Business process transformation isn’t something you set up once and forget. Once you roll out any new technology, take the time to understand how employees and customers use it. Use DAP tools to monitor adoption metrics. Also, provide ongoing support and make adjustments until processes are going smoothly.
12. Measure success
Revisit the original baseline metrics you established. From here, you can calculate the ROI. Are you seeing reduced process costs and times? Are higher customer satisfaction scores coming in? Find and share the wins to inspire your team to keep going.
Key Metrics to Measure the Success of a Business Process Transformation
How do you track your business process transformation and evaluate the outcomes? Pay attention to these metrics.
- Cost reduction: Lowering operational costs with efficiencies gained through optimized or automated processes.
- Return on investment (ROI): Calculating returns by measuring factors like cost savings and productivity gains. Positive ROI is a signal that the project is going in the right direction. Not seeing ROI could be a sign that something needs to change.=
- Customer satisfaction scores: Metrics like CSAT and NPS. Track any changes. Look at the data before and after the transformation. Streamlined processes should boost satisfaction levels.
- Cycle time reduction: Cutting down the time it takes to execute an end-to-end process. Things like handling a service request. When you optimize processes, you should also minimize cycle time.
- Employee productivity metrics: Data that shows productivity, such as revenue per employee or total focus hours. Automated processes should free up employees to do their best work.
- Compliance and quality control rates: Processes with built-in controls. This should increase compliance with regulations and your quality standards.
Real-Life Success Stories Of Enterprise Business Process Transformation
Want to understand how companies transformed and modernized their manual processes? Explore some examples and the results.
1. Ferring’s CLM transformation
Swiss pharmaceutical enterprise Ferring Pharmaceutical accelerated its CLM transformation and enabled its employees to use the CLM to its fullest potential with Whatfix in-app guidance and self-service support. In-app guidance reduced new user onboarding time, increased Icertis adoption, and delivered a more engaging contract management experience.
Ferring accomplished this by identifying recurring user challenges and adding contextual information (Smart Tips) in the CLM at the point of these challenges. With Smart Tips, users no longer had to wait for help desk assistance when they had a question – the answer was immediately available.
Similarly, Ferring launched a knowledge repository with Whatfix Self Help, enabling CLM users to find help documentation for their troubleshooting issues without leaving the application. This led to a 33% decrease in support tickets in the first quarter of the launch.
Whatfix also supported Ferring in other CLM-related user experience and enablement initiatives. Sequential, step-by-step instructions (Flows) assisted end-users in learning an objective or completing a task through a series of actions.
2. Dimensions UK’s care management system transformation
Dimensions UK is a non-profit that supports people with learning disabilities, autism, and other complex needs to help them lead an ordinary, meaningful life in their local community. Dimensions used Whatfix to drive the adoption of iplanit, its new care management app with Whatfix in-app guidance and real-time support. Here’s how Whatfix enables Dimensions UK:
- Promoting learning and doing at the same time through in-app guidance, which helped overcome user resistance.
- Providing employees with actionable and contextual information relevant to the page they are on in iplanit and their individual roles.
- Providing multi-format training content, which is displayed as videos, slideshows, or PDFs, thereby enabling care workers to learn in their preferred medium.
3. Mercy Hospital system
When the Mercy hospital system’s executive leadership saw automation would be a powerful tool in helping reduce costs and improve service and quality, they also knew it was important to look for ways to implement it across the organization.
They chose Amitech Solutions for their Robotic Process Automation (RPA) journey. This solved several business challenges and boosted productivity, helping the organization save $3 million in the first year alone.
4. Building products manufacturer
After more than 20 years of acquisitive growth, the company was planning an enterprise resource transformation to replace its aging system. EY helped them create a roadmap and investment case for the program
The manufacturer saw more than $250 million in savings over 10 years from working capital, tax, and other efficiencies that self-funded the technology implementation. They also have an increased ability to evaluate where technology investments yield the greatest value.
5. Jatagan security
As Jatagan Security grew, its manual inventory management system faced a daunting challenge. The complexities of managing larger inventories, multiple locations, and surging order volumes manually became overwhelming, leading to inefficiencies and costly errors.
Partnering with Quixy proved to be a turning point for inventory management as Jatagan Security saw a positive surge in customer satisfaction and a whopping 50% boost in productivity.
How to Accelerate Business Process Transformation With Whatfix
Whatfix enables companies of all sizes – from growth companies to Fortune 1000 enterprises – to achieve business outcomes and accelerate transformation projects.
1. Drive process adoption with contextual in-app training
Even the most powerful technologies are only useful if employees and customers need help to use them. In-app guidance enables employees with in-app training and assistance that provides contextual, interactive walkthroughs directly in the UI. This training accelerates user end-user adoption by showing people how to maximize capabilities from day one.
2. Provide on-demand help at critical moments of need with Self Help
If users can figure out how to use technology, they may not use it at all. With a DAP like Whatfix, enable all technology end-users with Self-Help. Self-help automatically crawls and aggregates your knowledge articles, videos, help content, and in-app guidance into one searchable database that overlays your applications’ UI and provides contextual, on-demand support.
3. Use guidance analytics to understand how end-users interact with your in-app content
Analytics allow you to understand users better than ever before. But remember, analytics software provides the information. You must determine appropriate next actions and address weak points that you uncover.
With Whatfix, track and analyze end-user actions with User Actions. This uncovers areas of end-user friction, maps user flows, builds user cohorts, and more. Use this data to create new in-app guidance and end-users, as well as continuously optimize and test new workflows and features.
4. Analyze end-user behavior to identify areas of digital friction
Digital adoption analytics provide visibility into where users face friction across technology experiences. The behavioral data you gain reveals actual usage patterns. This can help you figure out where users need more support.
With Whatfix, track and analyze end-user behavior with User Actions. This empowers IT teams to identify areas of friction, map optimal user flows, build flows for different user cohorts, and more. Use this data to create new in-app guidance and end-user support content and continuously optimize and test new workflows and features to create more efficient, user-friendly technology experiences that drive value.
5. Communicate workflow changes with in-app end-user communication
No matter what you implement, some people may be hesitant to embrace a new system. Reframe the technology as an assistant rather than an inhibitor. If the platform you’re using offers many options and features, be sure to direct users to what’s most relevant to them.
With a DAP like Whatfix, enable your technology end-users with contextual in-app guidance, information, and support to fully use technology. Make sure that your people know how to make the most of the tools and resources they have.
Business Process Transformation Software Clicks Better with Whatfix
With Whatfix, you can understand how your technology is used and under-adopted by your employees and customers. This makes it easier to adjust software onboarding, training, support, and overall end-user adoption strategies—all to provide a seamless experience for every end-user that enables them with the right context and support to utilize new technologies and systems fully.
To learn more about Whatfix, click here to schedule a free demo with us today!
