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How private and public sector organizations can better serve veterans
As we continue to reflect on the ultimate sacrifice made by service members following the 77th anniversary of D-Day, which took place on Sunday, June 6, we recognize the invaluable contributions all servicemen and women have made—they’re the backbone of our nation.We also recognize and appreciate the support military families provide. And yet, all too often, US veterans are overlooked when transitioning from active military duty to civilian life.As a US veteran, I have firsthand experience in making this career move and know how daunting it can be. Private and public sector organizations have a collective responsibility to ensure these individuals are given the necessary tools, resources, and training opportunities to enable a successful transition into professional life after leaving active duty. While there are countless ways to support our veterans, reskilling and providing better access to medical services are two examples of how to make an impact.Provide training opportunitiesThe social distancing requirements associated with COVID-19 impacted American jobs across industries. A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed the pandemic likely caused the unemployment rates for veterans to rise in 2020 for both males (6.5%) and females (6.7%). With more veterans out of work, it’s critical for organizations to provide access to training opportunities that will help unemployed vets build the skills employers in high-demand industries value.The federal government has expressed interest in investing in partnerships with other government organizations, businesses, and higher education institutions to provide citizens with greater access to job training, which means veterans will likely have more reskilling opportunities.Key industries are uniquely positioned to develop training programs and employment opportunities that are specifically designed for vets. Although some private organizations are already granting veterans access to training programs that offer certifications, these programs tend to vary in size. That’s why more organizations might consider developing their own programs as a way of helping vets re-enter the workforce.Veterans possess the soft skills needed to excel in many different professional environments, especially in IT. However, they often struggle to showcase these skills on their resumes. The ability to lead people, solve problems, create and collaborate with teams, and adapt to change are competencies valued in the civilian workforce.With the help of certification programs and guidance from trusted HR organizations, veterans can build tactical skills and gain a better understanding of how to translate the expertise from their military careers.Improve healthcare accessIn addition to ensuring veterans are equipped with the skills needed to re-enter the workforce, it’s imperative that we provide better access to healthcare services through the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).Last year, the VA was awarded $19.6 billion in supplemental funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act to prevent, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19.A majority of these funds went to the Veterans Health Administration and the VA Office of Information Technology. Although the VA Office of Information Technology used some of its funds to expand its telehealth capabilities, $9 billion hasn’t been used yet, according to the US Government Accountability Office.This suggests there are still opportunities for the VA to enhance veterans’ access to hospital services using the untapped funding. This includes investing in tools that can improve the healthcare services and overall experiences veterans receive, as well as vaccine management tools, such as those offered by LIKE.TG, which can streamline the time it takes to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine.It also includes investing in workflow technologies that help return the VA’s federal employees back to work, improve citizen and veteran services, and create better experiences.As we honor our vets who served on D-Day, we can and should do our utmost to support all vets returning to civilian life, with both industry and federal leaders identifying opportunities to support veterans during this inflection point. While there are many additional ways we can make a difference, setting these individuals up for success and providing better access to health services are two great ways to say “thank you.”Learn more about how LIKE.TG supports veterans through government workflow solutions.LIKE.TG, the LIKE.TG logo, Now, and other LIKE.TG marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of LIKE.TG, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Transforming citizen experiences in federal healthcare agencies
Throughout my career as a federal government CIO, my teams and I continually strived to provide the best possible experience to anyone who interacted with our agency. In the age of COVID-19, this sentiment has never been truer, especially for agencies providing healthcare services to citizens, beneficiaries, veterans, or others.Government CIOs, like their private sector counterparts, are prioritizing the citizen experience to improve health service quality and access. Their focus is ensuring that every citizen interaction is consistent, visible, and relevant across all channels. The challenge healthcare organizations face, both in the public and private sectors, is that they can’t easily access and analyze all relevant data. Various departments using their own information, coupled with voluminous third-party data sets and data tools, has resulted in ever-growing numbers of data silos.Solving this problem and delivering consistent and relevant omni-channel citizen focused healthcare experiences must start with a platform that is highly scalable and capable of deep integration across a variety of tools. This type of platform, along with a company culture that trusts and embraces data, allows organizations to accurately predict and respond to citizen needs. Those responses can be automated, self-service, or via representatives who have data at their fingertips to make informed decisions.Best practices pave the way to better experiencesThe private sector is providing higher customer satisfaction than federal agencies, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. As a result, healthcare agencies are paying higher costs and dealing with more citizen frustration than private companies.Industries like retail are stitching together a comprehensive 360-degree view of their customers. The view allows companies to develop products and services to meet customer needs, and also understand how to curate meaningful customer journeys and hyper-personalized communications.Federal healthcare agencies are starting to take a similar approach. According to IDC, 26 percent of agency executives are deploying key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the customer experience and advocacy. See IDC’s advice for how agencies can implement private sector best practices to enhance the customer experience.The government should follow suit by using data to better understand the citizens they serve. For healthcare service providers, this can include social determinants of health, medical histories, prescription drug use, and other relevant information. These details help agencies better meet beneficiaries’ needs, which in turn improves health outcomes, lowers costs, and increases citizen satisfaction.Digital workflows connect and improve patient careFederal healthcare agencies have a mandate to move toward digitalization. Digital workflows and processes enable a range of benefits, including automation, fast and easy information sharing, and improved service quality. To optimize digitalization, agencies need a single, centralized platform that’s capable of integrating data and workflows from across the federal, state, and local healthcare ecosystem, then sharing the insights.A common problem with many legacy systems is that they don’t offer interoperability. The inability to connect technologies and offer visibility into data sets limits digital capabilities, which in turn negatively impacts the citizen experience. By contrast, a platform built for workflow will facilitate collaboration, the sharing of best practices, and drive innovation, all of which will improve medical care and the delivery of innovative health services.The right platform can also consolidate data in a single location while providing cross-functional agency workflows, with the citizen at the center. This allows agencies to improve health service quality, access, and citizen experiences through effective and efficient care. To get started, review the 10 steps to transforming the customer service experience using automation, machine learning, AI, and other advanced processes.Develop a responsive citizen service environmentFederal agencies at the forefront of digital transformation are using digital solutions to automate manual or paper-based processes. They are saving time, money, and resources by eliminating redundant processes. Automated processes can also highlight and prioritize citizen needs. This helps agencies respond quickly to enable better outcomes, reduce overall costs, and ensure continuity of care.Digital processes also improve self-service capabilities. Citizens or their families can access forms quickly, fill them out only once, have them securely shared with the proper healthcare providers, and have full transparency into who is using them.These same techniques can lower the cost of healthcare. One way to do this is by investing in a platform that can serve as a knowledge center or provide knowledge-center support. This allows anyone with the proper authority to access digital forms, data, or other information from any location at any time. Platforms like this can offer cloud-based customer service management (CSM) solutions to enable an intelligent digital transformation that remains focused on the citizen experience.In federal healthcare agencies, CSM takes a patient or beneficiary-centric approach to digital experiences, rather than an agency-centric view. CSM applications can provide citizen information management in areas such as customer history, problem tracking, and contact management. For answers about creating citizen service excellence using CSM, read this QA from IDC.Enhance citizen experiences using an advanced platformThe Now Platform® from LIKE.TG offers all the core capabilities that enable federal healthcare agencies to quickly and efficiently digitize workflows and run them at scale. It delivers enhanced omnichannel experiences through a single platform to accelerate innovation and reduce issue resolution times. With LIKE.TG’s support, agencies can deliver on their mandate to improve health service, quality, access, and experience through effective and efficient care.
Governments need a Total Experience model for service delivery
At its core, government should be human centered. To deliver the best experiences for people, agencies must put citizens and employees first. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for many public sector agencies to rely on legacy operating models to get work done. These models were not built with the user in mind, but rather the task at hand. Now, as governments tackle digital transformation, new opportunities arise to make service delivery and operations more human and more citizen-centric.Government has entered an era of human-centered design, where priority is placed on people’s needs and what is most convenient for them. It’s about putting user experience first.What it takes to build an experience-led agencyEmployee Experience (EX) and Customer Experience (CX) have both become major priorities for many government agencies. While both are clearly important, they are often treated separately, creating missed opportunities for truly transformational experiences.The future of government work is changing. As technology advances, demographics shift, and citizen expectations evolve, agencies are re-evaluating and rearchitecting how work gets done. Governments need to adapt and consider how to improve all interactions, both employee and citizen.There’s an undeniable link between a good employee experience and better citizen experience. When employees are happy and motivated, they provide better service for citizens. But experiences can’t be improved overnight. It’s the intersection between humans, processes, and technology that yields the biggest change.Total Experience (TX), a strategy that creates superior shared experiences by connecting the employee and customer experiences, seeks to unite these for a better outcome for all concerned.The role of technology in TX“It’s human-centric products and services that make the best use of emerging and emerged technologies, be they the relatively simple website to advanced AI enabled by the cloud,” said Simon Cooper, director of digital government-focused customer strategy at Deloitte. “That in turn transforms how government operates and how those experiences are delivered in terms of services.”The public sector is seeing growing demand for faster, digitally-enabled service delivery. Technologies such as AI, automation, and cloud are helping agencies meet that demand. Deloitte outlines how automation and AI provide an opportunity to improve efficiency and ease the burden for employees and citizens by:· Doing more work: Computers can process more data at a higher speed—enabling more work to get done without increasing employee workload.· Doing work better: Optimized processes help agencies improve quality, lower costs, and enhance speed—freeing up employee time for more strategic tasks.· Doing work differently: AI gives agencies the ability to redesign work as a partnership between human workers and intelligent machines—taking advantage of the unique strengths of both.With the implementation of automation and AI into day-to-day processes, employees can focus their efforts on more pressing and high-level issues. This means employees are more satisfied and can deliver better experiences for citizens. But despite the potential that digital technologies offer to government, innovating with a TX lens comes with its challenges.Removing the roadblocks to building the government of the futureThe government of the future will be experience-driven—but getting there is no simple task. Like any new initiative, government leaders face their own set of challenges in building experience-driven agencies. A 2021 LIKE.TG and ESI ThoughtLab report surveyed 900 senior business leaders in five industries across 13 countries to identify the top-of-mind challenges leaders face when building an experience-driven organization:1. Uncertainty around the potential ROI and business case, as an experience focus is still a new concept for many leaders and management teams2. Lack of shared metrics for EX and CX, making it daunting to bridge the gap and develop a unified strategy3. Overall employee resistance to change driven by employees wanting to stick to known approaches and ways of operatingHow these challenges are addressed will influence the success of your TX strategy. To be truly experience-driven, government agencies will need to go beyond treating customer and employee experiences as separate disciplines and take a TX approach to interactions. With a more holistic strategy, agencies can improve citizen outcomes, lower errors and costs in government processes and programs, and better attract and retain an engaged workforce.Discover how government leaders globally are driving total experience efforts.
How Australia can elevate government customer experience
The pandemic shifted us all online, whether we wanted to or not. It forced the public sector to adapt more than most industries, requiring citizens to interact digitally with governments to receive the health and financial support available to them.Digital technology promises to elevate government customer experience (CX) by scaling services, cutting wait times, and reducing costs. Yet, according to the 2022 LIKE.TG customer experience survey in Australia and New Zealand, government services haven’t maintained fast, responsive digital delivery. Consumers called out the public sector as one of the worst-performing industries when it comes to CX.What can governments do to improve CX outcomes? Here are three steps.Connect the disconnectedOne unique challenge the public sector faces is the need to provide for everyone. That requires designing experiences for both people who are connected and comfortable with technology and those who aren’t or don’t have access.According to a 2021 EY report, nearly one-third of people believe technology will not be equally available to all groups in society.That’s true in Australia, where many people living in remote and rural areas lack access to technology and/or reliable internet. Some Australians could be left behind.The EY report further found one-third of citizens want governments to use more digital technologies for service provision and bridge the technology and connectivity gap.Ask for feedbackGovernment agencies and departments must listen to what taxpayers are saying. Then they need to incorporate that feedback into their service offerings.“Digital transformation is only successful if it provides a better experience than before—and the only way to know that is by getting good feedback,” shared Victor Dominello, minister for customer service and digital government in New South Wales, at Knowledge 2022.Traditionally, governments didn’t want to know what people thought, he added. “But you can’t elevate the citizen experience unless you understand it. Now we’re actively inviting and providing easy channels to capture feedback...It’s a massive culture shift.”
Share dataLIKE.TG research revealed speed is the most important factor in good service for Australians. One way governments can improve this area is introducing a digital ID to validate residents so they don’t need to repeat themselves or log in multiple times.The Australian government has made some progress on this front, with its myGov portal for multiple services. It’s still limited to a handful of departments, as many state and local governments vary in their digital maturity.This technology offers promise. When the Department of Home Affairs introduced portals to manage returning citizens during the pandemic, they cleared a backlog, accelerated processing, and removed the risk of human error.The key to success with these types of technologies is data sharing, the absence of which is a concern for consumers, according to the LIKE.TG research. Nearly half (44%) believe a lack of ownership between departments leads to bad service. Additionally, 41% believe inefficient communication within an organization results in poor experiences.Connecting teams through technology and enabling data sharing can give governments a 360-degree view of the citizen experience. With this, agencies and departments can provide faster services arranged around an individual’s needs and life experience.What does the future look like?If a government is going to have a comprehensive view of its population to provide effective digital services, it needs to capture data from multiple sources and make that data available to all services that require it.One example is NSW Health’s IT platform, HOPE, which was co-designed by consumers, clinicians, and managers across New South Wales in partnership with the Agency for Clinical Innovation, eHealth NSW, and the NSW Ministry of Health. It’s built on the Now Platform.The system allows both consumers and clinicians to access real-time information, better understand what matters to patients, and support shared decision-making about care, treatment, and health interventions. It’s making services faster, more collaborative, and responsive to individual needs.It can also take data from both digital and analog inputs so that anyone can benefit—regardless of their digital capabilities.Improving government CX isn’t the work of a moment. By listening, incorporating feedback, and creating easy-to-access and compelling linked digital services, governments can deliver a seamless experience—one that leaves no one behind.Find out more about how technology can improve public sector services.
How secure tech can improve public service delivery in Australia
Australia’s government has big aspirations to increase public service capability and capacity. By reducing its reliance on external firms and bringing capabilities in-house, the government hopes to boost efficiency, improve spending, and become a more equitable, inclusive employer.This transition won’t necessarily be easy. Manual processes and disparate legacy systems will make it difficult for government agencies to deliver great employee experiences. To accelerate and expand its capacity to deliver services, government must streamline its digital infrastructure to:
Optimize the way public servants do their work
Automate repetitive, manual processes
Empower people to do their best work
At the same time, the Security Legislation Amendment aims to improve the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure in response to increasingly frequent and severe cyberthreats. Agencies must align the need for rapid digital transformation with critical security and compliance requirements, but how?Rising need for public service transformationMost government agencies rely on multiple legacy systems to complete work and uphold critical security requirements. Take the public service application process, for example. To address the current labor shortage, agencies are expected to hire thousands of new employees. If only 10% of applicants move on to the interview stage (as commonly projected), some agencies could be left juggling tens of thousands of applicants.Inefficiencies and opportunities for human error abound, from toggling between systems to entering data manually. Add in the need for comprehensive background checks and detailed onboarding for this high volume of workers, and the process quickly becomes unwieldy. It’s clear legacy systems and manual processes won’t be able to keep up.To improve recruitment efforts and track the talent pipeline more effectively, agencies need to simplify their onboarding processes. Automating an inefficient and error-prone process can exponentially amplify inefficiencies and errors.When done right, optimization followed by automation can free government workers to focus on high-value tasks, improving employee experiences and satisfaction.
Balancing security and complianceThe need for rapid digital transformation is clear, but government can’t compromise when it comes to security. Amid the Security Legislation Amendment, critical infrastructure entities—including government agencies—must adapt while supporting digital resiliency. The amendment emphasizes risk management planning and mandates incident reporting for systems of national significance.Compliance with these regulations will include giving government agencies:
Full visibility into IT and operational technology assets on their networks
Complete awareness of vulnerabilities
The ability to respond to threats quickly and effectively
Building the future of governmentThe LIKE.TG Protected Platform is uniquely positioned to help address these needs. Built on Microsoft Azure, it gives agencies access to the capabilities and utility of the Now Platform while keeping their data and support in Australia. Because the LIKE.TG Protected Platform is a software as a service (SaaS) platform, it’s possible to deploy it in weeks rather than years. The platform is assessed at the PROTECTED level by an independent assessor for the Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP), assisting with the security and resilience of critical data and infrastructure.The secure platform empowers government to rapidly onboard new public servants, expand capacity, and comply with increasingly rigorous security standards.
Delivering real resultsIn May 2022, Australia’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources (DISR) successfully implemented the LIKE.TG Protected Platform to streamline and automate enterprise service management for more than 4,000 employees. The department procured and implemented the platform in less than six months.“By using one platform to manage complex tasks and requests, we have improved our automation and streamlined a range of administrative tasks, enabling us to assign team members to more important work,” says Steve Stirling, general manager of ICT operations at DISR.“In our work with more than 100 Australian state and federal agencies, we see them facing increasing demands to deliver more with less,” says Eric Swift, vice president and managing director of LIKE.TG for Australia and New Zealand.“As a result of this go‑live, DISR will significantly improve its employees’ experience so staff can focus on what’s important: improving outcomes for citizens. In both the private and public sectors, outstanding digital experiences for employees are the key to unlocking productivity and freeing up time,” he adds. “This is driving significant demand from a range of regulated industries for the LIKE.TG Protected Platform.”Find out more about how the LIKE.TG Protected Platform helps public services optimize and automate to complete work efficiently and securely.
3 ways to harness the power of low-code in government & public services
In the digital era, consumers measure the quality of a business experience against the best encounters they’ve had, regardless of industry.That means if they’ve enjoyed top-tier convenience and satisfaction from a streaming service or food delivery app, they expect the same level of excellence from every other business they interact with—even their local government or other public services.To provide the intuitive and seamless experiences citizens demand, government agencies need to offer simplified, unified, digital services. The power of low-code can help in three ways.1. Converting backlogs into swift assistanceLow-code solutions provide a transformative way for public sector organizations to quickly create solutions to address the biggest challenges facing their business. By enabling nontechnical employees to develop their own applications, low-code can streamline workflows, reduce bottlenecks, shorten queue times, and speed up project delivery.Gartner® predicts “over 35% of government legacy applications will be replaced by solutions developed on low-code application platforms and maintained by fusion teams by 2025.”1The City of Los Angeles created and deployed a custom low-code app in just two months to process a greater volume of applications for emergency rental units, such as oxygen tanks and other life-saving machinery, faster and more efficiently.Thanks to the optimized application process, including a specialized customer service hotline, the city was able to capture 4,800 rental applications on the app’s launch day and an additional 60,000 applications over the following two weeks. As a result, the city is getting help to those in need in a much timelier fashion.2. Unifying services across agenciesMany government websites require members of the public to manually complete forms. Whether a completed form is delivered to the correct agency is another matter. That’s because government agencies often struggle with siloed IT functions across dozens of departments.Low-code can enable governments to unite disparate departments, unify legacy systems, and connect agencies so that they work in harmony. This allows teams to guide users with a visual sequence of ongoing service tasks.Citizens can access a one-stop shop for all public-facing services. Employees benefit from access to the same single system of record. This helps eliminate departmental silos and encourages greater collaboration.When the New South Wales Government of Australia needed to coordinate multi-agency disaster response across the 300,000-square-mile state, it launched a low-code app in just one week.The app provides a central hub to rank, track, and manage disaster requests. It helps improve officer safety while enabling the state’s spread-out (and often remote) emergency services teams to seamlessly collaborate and efficiently mobilize resources.Since the app’s launch, the NSW Police Force has saved more than AUD$10.5 million and 30,000 hours of work and mobilization.
3. Enhancing field experienceLow-code can enable public services organizations to build apps that let people in the field capture customer information and access appropriate systems. In this way, workers can diagnose and solve issues as they arise instead of obtaining data manually and responding later.Self-service portals and mobile apps, for example, allow people to engage with their government and quickly address issues outside of typical working hours. The result is a B2C-quality, mobile-friendly, consistent brand experience.To significantly decrease child malnutrition in the South African province of Limpopo, LIKE.TG Elite Partner FlyForm built a low-code app for Ndlovu Care Group. The goal was to digitize the process of collecting and managing data to track outreach work, health screenings, and medical records.Thanks to the app’s success, Ndlovu has reduced the malnutrition rate from 45% to 21% among more than 5,000 children.Join the low-code revolutionThe increase in demand for digital services means governments must drive digital transformation and engage citizens with simpler and more unified experiences. Low-code can close the digital divide by leveling the app development playing field, reducing costs, and connecting legacy systems.By simplifying and democratizing the development process, low-code helps enable all areas of government and public services to ideate, create, and provide feedback on solutions that will enhance services and operations for citizens.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps organizations innovate with low-code development.1 Gartner, Press release: Gartner Announces the Top 10 Government Technology Trends for 2023, April 17, 2023GARTNER® is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Transformation accelerated in government means trust accelerated
The 2023 LIKE.TG Federal Forum brought together nearly 1,800 U.S. government professionals and industry partners to discuss the successes and challenges of modernizing the business of government. Alongside the year’s theme of “Transformation Accelerated,” a secondary theme emerged across the various talks: trust.Only two in 10 citizens report they trust the government, according to Pew Research. That’s why building trust in government is a goal of the Biden administration. Trust has been low throughout the last three administrations, indicating that dramatic steps need to be taken.Moving the trust needleDuring the Federal Forum, attendees heard how innovative approaches to citizen service moved the trust needle for a variety of agencies. For example, at one agency, requesting a housing repair used to require numerous phone calls and emails, a lot of paperwork, and sometimes an in-person visit.With LIKE.TG, the agency was able to create an app that allows constituents to submit an issue online. That request is immediately turned into a case and routed to the most appropriate office and available technician to handle it.The whole process is transparent, with everyone able to see where the request stands. The efficiency in repairs has improved morale among constituents and the employees who perform maintenance work.Service departments—including HR, IT, and safety—support the workforce so they can carry out another agency’s mission. But each group had different processes and tools for communicating and interacting with employees.LIKE.TG enabled the agency to standardize processes on a single platform to create automated workflows for requesting services and getting support, regardless of the department.These examples speak to how the consistency and visibility offered by digital solutions can help build trust that systems are working in the best interests of the people they serve.
Embracing new technologiesTo transform experiences, agencies are tapping into key technology trends. More than a mandate, zero trust is seen as the logical way to deliver user-centered services. Discussion during the Federal Digital Transformation panel highlighted the old “trust but verify” model, which put the onus for security on end users. If they clicked a phishing link, a security breach was their fault.Zero trust, on the other hand, puts the obligation squarely on the shoulders of organizations equipped to handle that responsibility. This helps them follow the directives outlined in the National Cybersecurity Strategy.Citizen development, the ability for nontechnical business users to create applications, helps organizations meet the continuously growing demand for new digital solutions. There simply are not enough traditional developers to create all the technology solutions users need.By empowering more people to build basic digital workflows, highly trained developers are freed to focus on more complex, mission-centric applications. While singing the praises of citizen development, multiple speakers warned that application sprawl is a warranted fear, but one that can be combated with practical governance built into the process.Automating repetitive tasksSpeakers throughout the event stated that anything that can be automated should be automated. They repeatedly extolled the benefits of automation for federal employees, despite the fear that machines will take our jobs.Removing mundane, manual tasks allows for higher-level thinking and work, which in turn leads to increased job satisfaction. Upskilling was cited as a key focus for every agency to help employees understand how to use automated technologies and the data they produce to advance agency missions.The insights provided at the 2023 Federal Forum showed that transformation must be driven by the desire to improve trust among constituents and employees. With a human-centered approach to automation, technology can inspire a new appreciation for the services government provides, building a new experience with citizens.Explore all the discussions around transformation and trust in the 2023 Federal Forum on-demand library. And find out more about how LIKE.TG helps accelerate transformation and trust in government.
Federal 100 list highlights impact of LIKE.TG federal solutions
We’re proud to announce that Steve Walters, senior vice president of federal solutions at LIKE.TG, has been named to the 2024 Federal 100 list. Published annually by NextGov/FCW, the list recognizes outstanding individuals who went above and beyond in support of federal IT in the previous year.For Steve, the accolade is much bigger than himself. We sat down with Steve to learn more about the award and its significance.What does the Federal 100 award mean to you?I’m honored and humbled by this award. It recognizes 100 individuals from the federal community who have a passion for improving the government’s mission and helping it deliver value to its constituents. When you look at the list, it’s pretty impressive. It’s humbling to be included on this list of technologists, leaders, and innovators.But I don’t see this recognition as something about Steve Walters. I really see this as a reflection of the great work that the LIKE.TG federal team has done in partnership with our customers, of the impact we’re making across the federal government.I also think it’s a recognition of the evolution that LIKE.TG has undergone over the years. It’s not just about IT Service Management. It’s about the LIKE.TG platform and the mission outcomes that we’re delivering in partnership with our customers.What's the state of public sector digital transformation?There’s never been a better time than right now to accelerate the digital transformation journey that our customers have either started or are about to embark on. We’re at an inflection point where the big goals that our government has for digital transformation and the capabilities of the technology are starting to come together.There’s been a big gap in those two principles for some time. So when we talk about accelerating digital transformation, that time is now.
What are some of the big challenges federal agencies face?One challenge is mission resiliency. It’s not just about completing your mission. It’s really about how agencies can continue their missions when there’s digital disruption—a catastrophic event, systems going down, the next pandemic, or a cyberattack. How does an agency continue to function when something like that happens?Another thing agencies are dealing with is how to improve the employee and constituent experience. How can they provide world-class employee experiences from day 1, when an employee starts, and throughout their employment? Do they have the very best platform to achieve their mission or their task for their constituents?The last piece is around modernizing legacy systems. In many cases, the systems work, but the experience for employees and constituents is from like 10 to 15 years ago. So, how can you modernize that very quickly without introducing more technical debt, reduce the overall risk to the government, and then increase time to value?How does LIKE.TG help address these pain points?We bring people, systems, data, and organizations together across the entire enterprise, and we bring that back in a consumable manner so that leaders and employees can then take action. We do that through our digital workflows and hyperautomation.Much like the iPhone revolutionized the mobile consumer experience by bringing technologies back to a single platform, we’re doing that at the enterprise level for the workforce on a single platform, the Now Platform. That’s how we can help address those three challenges.For example, a large federal agency recently realized it needed to modernize the veteran onboarding experience. The agency’s HR system did what it was supposed to do, but not having connectivity on mobile devices or being able to tie into other systems was a huge gap.LIKE.TG was able to partner with another company and modernize that experience while keeping the HR system in place. This reduced the risk and improved the experience in less than 12 months. The agency got the time-to-value piece and didn’t take on additional technical debt because it didn’t have to rip and replace.What role does AI play in the public sector?As in the private sector, there’s tremendous interest in AI and, more specifically, generative AI (GenAI) in the public sector. The opportunities and the interests are huge.It’s important to understand that disruptive technologies have come and gone before. What's different about GenAI is that it can accelerate digital transformation at a much faster rate than any other disruptive technology in history.The key piece here is that if you’re really going to harness the opportunities of GenAI, it can’t be treated as a single disruptive technology. The real power comes when you combine GenAI with a platform like ServiceNow. Those together are what really accelerate transformation around the mission and around the employee-constituent experience.As I said, we’re at an inflection point. The federal government has a lot of very big goals. And it has access to technology that can meet those goals. It’s not just about digital transformation anymore. It's about accelerating the transformation journey. That’s really what’s ahead of us.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps federal government simplify workflows and accelerate digital transformation.
India spotlight: 4 ways to build digital trust in government
Trust means different things to different people. From my point of view, it always involves four key factors: consistency, reliability, security, and honesty. If the government can embody these factors, at both the state and national levels, then it can earn the credibility to lead.As the Indian government strives to deliver its eOffice model and become a $5 trillion digital economy by 2025, digital trust and credibility are crucial.India has the world’s largest electorate: 1.4 billion people with diverse cultures, languages, religions, and perspectives. Because of the variety of life experiences—all being served by a single national institution—citizens’ trust in government is critical to the country’s success and stability.Let’s explore what digital trust looks like for India—and how we can strengthen it in the four key areas of the e-governance framework.1. Government to citizens (G2C)Perhaps the most important part of the framework is building trust with citizens. Government needs to have user-friendly systems that allow citizens to access high-quality resources consistently and reliably.It also needs to deliver vital services in times of crisis or disaster. At the outset of the pandemic, for example, governments had to act within days, not months, to keep their citizens well informed and safe. Those that succeeded earned the trust and respect of their people.LIKE.TG worked with a government organization to do exactly that, enabling 18,000 city employees to work from home and launching a fully functional COVID-19 test appointment app within 72 hours.From a technology perspective, building trust with citizens means optimizing data centers with high-availability architecture, integrated systems, and efficient workflows. That way, government is poised to respond proactively when citizens need it most.
2. Government to business (G2B)Creating a positive environment for businesses to prosper is another way government can build trust. That means cutting red tape and allowing the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive. This is especially true for vendors working directly with government: They want fast licensing, procurement, permits, and revenue collection.Making the government easy to work with helps businesses view it as a dependable partner for the private sector. This is possible by incorporating consumerlike experiences, eliminating burdensome processes, and building digital channels for communication.For example, optimizing procurement through enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization and portfolio management technologies can simplify the government back office, reducing bureaucracy and streamlining processes.Standardizing forms, reducing required fields, and providing online content repositories for self-service can provide a better user experience.3. Government to government (G2G)Intergovernmental operations are also ripe for improvement. Citizens want transparent, trustworthy public services that run efficiently. Government wants to be a better steward of taxpayer money through better planning and management across departments.To build digital trust, government must focus on smart governance that uses modern technologies and agile project management. That means implementing effective project portfolio management and role-based access controls. Together, these help government ensure projects progress across silos with accurate and secure data sharing.LIKE.TG is working with government organizations to deliver these kinds of results. In one city, we deployed our Strategic Portfolio Management solution to help the local government manage major projects and provide reports for executive scrutiny. We established centralized IT standards and best practices and helped IT teams use resources more cost-effectively while fast-tracking their activities with confidence.4. Government to employees (G2E)The final focus area is establishing trust with employees. If government wants to be efficient and effective, it needs to attract and retain smart, talented people and empower them to get their work done. That’s the foundation for achieving India’s digital strategy objective by 2025.A powerful ERP solution can give employees the visibility, control, and access they need to deliver projects effectively across all arms of government. Boosting productivity and allowing people to participate in the mission of government can also help improve employee satisfaction and retention.An integrated pictureLIKE.TG understands the importance of building trust with all stakeholders in government. That’s why our global, multi-instance infrastructure employs progressive security layers and rigorous security practices to protect data.Using the Now Platform—which connects people, processes, and technology organizationwide—government can achieve secure, responsive, effective, and transparent work across departments to earn digital trust.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps government deliver digital experiences.
Using better visibility to tame India’s ‘digital elephant’
Have you heard the tale about the blind men and the elephant? A group of blind men who’ve never seen an elephant touch different parts of the animal and try to figure out what it is.The first man touches the elephant’s side and says, “An elephant is like a wall.” The second touches a tusk and says, “An elephant is like a spear.” The third touches the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake.”Without seeing the full picture, it’s impossible to truly understand the world around us. We can only see the truth by comparing and combining different perspectives. In India, the government has a new “digital elephant” to decipher.Wrangling the dataAs part of the Digital India by 2025 strategy, the Indian government is in the middle of an enormous digitization project involving all departments, agencies, and states. This digitization will create a lot of data.The Open Government Data (OGD) Platform, which aims to aggregate all public sector data, contains data sets from 165 departments across 33 sectors. That’s an enormous amount of information—and it’s growing every day.Recording all that data is only one step of the digitization process. Government organizations also need to standardize, analyze, and report on the data to make it actionable. Getting a clear picture of progress on digital projects across state lines is currently difficult, for example.How can leaders track their disaster recovery management and solve problems quickly? How can they report on Early Harvest Programs? How can they understand the amount of BSNL fiber being laid across the country? How many villages have been connected as part of the remote auditing project?To answer these questions, government leaders need a single source of truth that provides visibility into the status of their digital projects and the IT assets enabling them end to end (or trunk to tail). Having a clear picture can help leaders make intelligent decisions about strategy, allocate funds efficiently, focus on priority projects, and quickly shift budgets when needed.
End-to-end visibilityWhat does that look like in practice? As with the elephant in the story, a lot of parts need to come together to create a full picture:
Consolidating technology systems across government to provide a consistent user interface
Integrating applications and data sets to increase visibility into service workflows
Breaking the barriers between departments, agencies, and state governments to streamline data sharing and collaboration
Implementing governance and compliance structures such as role-based access controls (RBACs) to ensure information security isn’t compromised
Many departments are already attempting to deliver parts of this program. To hit the 2025 target of the Digital India strategy, the government will need to work with best-in-class technology partners.That’s where LIKE.TG can help. When it comes to delivering visibility in complex IT environments at speed, without compromising security or compliance, we say yes.See the full pictureWe work with government organizations to integrate systems, simplify user interfaces, increase visibility, and accelerate digital projects. As the foundation for all digital workflows, the Now Platform can connect people, functions, and systems across any organization.Our solutions help organizations make better sense of project data with RBACs, dashboarding, drill-down views, and real-time data visualizations. That means everyone in government can access the level of information they need through a single interface— and have the power to put that data into action immediately.Because LIKE.TG protects sensitive data using platform encryption, meeting regulatory requirements is never a concern for government agencies.Find out how LIKE.TG can help any government visualize its “digital elephant.”
Powering government security and innovation in the cloud
It’s no secret that government agencies are facing increasing restrictions and compliance regulations as they strive to ensure effective data governance and protection.“Agencies have a lot of regulated information that needs to be governed, and they need to make sure it’s not compromised,” says Corey DuBois, senior advisory presales solution consultant at ServiceNow. “There are a lot of checks and balances they need to have in place.”Because of these stringent requirements, agencies are typically restricted from leveraging out-of-the-box solutions. This often creates more challenges, such as finding the right people with the right skill sets to build the solutions and coming up with funding. Strict security and compliance regulations also limit agencies from taking advantage of the scale of the cloud to bring down the total cost of ownership.A new world of possibilitiesAll of that is about to change. Technology leaders are investing in achieving the right certifications to support government agencies. This can provide governments with better access to innovative tools and help ensure their ability to meet necessary security and compliance standards.“By leveraging a government cloud, agencies can consume cost-based applications more frequently, enabling them to meet the demands of their customers and their mission,” DuBois explains.LIKE.TG and Microsoft are helping enable this new level of innovation for government.Partnering to embrace the cloudAt Microsoft Federal’s National Security Symposium 2022, prominent defense, intelligence, and security leaders came together to explore the latest trends, insights, and innovations.In a partner panel discussion, DuBois highlighted our recent achievement in securing US Department of Defense (DOD) Impact Level 5 (IL5) Provisional Authorization for the LIKE.TG National Security Cloud (NSC).This makes the LIKE.TG NSC one of the few software as a service and platform as a service (SaaS/PaaS) offerings built and authorized to meet the rigorous DOD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide at Impact Level 5.Through NSC, the DOD, its mission partners, and select federal agencies can move highly sensitive data to LIKE.TG cloud-based solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure Government. This includes controlled unclassified information and unclassified national security systems.
Source: Microsoft Federal National Security Symposium, May 2-3, 2022, Washington, DCSupporting mission-critical workLIKE.TG and Microsoft are aligned to help customers in the federal market move into private cloud, shared cloud, or trusted cloud offerings so they can realize the benefits and value of cloud services. Agencies can then accelerate key initiatives, such as security and zero trust, while leveraging analytics and insights directly within their cloud instance.“There are a lot of activities to keep track of in any one instance,” DuBois says, “so being able to get insights into all the capabilities of that environment and automate that process is extremely valuable for government agencies.”NSC enables agencies to take advantage of the benefits of the Now Platform® within a secure, trusted cloud environment. They can integrate everything on a single platform, digitize workflows across systems of record, and power innovation with low-code apps.By connecting people, functions, and systems across the organization at greater speed and agility, agencies can spend more time focusing on mission-critical work while helping to reduce cost and risk.The right cloud environment can make government more resilient, flexible, and responsive—all while keeping security at the forefront. NSC puts innovation and security hand in hand, giving you the ability to achieve your goals and meet necessary compliance standards.Find out more about how LIKE.TG and Microsoft are shaping the future of government.
Making hidden talent visible in government
Strengthening and empowering the federal workforce is a key tenant of the President’s Management Agenda. Considering that, as well as an aging labor force and the critical need for people with cybersecurity skills to combat increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, now is the time for government agencies to reevaluate how they view employees’ skills.Moving to a data-driven talent strategy can enable agencies to uncover hidden talent by matching the right people to the right work at the right time—and enhance employee experience and engagement.Progression not promotionThe first step is realizing that skills do not equate to titles. For too long, career success has meant moving up General Schedule (GS) pay-scale levels or titles. But a change in title does not necessarily mean an individual has been or will be exposed to new experiences or gain new skills or responsibilities.The growth that comes with new challenges can help keep employees fulfilled. One way to promote that is to allow employees to move into positions across the organization. Sideways needs to be the new up to keep valuable employees engaged in government missions.Keeping talent in governmentPeople enter public service because they want to work for an organization with a mission. They don’t leave because they stop believing in the mission. They leave because they don’t receive opportunities to grow and develop.Talent sharing across agencies is long overdue. Hoarding talent within an organization does nothing for government goals or individual growth.Government employees need to see career path options outside their current organizations. Where can their skills make an impact in another office or agency? Seeing a growth path can keep talent within the government ecosystem rather than losing it to commercial companies.Diversify the workforce you already haveA data-driven approach to talent can go a long way toward driving out bias and growing equity. Across government, opportunities abound for people to get involved in steering committees, pop-up projects, and short-term initiatives.We assume people will seek out these options. But employees tend to network only with people they know. This limits what they’re exposed to. Employees miss opportunities every day that are tailored to their skills and career goals.With an automated, data-driven approach, opportunities can be pushed to employees who meet specific skills and capability criteria. Those employees can then engage with a digital workflow, allowing them to quickly and easily break into a new network within the organization.Technology then becomes a proactive, enabling force in finding the best fit based on skills, not on position or education. No longer are we dependent on who we know.Personalize the journeyThree-quarters of employees who’ve made a move within an organization have a higher likelihood of staying, according to the 2023 Workplace Learning Report from LinkedIn. Providing a dynamic career path backed by training and mentoring opportunities is a way for government agencies to demonstrate commitment to employees.A one-size-fits-all training program ends up fitting no one. Employees have come to expect a personalized experience from the brands they interact with—music recommendations based on their tastes or reminders to order toothpaste based on their buying habits. They expect the same personalization from their employer.Agencies need to become data-driven to better align their training with both employee and mission needs. Knowing potential growth areas for employees allows for more targeted efforts in offering reskilling and upskilling opportunities to the people who will most quickly benefit from the training. This will result in a more customized experience, giving employees programs and training they want to participate in and learn from.LIKE.TG is proud to support organizations ready to make the leap to a data-driven, skills-based model. Watch our webinar for more details on how you can move away from spreadsheets and emails to manage skills in an automated way that works for everyone—HR, agency leaders, supervisors, and employees.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps government deliver better digital service experiences.
For the people: Improving government CX
Government continues to trail private industry in its ability to meet customer service expectations. The American Customer Satisfaction Index Federal Government Report 2022 scored government service at 66.3 out of 100, below the average customer satisfaction index of 73.2.1 It’s not all bad news, though.Thanks to customer experience (CX) being a focus of the Biden-Harris Management Agenda, this year marked the first uptick in customer satisfaction since 2017. With more than $500 million in the White House fiscal 2024 budget proposal earmarked to support the improvement of government CX, the hope is for a continued upward trend.To realize this hope, and the promise of a government that works for all its people, agencies need to be strategic in how they invest in improving the CX journey to benefit both citizens and their workforce.
Why it's time to re-invent finance with IT
Financial services is one of the more respected, highly-trained, and revered departments of any business. Accountants (both management and chartered), actuarial professionals, and financial professionals of all disciplines generally take on several years of post-graduate studies that put them in line for a potential slot in C-suite management, if they choose to pursue that course.One would think then, on that basis, that finance would insist on using only the sharpest processes, the most contemporary technology tools, and the highest grade workplace systems possible.Strangely—and somewhat paradoxically—this is typically not the case.Skyrocketing slownessAccording to Gartner, “on average, finance is the third-slowest operating corporate function behind legal function and IT. 73% of finance functions face pressure to speed up. As request volumes skyrocket and budgets stay flat or are reduced, finance leaders tell us they are looking for new approaches to finance operational efficiency to meet growing business needs”. (Source: Gartner: Build a Finance Function that Meets Business Demands, 2018)We need to stand back and ask ourselves how we can improve the speed of these corporate functions, including finance. Much of the truth behind this predicament lies in tradition, custom, and ritual. Yes, accountancy has moved out of “bookkeeping” on paper and pencil ledger books into the fabulous world of spreadsheets, but many of the same age-old work processes are still resolutely in place.We know that finance still uses many essentially manual processes, including emails and spreadsheets to manage workload. But these are disconnected platforms, software applications, and data streams that lack any discernible degree of autonomous intelligence and service automation.As in finance, as in everythingBut this whole discussion extends way beyond finance. The financial function may have been called out here for want of highlighting a trend that needs bucking, but there is an equally inequitable level of disconnectedness that pervades throughout every business function.We should remember that finance is the broker for so much of what happens inside any business, i.e., it “signs the cheques” and makes things happen so to speak. But really, the IT department has the same brokerage responsibility. If it doesn’t provide the platform and connectivity conduits for information exchange to happen in a fluid fashion, then work doesn’t work the way it should.Looking at the other workplace disciplines at play here, Gartner’s analysis pointed to finance as third slowest as a department. The analysis then ranked RD, sales, human resources, the risk department, and then audit and procurement as the most sluggish company divisions, with marketing (both B2B and B2C) coming in last.Steps for actionSo how should organizations bring about change in the face of operational systems that are often weighed down by the anchor of traditional processes and archaic systems management?A good starting point rests on an analysis of how any organization should think about redesigning the core operational building blocks of any business function. A business should also think about how it is going to deal with the impact of new information flows as they traverse the business. The reality of shared services that dovetail across new intelligent business functions means that there is an inevitable need for a new level of threading and connection.Financial service institutions are under pressure to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Those that do can turn the high pace of change into a competitive advantage with tremendous growth potential. But adapting to these market dynamics will require embracing new ways of working such as putting a single platform to work across your enterprise—to boost visibility, enable compliance, and deliver great service.(Discover the platform being used to reinvent financial services.)Coming full circleWe started with finance. Those highly trained professionals who actually need to embrace a new era of reinvention. But, it turns out that finance isn’t that different from all the other departments in any given business. As we have said, finance has a foundational broker effect in the business—so if it’s done right, then the effect throughout the business will be positively virtuous.Monty Python’s classic comedy accountant may have wanted to grow up and graduate to become a lion tamer, but we’re not suggesting quite that much reinvention is needed. You don’t need to get into the circus to pull this act off.Now logo, Now, and other LIKE.TG marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of LIKE.TG, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company names, product names, and logos may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Asia-Pacific banking outlook: Compliance culture depends on innovation
Banking institutions are risk engines. Customers know this. Bankers know this. Financial regulators know this.Although no one likes to be turned down for a loan, risk due diligence is actually a good thing. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 proved that risky practices of the past were not good for the economy, for society, or for confidence in the sector as a whole.The challenge is finding the balance to meet responsible lending criteria while ensuring consistent customer satisfaction. Perhaps the answer lies in looking at risk management in a different way—through the lens of automation and transformation.“In a world of unprecedented disruption and market turbulence, transformation today revolves around the need to generate new value—to unlock new opportunities, to drive new growth, to deliver new efficiencies,” Deloitte noted in one of its transformation reports.The financial services industry needs to transform now, more than ever.Digital banking transformation and complianceBanks know that transformation is critical. However, as they look to transform from legacy models to new digital offerings, a big factor holds them back: governance, risk, and compliance.In a highly regulated industry, there are a number of compliance issues that banks need to focus on. These include responsible lending to small businesses, enforcement and monitoring of loans to businesses, and the way products and accounts are administered, among others.It's very important for banks to be able to demonstrate due diligence compliance practices while providing excellent customer experience. That’s why compliance has a crucial role to play across all types of regulation—and why technology needs to enable organizations to make this a reality.Banks are changing. As Matt Baxby, CEO of Revolut Australia, says, “We will see a generational transition from trust in banks as a driver of loyalty. Trust in financial services used to be about safety and security—banks were the bedrock—there to keep your money safe.“Now it is just as important to demonstrate you are acting in the interest of your customers, transparently and protecting their data and privacy. That will be an enduring legacy of the Royal Commission, which will only amplify with time.”The key to redressing these trust issues lies in how financial institutions can make the digital experience seamless, effective, and efficient for all those involved.Risk: The center of everything the organization doesIn such a highly regulated market, risk, controls, and compliance need to be embedded within day-to-day activities. Imagine if it were possible to automatically detect risks and controls within the system. Rather than being seen as a separate function, they could be embedded within the front-line processes while servicing customers.With increasing digitization and competitiveness within the financial services sector in Asia, it’s imperative for organizations to drive toward enhancing and uplifting a risk, resiliency, and compliance culture. This first line of defense is the beacon of good risk management through a singular focus on the user experience and high user adoption of integrated risk management technology.Taking this approach would avoid and prevent breaches, fines, or risk events. It would also reduce customer financial claims and, ultimately, loss on the income statement.
Improving the digital experience reduces riskThere’s a perception that demonstrating compliance and due diligence requires a lot of time, effort, and resources that can take banks’ attention away from pursuing their innovation goals.That’s not true.In fact, embedding risk controls into the front, middle and back-office processes removes the reliance on onerous checklists and referring documents, manuals, and banker handbooks. At the same time, it accelerates institutional learning and banker time to competency. It also creates a digital audit trail across all value chains.In fact, when financial institutions improve the digital experience, it benefits three groups:
Customers – who can easily get service and advice while protecting their data
Employees – who can be armed with modern technology and connectivity
Regulators – who gain assurance that banking and financial services are safe and secure
Transformation needs to be handled carefullyImproving the digital experience does require transformation. As we observed above, this can be a risky initiative in itself. When handled incorrectly, technology can cause errors and frustrations that diminish the customer experience while introducing risks.Inconsistent data structures and taxonomies between source systems create alignment and reconciliation issues and impede the ability to quickly assess and manage the impact of obligation changes.Reliance on manual provision of data across functions, fragmentation of data sources, frequency of policy changes, and limited quality and level of granularity of data capture within some data sources results in increased manual effort and risk of errors within reporting and analytics.The lack of integration between systems and workflow tools within and across processes produces many manual touch points. This prevents entire processes form being automated to improve both controls and process efficiencies.4 steps for transformational successWhen handled well, financial services transformation enhances compliance while reducing risk. Embedding risk and compliance automation controls across your front, middle, and back office gives you a foundation to meet the evolving expectations of both customers and regulators.Taking an automated and integrated approach toward business resiliency and third-party risks will be key. It enables your organization to reduce risk, noncompliance, and underperformance through more informed and faster decision-making at every process.LIKE.TG can help reconcile data, streamline customer experiences, and future-proof financial services in an era of rapid transformation and changing market dynamics. By following a four-step process for transformational success, it’s possible for financial services institutions to be compliant by design:
Build a solid foundation across IT and operations.
Expand to continuous monitoring for governance, risk, and compliance.
Expand to front-to-back intelligent servicing.
Deliver differentiated customer experiences.
Following these steps can help you become intelligence-led; achieve real-time, digitized risk and compliance processes; and leverage the power of AI and machine learning.Risk and compliance should be built inRisk and compliance visibility is critical for the survival of financial organizations. Risk and compliance managers across all domains need a central platform to help regularly monitor and assess risks. This platform should easily provide reporting to executive leaders vertically and horizontally across the organization.LIKE.TG can take you through these processes. We understand the products and services that are being distributed: from event and agreement data to machine learning decisions and actions, communication and other inputs into assurance, audit and compliance processes. LIKE.TG also knows the activities the banker carries out, the conversations bankers have with customers, and how they’re linked together.More importantly, we’re able to take a front-and-center approach to risk: ensuring we don’t just address it head-on, but that we build it into the system.Risk and compliance shouldn’t be seen as a separate function in every part of the business, or as a competing priority with transformation inside the bank. It should be embedded in everything a bank does and exist within a single, integrated business environment.Learn eight steps to automate governance, risk, and compliance.
3 ways to future-fit financial services organizations
Big tech companies are on target to capture up to 40% of the $1.35 trillion in U.S. financial services revenue from banks, according to Insider Intelligence. Weathering this storm requires an integrated approach to people, processes, and technology. Yet many financial services organizations are saddled with outdated technology and processes that make digital transformation overwhelming.“Nearly every bank has taken off on their journey to the cloud, but very few have gotten more than a few feet off the ground,” Accenture reports.LIKE.TG Financial Services Operations can help accelerate digital transformation. It allows financial services organizations to intelligently orchestrate and automate business processes and services. IDC agrees, having named LIKE.TG the winner of three 2022 IDC FinTech Real Results Awards: Next Generation Payments, Treasury Trade Transformation, and Overall Winner.“Winning in both the Next Generation Payments and Treasury Trade categories, and receiving top honors as overall winners, demonstrates that LIKE.TG has proven it can revamp existing financial services environments with its work orchestration and process automation capabilities,” says Jerry Silva, vice president at IDC Financial Insights.
Here are three ways financial services organizations can future-fit their businesses.1. Drive frictionless customer experiencesMany financial institutions face innovation challenges due to outdated technology and fragmented platform architecture. This makes it difficult to manage customer experience, requiring multiple people to work on customer requests across numerous departments.Because financial services systems are built for volume, availability, and security, they’re not easy to change. Changing too quickly risks regulatory, compliance, security, and account issues. Yet innovation is imperative to meet evolving customer demands and prepare for future success.Equipped with a banking-specific data model and strategic out-of-the-box applications and integrations, Financial Services Operations orchestrates work across both existing and new processes and technology.It includes optimized workspaces for bank employees, preconfigured workflows for common processes, and strategic integrations to help organizations become more efficient, deliver frictionless customer service and consistent employee experiences, and continuously adapt to meet evolving customer demands.Lloyds Banking Group, for example, automated more than 90% of payment exceptions by adopting Financial Services Operations. Work that once took days now takes minutes, thanks to integrating systems and data.In addition, Lloyds is able to process more than 60% of direct debit refund cases in less than three minutes, a process that took three days prior to implementing ServiceNow. Customers can receive a refund in as little as 30 seconds.2. Reduce operational costsMany financial services organizations rely on multiple platforms—such as a payment system, customer relationship management system, and a lending platform—to perform a single financial transaction. These siloed systems stymie business performance and productivity. They’re also costly to maintain and update.Adopting leading-edge architecture and delivery practices can help accelerate software innovation across the enterprise at scale. Financial Services Operations allows organizations to go beyond the constraints of their current systems. Using process automation, AI, and low-code, banks can create brand-new ways to work.
At a large global bank, for example, organizational silos and legacy communication channels caused service inconsistencies and many other challenges. These resulted in cost inefficiencies, a lack of data and insights to drive improvements, and difficulty providing efficient and productive customer and employee experiences.After implementing LIKE.TG, the bank significantly decreased development costs and increased self-service. Thanks to the noticeable value add, use of LIKE.TG rapidly expanded organically across the organization.3. Improve risk and compliance oversightBanks operate in a highly complex and regulated environment while managing ever-changing security risks, such as infrastructure and data privacy vulnerabilities. With LIKE.TG, controls are easily built into the process and tracked via service-level agreements, an end-to-end audit trail, and managerial dashboards.Now banks can move away from outdated, inflexible risk and compliance technologies that depend on email, spreadsheets, and shared cloud documents. Using a digital, end-to-end platform can allow financial services organizations to create a seamless enterprise system of action. This system can connect tools, people, and processes—and prioritize risks based on business impact.Getting the right data to the right people at the right time will help financial services leaders make informed decisions to manage risk and compliance properly.Find out more about how LIKE.TG makes financial services work better.
4 ways to improve financial services experiences
Updated May 5, 2023In banking, insurance, and wealth management organizations, it’s imperative to enhance customer experience to stay competitive. Although digital transformation has improved the front office and customer engagement, it’s not enough.Financial services organizations also need to provide good employee experience, protect against risks, cut costs, and accelerate innovation. It’s a tall order for any highly regulated organization. Here are four ways LIKE.TG can help you improve financial services experiences:1. Strengthen security and risk managementRansomware attacks pose a threat to all businesses. Financial services organizations need to be especially diligent in safeguarding against these types of attacks. It’s critical to both employ preventive tactics and have a resilient recovery plan.Watch our Improving security and ransomware preparedness webinar to learn ways to strengthen financial services security and risk management.2. Automate anything and everythingFinancial services organizations tend to excel in digitization and cloud technology, but many are missing the final piece of the puzzle to fully streamline their operations: hyperautomation.Encompassing AI, machine learning, process mining, and more, hyperautomation can greatly improve efficiency and customer experience. Find out how in Make hyperautomation a reality.3. Humanize customer experienceNo customer likes feeling unheard or unimportant. Customer loyalty is driven by satisfaction, which is reliant on customers feeling listened to, understood, and appreciated.Get tips on humanizing the customer experience in banking, based on research from American Banker and Monigle. The discussion includes insights to help you maintain balance between people-driven and technology-driven experiences.4. Revamp banking operationsOptimized banking requires connecting technologies and teams to eliminate silos. The Now Platform is designed to do exactly that.Find out about banking-specific enhancements to the platform in the Utah release in LIKE.TG for banking. Updates include banking system integration, real-time visibility, and options for agent callback.
Why banks need to unify technology, risk, and security
In today's dynamic banking environment, effective management of technology risk is paramount. The rapid adoption of new digital tools and solutions is exposing banks to a battery of technology threats that can bring down their operations.These growing risks range from cyberattacks and fraud to internal software failures and system misconfigurations—and they have CEOs on alert. According to a survey of 750 global banking executives conducted by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab, seven out of 10 CEOs say technology risk is the biggest danger to their bank. And 64% of CEOs expect technology risk to increase over the next two years.On top of that, regulators are demanding increased accountability from boards of directors and senior executives. Four out of 10 banks ensure the board and senior management oversee technology risk management. That number is expected to rise in two years’ time.The need for better technology risk managementAccelerating digital innovation is driving the need to improve risk management and resilience. About a quarter of C-suite executives—and more than a third of chief operating officers—say worries about introducing technology risks are preventing their firms from innovating.Another 23% of C-suite executives—and 27% of chief information officers—think their innovations create risks because they don’t involve IT, risk, and security teams early enough in the process. Nearly half of executives believe these functions must work well together to successfully manage tech risk.Internal forces matter just as much as, if not more than, external ones. Hackers and nefarious actors cause only 6% of all failures at major banks, according to The Financial Brand.Most major incidents result from events that can be controlled from within, such as deficient software, inadequate change processes, deployment issues, and human errors. This reality accentuates the need for cross-team collaboration, bringing together experts in technology risks, human risks, process risks, etc.The impact of siloed teams and dataAlthough most banks have systems, technologies, and processes to manage risks, the systems often operate as point solutions that amplify silos across people, processes, and data. In fact, siloed data and tools is the top technical challenge risk teams at banks face when seeking to improve technology risk management, according to the LIKE.TG/ThoughtLab research.With disconnected teams and data, it’s a herculean effort to ensure technology and security teams are properly managing risks throughout the technology lifecycle and operating in a compliant manner. This fragmentation often prevents chief risk officers, information security officers, and technology leaders from having an accurate and current view of risk levels, control effectiveness, and issue remediation.Even for banks at a high level of risk maturity, 40% believe IT, cybersecurity, and risk executives have only partial visibility across IT infrastructure, security systems, and business processes.
Communication and coordination for best resultsUnifying technology, security, and risk organizations is an important step on the journey to becoming a leader in risk management and resilience—and innovating and growing.In fact, 62% of leaders in technology risk and resilience plan to ensure IT, risk, and cybersecurity teams work together more closely over the next two years. The right organization and culture across these teams can create a “defensive triad” that solidifies the connective tissue behind a confident risk posture.“IT and cybersecurity departments have been isolated in the past, but we have learned that we need to coordinate with other groups,” noted a global head of crisis management, cyber, and technology risk at a top-tier French universal bank. “We might be able to solve technical issues, but not the tactical or strategic ones. We are working to break down the silos.”IT and cybersecurity teams realize they must work with each other and with a range of decision-makers from the business, including the CEO, senior managers, and operational and financial risk managers. To improve coordination, more than a quarter of leaders have expanded the role of the chief risk officer to include IT risk, a percentage that is expected to grow to 36% in two years.Intelligent orchestration and monitoringIntegrated risk platforms provide banks with a full view of cyber, technology, enterprise, and operational risks, as well as a common set of tools to manage them.Over the next two years, nearly all leaders in technology risk management—and three-quarters of less mature organizations—will use an integrated risk platform, according to the research. This will be essential for banks as they strive to incorporate technology risk into their overall risk frameworks and take a more holistic risk approach.When risk, security, and technology teams work together to intelligently orchestrate and monitor processes on one platform, banks can:
Improve risk posture: Financial institutions can identify and respond to risks fast. Teams can address risks and threats before they become breaches or audit findings. By continuously monitoring technology and security controls, firms can reduce the number of high-priority issues, leading to a strong risk and compliance posture.
Bolster security: Modernizing your security operations can optimize resilience, productivity, and costs. This is possible with a rationalized environment that spans all departments.
Reduce costs: Automation built into every aspect of risk and compliance management can greatly reduce manual efforts and the potential for operational losses due to regulatory fines, audit findings, or risk failures.
Accelerate innovation: With unified technology systems and processes, business leaders and tech leaders can innovate more rapidly across the business while mitigating risk.
Gain more insights in the full research report: Conquering technology risk in banking.
New partner app helps banks process emergency loans
LIKE.TG partner INRY has released a Small Business Loan Management app based on LIKE.TG® Customer Service Management (CSM) technology. This digital workflow solution delivers transparent, compliant and efficient lending experiences. The goal is to reduce bank overhead and small business distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.The app will enable lending institutions of all sizes and their small business customers to more efficiently process applications for the SBA Paycheck Protection Program. It provides clear program guidance, application and loan forgiveness management and a common case record for audit purposes.As part of the US Government’s $2 trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief package, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has allocated over $500 billion in loans through its Paycheck Protection Program to help businesses keep their workers employed during the COVID-19 crisis.This program creates unprecedented operational overhead for the SBA, banks and their customers. The Small Business Loan Management app is a low-cost, secure, scalable solution to this problem.“The SBA Paycheck Protection Program is vital support for America’s small business owners and employees, but the process of accessing those funds has been challenging for many,” said Lauren Robbins, VP and General Manager of Financial Services at ServiceNow. “We are proud to partner with INRY to bring more efficiency to this process by helping banks streamline the processing and management of PPP loans, thereby giving businesses and their employees faster access to this much-needed funding.”Key capabilities of the Small Business Loan Management app include:
Loan application management: This enterprise-scale solution simplifies the loan application process, delivering a better experience for customers. It provides guidance, secure document upload, risk reduction, case workflow management and tracking for both customer and bank agent.
Loan forgiveness management: The app helps banks manage complex forgiveness processes. This helps ensure that reimbursement requests to the SBA are straightforward and successful.
Loan maintenance: Banks and customers can manage disputes, appeals and, if required, loan repayment administration.
Audit and compliance management: This ensures that a permanent record of the case and workflow interaction between bank, customer and SBA is held securely.
Insight and analytics: Lending executives get a single pane of glass view into progress at various stages in the process.
The app is powered by the latest release of the Now Platform, Orlando, which includes powerful features like Agent Intelligence, Virtual Agent, Integrated Risk Management and much more.LIKE.TG continues to partner with INRY to develop additional functionality for the app. A key aspect of the solution is its low cost. During the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important that small, medium and large banks can adopt and deploy the solution in support of their small business customers.
“The Small Business Loan Management app is a cost-effective, secure, enterprise-grade solution that addresses the challenges associated with the rapid mobilization and deployment of relief aid to small businesses in need,” said Bipin Paracha, CTO and Co-Founder of INRY. “We developed this app to respond to the needs of banks of all sizes and to rapidly and securely manage the lifecycle of loan processing–from the collection and retention of loan data to loan maintenance, closure and audit.”INRY initially identified the need for an app that would help lenders provide SBA emergency loans more efficiently. LIKE.TG recognized the potential to help and jumped in to tune the app for LIKE.TG CSM. The app harnesses the power, innovation and enterprise scale of the Now PlatformÒ, delivering a low-cost solution for banks of all sizes to manage the Paycheck Protection Program lifecycle. This solution can replace locally created end user solutions quickly.LIKE.TG quickly established a close technical partnership with INRY and helped develop the new solution in less than two weeks, underscoring the rapid development capability of the Now Platform.An early customer of the solution is Bridgewater Bank in Minnesota, whose CTO, Mark Hokanson, said: “The Paycheck Protection Program has required significant collaboration between lenders and clients, and the Small Business Loan Management app will help streamline communication and reduce case processing time. The capabilities of the app, including a consistent and user-friendly dashboard with real-time data, will help our leadership focus attention where it is most needed – on providing the fastest, highest quality of service for our clients. This framework also sets us up for future work with loan forgiveness and other steps that we see will need to be addressed further down the road.”Earlier this year, LIKE.TG announced forthcoming product capabilities for the financial services industry. Today’s announcement reinforces how LIKE.TG and its partner community are successfully delivering solutions to meet middle office customer workflow needs in financial services, and plugging the gap left by digital fragmentation. Find out more about LIKE.TG’s financial services industry solutions.The Small Business Loan Management App is available for download on the LIKE.TG Store. Find more about availability and implementation here.
Understanding the ‘new normal’ for financial services
By: Keith Pearson, Senior Director, Financial Services, LIKE.TGLIKE.TG has been working hard to help businesses navigate the impact of COVID-19. At the heart of our efforts is a new suite of capabilities released as part of the COVID-19 Customer Care Program, developed to support our customers in managing the impact of the crisis while maintaining our commitment to deliver virtually 100% “Now Platform® uptime.We have also been developing solutions for Financial Services specifically, recognising that the pandemic has brought about unprecedented challenges for banks and insurers particularly.An example is the new Small Business Loan Management app that has been released by our partner INRY, based on LIKE.TG Customer Service Management (CSM) technology. It’s designed to help streamline the process of getting much-needed financial help to businesses impacted by the pandemic.Managing the crisis and its ‘long tail’The app was developed directly in response to the challenge many financial services providers in the US faced in dealing with the sheer volume of applications they received from the SBA Paycheck Protection Program.Banks faced a very immediate problem, so the app needed to be built quickly. It was — total development time was four weeks from the app’s conception to deployment with customers. The app is now readily available to help any bank or lender manage the huge influx of applications they are experiencing.The need now moves on from loan application to loan maintenance, and in some cases forgiveness. The app is also designed to help banks manage the inevitable long tail of enquiries, disputes and resolutions that can result from these government schemes.The long viewWe have to take a long-term view because the current situation is unprecedented. The much discussed ‘new normal’ that emerges in the coming months will be characterised by an increased focus on operational resilience, a need to ensure the safety of employees and the suitability of their environment, and an acceleration of tech-enabled solutions that address the needs of a semi-remote workforce.The complicating factor in this picture is that we are likely to be living with low interest rates for some time to come. This constrains the ability of financial institutions to invest in these solutions. Along with what may become the worst recession in living memory, reduced interest rates will drive financial services institutions to become more efficient, reduce silos and get smarter about how they deliver digital transformation. Investment budgets may be slashed, and the programs that do go ahead will need to deliver rapid time to value.Digital transformation has never been more important. The organisations that accelerate their digital strategies are likely to be the businesses that will come out of the recovery best, with an effective economic ‘bounce back’ being driven by those who can effectively harness powerful technology-enabled solutions.Unlocking the technology revolution in financial servicesFor financial services organisations, finding the balance between tech innovation versus regulatory and compliance obligations has, understandably, favoured the latter. However, as the current pandemic has shown, businesses need both flexibility and resilience to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, with the correct infrastructure underpinning the operational approach.This is where LIKE.TG has a huge role to play. As we continue to release solutions specifically designed for financial services, we can help organisations slash development times for new services – optimising investment by giving them the ability to build something or create a prototype – rather than spending months pondering business cases or detailed designs.Joining from my previous role at Lloyds Banking Group, where I led the use of the LIKE.TG Platform to deliver innovative ways to drive improvement and operational efficiency across the middle and back offices, I am hugely excited about our product roadmap and the compelling solutions that we will deliver in the coming months.With these new tools, LIKE.TG is helping financial organisations find the balance they need between the optimisation of investment and the speed and flexibility required by the ‘new normal’.As the demand for digital transformation continues to accelerate, so we are doing everything we can to be your strategic partner of choice – now and in the future.
LIKE.TG transforms the quarterly close
All companies must close their books at the end of every quarter and fiscal year. Historically that’s been a painful, time-consuming process. Help is on the way with LIKE.TG® Finance Close Automation, recently previewed during the Knowledge 2019 keynotes in Las Vegas.We also held breakout presentations on the conference show floor to discuss this new technology, which will be available in our next product release – New York – in the third quarter of 2019.So, what is it and what does it do?As Investopedia reminds us, an organisation’s close period is the time between the completion of a listed company's financial results and the announcement of these results to the public. Typically, the close period is the month preceding the release of a company's quarterly results, and thetwo-month period before the release of its annual results.Tedious time-consumingMost organisations use a series of electronic – but essentially still manual – processes, including emails and spreadsheets, to manage each of their financial close periods. Largely because of these disconnected platforms, applications and information streams, the month end financial close period is often one of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of modern work.Our product is LIKE.TG Finance Operations Management, and Finance Close Automation is the first application to come from it. Built specifically for the office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Finance Close Automation is designed to reduce risk, accelerate the whole process from start to finish, and increase team satisfaction.The solution is a natural extension of our digital workflows, built on the capabilities of the Now Platform. In an enterprise technology stack, it sits alongside a company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system as a complementary toolset.NowX concept developmentsOur Chief Product Officer (CPO) CJ Desai has explained the inspiration for this innovation.“The idea for Finance Close Automation was conceived by our former Corporate Controller, Amir Jafari, when he envisioned harnessing the power of the Now Platform to improve our manual finance close process,” said Desai. “Jafari led a team that began innovating the Finance Close Automation app; this team paved the way for NowX, our internal group focused on developing new concepts for products."Finance Close Automation is the inaugural product coming to market from NowX. In addition, Amir now leads our business unit responsible for Finance Operations Management.At LIKE.TG we do eat our own dogfood (I would prefer to say that we drink our own champagne). We used the Finance Close Automation app forour own quarter- and year-end close processes throughout its developmental phase. By using the app, we were able to validate it and augment its functionality.PayPal proof of conceptDigital payments leader PayPal is an early adopter of this technology and has already seen positive results.“The LIKE.TG Finance Close Automation app is an innovative new solution that brings together all aspects of the finance close process, enabling simplification, transparency, better controls and greater efficiency,” said Aaron Anderson, PayPal’s Chief Accounting Officer and Vice President. “With its entry into the finance arena, we believe LIKE.TG will make a meaningful impact on finance departments acrossindustries.”Deloitte, the lead launch partner for the product, also shares our passion for innovation and acceleration of operational efficiencies.“Working with LIKE.TG, we’re helping clients drive digital transformation across their organisations. We are particularly excited to help mutual clients like PayPal realise the potential of enterprise service transformation by extending workflow capabilities to the finance close process,” said April Slovensky, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP.I want to be a lion tamer!In Monty Python’s famous accountancy sketch, the accountant wants to become a lion tamer because he’s bored with office work. Today, accounting pros want to be able to fulfil their fiduciary responsibilities without struggling with cumbersome, poorly engineered processes such asconnecting emails to spreadsheets to financial reports and back to financial close reports.LIKE.TG Finance Close Automation may not enable finance professionals to spend more time taming lions. However it will allow finance departments to consolidate knowledge, policies and processes. In turn, that will free up resources that companies can use to build innovations that will help them compete in the marketplace.
Creating a truly connected financial organization
Financial services is no stranger to disruption. From fintech to blockchain and beyond, the industry has bobbed and weaved through a decade of constant change.The good news is that this experience makes the industry uniquely positioned to lead through the challenges of COVID-19. The bad news is that those financial organizations that can’t rise to the task can lose the trust of customers counting on them in their time of need.This is an important moment for the financial service industry, and those that can deliver consistently stellar customer experiences are more likely to rise to the top.The key to great customer experiencesIt’s been said that trust is the ultimate human currency. It can’t be bought and, once attained, can be lost in an instant. For financial institutions this is especially true, which is why the ability to deliver great customer experiences even while responding to the massive spike in customer requests is critical.In a 2018 North America Banking Operations Survey, Accenture found 74% of bank operations leaders say customer experience is their top strategic priority. Creating the customer experiences that lead to enduring trust and loyalty begins with building a truly connected financial institution.This goes far beyond creating a slick customer interface. Many financial institutions have focused their digital efforts on the engagement layer, but the key to delivering truly exceptional customer experiences is the ability to connect the front office to the rest of the organization.In 2018, JPMorgan Chase spent about 40% of time in global operations on servicing client accounts, including answering queries. As we develop systems to better direct those requests, we will spend less time searching for answers and more time responding to client needs.Fragmentation across systems and departments is the prime culprit for this damaging lack of agility and operational resilience. Because when the front, middle, and back offices can’t connect, customers can’t get the services and answers they need.Reaping the rewards of connectionWith today's growing cost pressures and low interest rate environment, margins are thinner than ever. Inefficiency is expensive—unwieldy processes and disconnected systems lead to lower productivity and soaring compliance and audit costs. The financial institutions that have already backed their engagement layer with connected operations are reaping the rewards.According to a recent McKinsey analysis, scaling up to the entire global banking industry might generate new value of $30 billion or more, assuming core business processes representing 15-20% of spending could be digitally streamlined to improve productivity by 8-10%.
Introducing new Financial Services OperationsThe next frontier for financial services will be to transform the customer experience with modernized operations from front to back. Which is why LIKE.TG has worked with more than 900 financial institutions that run their business on the Now Platform® to develop Financial Services Operations, our first industry product purpose-built for financial services, which will be generally available later this year.Financial Services Operations will enable financial institutions to increase employee productivity, significantly reduce operating and compliance costs and strengthen customer loyalty. Employees in operations will finally have access to one single system of action to aggregate insights across systems of record, manage processes end-to-end, and collaborate in real time across departments. Product highlights include:
Banking services framework, compliant with Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) standards, and an industry data model that will enable rapid plug-and-play deployments with fast time to value.
Card Operations application that will streamline common customer inquiries such as credit limit increases, card access management, and new credit card issuance.
Payment Operations application that will digitize payments inquiries and exceptions such as payments in error and beneficiary claiming non-receipt originating from customer and third-party institutions.
Financial Services Operations can be the key to building the lifelong trust and loyalty that helps lead to enduring success—and it can’t come a moment too soon.Use of Forward–Looking StatementsThis blog contains “forward–looking statements” regarding our expectations, future plans and performance. Forward–looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward–looking statements. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward–looking statements we make. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward–looking statements include: (i) delays and unexpected difficulties and expenses in making generally available the financial services product, (ii) uncertainty whether sales of such product will justify these investments and (iii) changes in the regulatory landscape relevant to enterprises operating in the financial services industry. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update these forward–looking statements
Banking on change: The future of customer service in financial services
Fintech companies around the world are transforming how financial services are delivered. Nowhere is that more apparent than in customer service, especially around complaints, disputes, and fraud operations, with new entrants redefining what good looks like.Australian firms such as Afterpay, the buy-now, pay-later giant acquired by Square, have succeeded by offering new products and experiences in line with consumer preferences for simple, intuitive, streamlined services. A wave of neobanks, digital investment platforms, and next-generation insurance firms are just the tip of the iceberg in a shake-up that spans all areas of finance.These new market entrants present a clear customer service challenge for incumbents, which face additional complexities from legacy systems and inefficient manual processes. The decline of bank branches and physical locations that previously helped shore up customer loyalty add to the conundrum. How can financial services providers maintain a connection with customers, many of whom still want to deal with people, not screens?Room for improvementThe truth is most consumers rarely see financial services as leaders in customer service. A LIKE.TG-sponsored study revealed 13% of Australians believe financial services offer the worst customer experience, coming in behind telecommunications and government.Many (35%) attribute poor service to overwhelmed customer service departments. Others (33%) recognize employees’ lack of decision-making power as a key issue. Customers (29%) also identify siloed teams and systems as a challenge that leads to poor service.Banks often spend millions of dollars a year processing complaints that typically take hours to complete. That’s a lot of time and money spent on resolving issues, particularly if customers still aren’t satisfied with the overall experience. There’s a clear opportunity to do better.
The path to efficiencyMany of the common complaints about finance providers center on slow speeds and inefficiency. Customers find the issue management process frustrating, cumbersome, and time-consuming. They want a fast, efficient process where they feel valued and heard—every time.Financial providers must up their game. They need to meet global rising customer expectations for frictionless experiences across every department and touch point. A number of Aussie and Kiwi financial institutions are already investing heavily in streamlining processes to improve customer service.For example, a New Zealand financial services provider used LIKE.TG to simplify key operational processes in areas such as loan operations and the way customer interactions moved through the organization. This drastically cut response times—from four days to one, in some cases. Customer satisfaction increased as a result.The way forwardThe most important factor for good customer service, according to 51% of consumers who responded to the LIKE.TG survey, is getting issues fixed promptly. Another important factor, highlighted as the top concern by 47% of customers, is being able to get through to someone quickly when a problem arises.At the same time, financial services providers must be mindful that demographic differences require tailored approaches. Younger generations are happy with self-service via digital channels while older generations want to speak to someone—ideally in their country.Best practice requires a mix of channels that cater to the different needs of different groups of consumers. It’s also important to use technology to categorize and filter issues to help ensure customers are directed to the most appropriate place or individual to resolve their problem fast.With the competition for clients now fiercer than ever, top-notch customer service is set to be worth its weight in gold.Download our ebook to discover five steps to digitally transform the client experience.
Knowledge 2019: Day 2 Recap
On Day 1 of Knowledge 2019, the main keynote presentations showed how digital workflows are shaping the future of work. On Day 2, keynote presenters dug deeper into that core idea to explain how the Now Platform can empower IT organizations and create better employee experiences—an increasingly important differentiator for companies worldwide.Revitalizing ITKicking off the IT Workflow keynote, LIKE.TG chief innovation officer Dave Wright presented a vision of simpler, more agile, mobile-driven work experiences for IT employees.Achieving that vision, Wright said, requires killing off the long-standing era of what he called “the IT ticket spin cycle,” where IT teams get bogged down in endless cycles of incident management using entangled, inefficient and often manual workflows.“The really insane thing is, we built these systems ourselves,” said Wright. “We do the same thing again and again, even though we know how to fix it.”Wright described the strategy companies can use break the cycle using ServiceNow. “We’re going to see a convergence where we use virtual agents, automation and virtualization to get to the point where there are no Level 1 tickets,” said Wright.To illustrate how companies are tapping the Now Platform to spark this convergence, Wright introduced Lyne Germain, VP of IT integration at Shell, to explain how the global oil company embraced digitization to streamline IT processes for a better work experience for its 81,000 global employees.
“Change can be really difficult in a company Shell’s size but we’re committed to IT digitalization and LIKE.TG is helping us achieve it,” said Germain.Pablo Stern, SVP IT Workflow Products for LIKE.TG, unpacked the key challenges that create a state of IT friction for too many organizations: manual processes; poor collaboration and lack of visibility due to siloed teams; and workflows that are not aligned with business goals.“Some customers tell us it takes 23 days on average to approve a deployment,” Stern said. “We can solve that. We can reduce friction to accelerate change. We can improve collaboration through shared insights. We can align work to business for a new kind of change management.”
New IT Business Management (ITBM) tools in the upcoming New York release of the Now Platform will smooth the path for those changes, explained Ben Yukich, Principal Solution Architect for ServiceNow.Within the Operator Workspace module—unveiled by C.J. Desai in yesterday’s keynote—a single dashboard will display and prioritize all alerts. Using Operator Workspace, IT pros will have access to Alert Intelligence, which leverages AI insights to identify root causes faster, and Visual Playbooks that recommend prescriptive action to prevent other systems from being compromised.Operator Workspace also features a No Code Security Playbook that allows cybersecurity processes to be automated without writing a single line of code.Reinventing employee experienceBreaking old cycles to improve workflows was also the main theme of the Employee Experience keynote, led by Blake McConnell, SVP Employee Workflow Products for ServiceNow.Employees have endured clunky and inefficient HR processes for years, McConnell said. It’s a problem made more pressing by the changing expectations of employees.“Gen Z, Millennials, Baby Boomers—today they all expect a consumer-level experience at work like never before,” McConnell said.To win and retain top talent, management must ensure a great employee experience, said McConnell. The biggest roadblock? “Management isn’t doing the work,” said McConnell said. “IT and HR are doing the work, but they’re not aligned.”To create that alignment, LIKE.TG’s Employee Service Center is already helping to bridge the gap between HR and IT to create smoother onboarding for new hires. Customers from financial giant HSBC and technology services company Asurion took the stage to explain how they executed on that strategy.New capabilities in the New York release promise to consumerize the employee experience even more, , McConnell added. He highlighted mobile onboarding and Virtual Agent integrations powered by natural language understanding.Sean McCann, CIO of Corporate Functions at HSBC, explained how LIKE.TG helped the global bank undertake a massive HR transformation for its 235,000 full-time employees.“We hadn’t customized our HR systems in 18 years,” McCann said. “It was a difficult place to start from. But after a two-year process and with assistance from LIKE.TG, we changed the way our people worked in 66 countries overnight.”The results have been striking: Today 88% of HRBC workers say they are highly satisfied or satisfied with their employee experience. A full 50% of HR processes are now self-service.Kelly Rosalia, Senior HR Program Manager at Asurion, and Brad Wirths, Asurion’s Senior Director of Service Management, tapped the Now Platform’s Employee Service Center to create an employee onboarding experience that is “remarkably human, delightfully simple and actually helpful.”Last year, Rosalia and Wirths attended Knowledge 2018 to learn about Employee Service Center. One year later, they returned to describe how the module had transformed their onboarding experience. “The experience is more human now,” Rosalia said. “It’s much easier and actually fun.”Employee Service Center allowed Asurion to automate manual processes and unify diverse systems across siloed departments using one simple dashboard. Analytics and employee feedback on the portal ensure that the company can continuously improve its HR services.“Once we turned on LIKE.TG, we could see areas we needed to improve—even areas where we didn’t know we needed improvement,” said Wirth.
Knowledge 2019: Day 1 afternoon highlights
Reimagining the customer experienceEvery CEO knows the bottom-line value of delivering great customer experiences. Every year, businesses spend billions of dollars on customer relationship management solutions. Total CRM spend is projected to reach $80 billion a year by 2025.Yet few companies truly deliver in the end, as Farrell Hough, LIKE.TG’s senior vice president of customer workflow products, explained in her afternoon keynote presentation at the Knowledge 2019 conference in Las Vegas.Hough’s presentation followed this morning’s opening keynote, in which CEO John Donahoe and Chief Product Officer C.J. Desai explained how LIKE.TG is bringing consumer experiences to the workplace.“CRM on its own is not enough,” said Hough. “What it does today is really more like call reaction management.”During her 70-minute presentation, Hough laid out a vision for how the LIKE.TG platform can help companies transform their customer service operations by digitizing and automating problematic underlying workflows. They can then use the data to create better, more unified customer experiences.
Instead of getting by with the status quo—what Hough described as “disconnected, reactive experiences where interactions are limited to phone calls with customer service agents”—companies can tap the latest features of the Now Platform to deliver 360-degree customer experience through a single integrated app.“Many customer service representatives today are on an island,” said Hough. “They’re not able to connect with other parts of their organizations. We know there’s a better way. We’ve already done this internally at LIKE.TG, across IT and employee services. This is what we need to bring to our customers. It’s what they need and what they deserve.”The Now Platform enables three key capabilities, said Hough. First, it creates end-to-end service that can handle all of a customer’s interactions and needs. It also works proactively, with dashboard tools that identify issues and recommend actions before customers are even aware that there’s a problem. Finally, it enables customer self-service, automating simple requests and handing off more complex tasks to human agents.Digitizing customer service workflows can yield significant payoffs. LIKE.TG customers have seen an average 20% increase in customer satisfaction and a 70% reduction in resolution times, with 65% of cases handled by self-service.Customer storiesHough introduced two LIKE.TG customers with very different use cases to explain how they made the leap to digitized customer service workflows.From the healthcare industry, Hough welcomed Erin Doney, VP of customer experience automation at UHG Optum. A part of UnitedHealth Group, Optum is a pharmacy benefit manager and care services group that operates across 150 countries.Doney explained how UHG Optum closed critical customer service gaps. “We decided to put the customer first in everything we do and we discovered we had gaps where patients interacted with agents or nurses,” she said. “They had to navigate multiple systems.”Optum convened agents and developers in an IT “test kitchen” where they designed, prototyped and tested new patient service solutions using ServiceNow. “It was human-centered design,” said Doney. “The people who would wind up using the tools helped design them.”Optum service agents now use a single dashboard built on new digital workflows that unify all aspects of the service experience. “Interaction” recommendations help agents focus on empathetic communication. Benefits information is integrated and visible alongside other data. Agents can even refill prescriptions using the same app with a simple handoff to a different team member.Simplifying service at VodaphoneVodafone, a UK-based telecom company with 313 million customers worldwide, teamed up with LIKE.TG to reimagine its customer service with one objective: “radical simplification,” said Chris Holmes, Vodafone’s head of digital experiences.That’s small task when you have B2B clients that demand mission-critical services. “In telco, networks and services are proliferating,” Holmes said. “We had to make sure we were streamlining them. Our customers expect highly personalized services, which we provide through digitization and automation.”Vodafone leveraged the Now Platform to create a single dashboard app for service agents that gives them a 360 view of the customer, and allows them to be more proactive, Holmes explained. Vodaphone’s customer satisfaction scores have jumped 25% since the implemented ServiceNow.Holmes’s biggest takeaway? It’s important to start by identifying which workflows need automation, and which don’t. “The biggest lesson we learned from customization and simplification is not to automate processes that don’t serve us.”
