FERVENT FANS GIVE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK TO VERINT FOR TURNKEY INTELLIGENCE
Turnkey Intelligence is an independent third-party research firm recognized, respected and trusted by the top entities in sports and entertainment.
The company determined it had outgrown its “homegrown” survey tool and was searching for a more scalable, flexible and robust solution to meet the needs of its customer research group.
After doing its homework, the company chose Verint Enterprise Feedback Management as the critical foundation to solicit and capture feedback from more than one million sports and entertainment fans annually. This feedback is used to drive customer experience improvements at more than 220 professional and collegiate properties, leagues, brands and events. The extensive survey design functionality enables Turnkey to improve convenience and relevance for its survey respondents—helping to increase participation.
Click here to read the case study to see how Turnkey Intelligence and Verint help keep fans coming back for their favorite sports and entertainment choices.
What you need to do to be successful as a virtual accountant
The digital accountancy profession has evolved at a remarkable pace over the past few years. This evolution has been driven by the accelerated adoption of the cloud, which allows accountants to work more flexibly, remotely and virtually. As as virtual accountant, you are transforming the way that services are offered, creating some great opportunities for businesses and accountancy firms.
Alongside this fast-paced digital innovation, however, are some key issues that you need to consider, particularly around best practices. What are the best practices for a virtual accountancy service and what are the really important things that you need to be doing?
Communicate well and use the right accounting solutions
When accountants work on-site, they’re part of the team and communication is pretty straightforward. Working virtually, as a virtual adviser or CFO, requires communication to be more digital, making greater use of tools and apps such as instant messaging, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and the like.
Good communication is crucial and having the right accounting software, as well as the right solutions to allow you to work effectively remotely, really underpins the success of a virtual accountancy service.
When an accountant is physically present, clients can see them doing work, which creates value that the client can understand. In a virtual setting when the accountant is not there, the value provided can be less evident to the client.
Instead of time served, the focus moves to achieving the end result without putting in all that time – especially time spent face-to-face. This is how you as a virtual accountant can make sure your clients are receiving value.
Good communication and showing how you can adding value will help you be successful as a virtual accountant
Show how you can have a better overview of the accounts
Many businesses will typically have an accountant on the team to do the day-to-day tasks, the month-end, prepare the year-end, tax filing and so on. Having you on-board as a virtual accountant creates an opportunity that wasn’t there before.
The in-house person provides a vital service for the business but they may not see something happening that could trigger an audit or impact cash flow in a year because they are too close to it.
By contracting a virtual CFO or accountant, the client business gets a new higher value service that can oversee the finance function and provide an element of mentoring to the in-house accountant.
This can help the staff accountant move beyond day-to-day detail and start thinking and working more strategically on a longer-term outlook – resulting in a hugely positive impact on the business.
For businesses, they can have an accountant with great experience, living in a smaller town, who can serve their needs for half the price of a typical CFO or accountant. For firms, virtual accountancy enables them to expand their own talent pool by looking at a much broader geography and casting their net much wider.
Highlight your value for money as a virtual accountant
With your virtual accountant proposition, there is scope for flexibility in terms of pricing and service bundles. Given the choice between the uncertainty of a monthly fee that varies with their fluctuating service requirements (that they can’t budget for) and a fixed-price package combining all the services they need, including a virtual accountant, business owners are more comfortable with the latter.
However, communication of your added value has to be spot on. Otherwise, what prevents a client from deciding to use a practice just down the street instead of your services? If clients don’t understand what they’re getting for what they’re paying, your virtual firm is going to run into trouble.
Demand for virtual accountancy services is growing, driven by clients who understand the role that a virtual CFO or accountant could play, without having to pay a full-time salary.
However, that old adage “out of sight, out of mind” can still ring true. So make sure your communication works, that you are continuing to provide value and that your clients can clearly see the business benefits of the virtual services you are providing.
PREPLANNING FOR THE HOLIDAYS AT YOUR CONTACT CENTER WILL KEEP YOU ON THE NICE LIST
During the holidays, contact center managers face unique scheduling challenges. Employees may want additional flexibility with their schedules, and they may even want to rearrange their shifts to spend extra time with family and friends.
Enghouse Interactive Workforce Management (WFM) was designed with these scheduling challenges in mind and can simplify the process of holiday scheduling.
Communication is Key During the Holidays
When managing your employees during the holiday season, it’s important to communicate your expectations clearly. Prior to the holiday season madness, managers are able to analyze the historical call traffic data to give a clear idea of how many hours and employees will be needed when forecasting and scheduling work assignments during the holidays.
Additionally, supervisors are able to quickly and efficiently view agent schedules using the graphical user interface. Using a built-in communication framework, supervisors can easily communicate expectations to all employees.
Communicating Policy is Integral
At the beginning of the holiday season, being sure to clearly communicate company policy to all agents is important. Giving them an opportunity to ask questions and clear up any confusion they may have about company policies will prevent them from misunderstandings on issues such as unplanned absences and shift trading.
Offer Perks to Boost Morale
Many contact centers require some employees to work overtime during the holiday season. Some employees are even expected to pick up additional shifts to cover for people who call in sick. In order to boost employee morale and prevent burnout, it’s always a good idea to consider offering extra perks. If certain employees are ambitious enough to volunteer for overtime, reward them over and above their standard paycheck.
Extra breaks, bonuses, and even promotions are a great way to show that you appreciate your employees going the extra mile. WFM will allow you to easily schedule extra breaks for your employees as a reward.
Be Fair to All Employees and Don’t Play Favorites
Although it can be challenging to schedule time off for everyone during the holidays, no employee wants to feel like their manager is playing favorites (or putting them on the naughty list.) In order to be fair to all employees, time off should be given on a first-come-first-serve basis. Employees with seniority shouldn’t be given preference over newer employees.
Set Reasonable Deadlines for All Employees
Aiming to set reasonable deadlines for call length during the holiday season is another way to smooth over holiday shifts. WFM allows you to set realistic service level expectations for your employees based on previous year’s call data. Supervisors are able to assign each person with a reasonable workload, and shorten wait time in the queue for your customers.
Allow Employees to Trade Shifts
Trading shifts allows employees to take holiday scheduling into their own hands. It boosts employee satisfaction because it allows them to have more control. When employees want to trade shifts, WFM allows users to quickly visualize and change schedules without a hassle.
Quite simply, WFM helps simplify holiday scheduling. It provides a greater sense of control, and it will even create a greater sense of satisfaction for your agents!
To contact Enghouse Interactive or learn more about WFM click HERE
BETTER THAN THE OSCARS! THE VERINT 2018 ENGAGE GLOBAL CUSTOMER AWARDS
Have you or someone within your organization used software from Verint to optimize customer engagement? Has this person helped increase customer satisfaction, build customer loyalty, drive revenue, improve operational efficiencies, and/or heighten employee morale?
If so, then be sure to enter for the 2018 Engage Global Customer Awards!
The Engage Global Customer Awards recognize individuals and their respective companies for outstanding accomplishments over the past year in the following categories:
Simplifying customer engagement: Leveraging Verint solutions to be agile and responsive to the increasingly demanding expectations of your customers.
Optimizing the workforce and customers: Transforming the employee experience and offering staff the flexibility, transparency, motivation, mobility and empowerment they crave. Driving positive outcomes for your customers by delivering personalized, consistent service, great self-service options, proactive engagement, and easy ways to provide feedback.
Sharing real-time intelligence: Moving beyond measuring, monitoring and forecasting to understanding customer intent, predicting behavior, and driving automation across your enterprise.
Finalists will be selected for each category and asked to present additional information to a panel of judges via written form. One winner and one highly commendable recipient will be selected for each category. Winners will be notified in May and will be recognized at the Engage 2018 global customer conference.
In addition, they will have the opportunity to take part in a professionally developed video highlighting their outstanding accomplishments.
Sound good? It’s easy to enter the Engage Global Customer Awards—just click below to complete and submit a short nomination form. Nominations are being accepted through March 30, 2018.
Interested in speaking at Engage? It’s a great opportunity to share your experiences with Verint solutions with your peers from across industries, around the world. If so, please visit our Call for Speakers page today.
Register today—and we’ll see you in Dallas the week of May 14!
JOIN US: ADMINISTRATION FOUNDATION COURSE WITH DANE SMITH FEB. 12-15
The four-day Administration Foundation course is integral to administrating the Communications Center (CC) system. The course is designed to give you an in-depth knowledge of more advanced CC administration. Hands-on exercises will help you learn how to optimize your contact center for faster call handling and improved customer satisfaction.
Here are the details:
Course: 4-day Intermediate CC Administration Course
Date: February 12th – 15th
Location: Dallas, TX
A few of the things we will cover during this four day course include:
How CC delivers calls (call routing) • Using skills-based routing • How agents use TouchPoint • Understanding supervisor functionality • Companies vs. departments • Creating and editing queues • Working with agent login classes • Delivery Patterns • Configuring alerts, service level, modifiers and wrap up templates • Introduction to Snapshot • Out Dial and Auto Dial Queuing • Using auto attendants to distribute calls • Using progress announcements, position in queue, and ETA in queues • One touch keys • Configuring and optimizing callback • Auto reply announcement • Multilingual announcements and call flows Using and Configuring Survey • Deep dive into reports • Reducing abandons and hold times based on reports • Creating personal reports • Scheduling reports • Reporting on auto attendants • Using Reports to troubleshoot • Email • Web Chat • SMS • Multimedia templates Troubleshooting • Troubleshooting tips • Recognize and fix common issues Security • Security best practices • Security classes vs. user security • Functions vs. objects Utilizing Queries in the Call Flow • Customer Queries • Query Database
How accounting software saved my weekends and family time.
It’s no secret that skills shortages have become a pretty serious threat to British business and the economy.
This issue has come into even sharper focus in the wake of the Brexit vote, with many employers concerned that tighter immigration controls could make it harder to bring in talented workers from EU countries.
The April 2017 Report on Jobs from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and Markit revealed that candidate availability in the UK had fallen to a 16-month low. Recruiters warned of shortages of suitable applicants for more than 60 roles across various sectors.
According to a recent report from law firm Eversheds Sutherland and market research company Winmark, the ‘war for talent’ and skills shortages are currently the most pressing concerns for HR leaders.
It’s clear that this is a considerable challenge and employers need to find a way to overcome it. So what are the specific actions and measures your organisation can put in place to maximise its chances of acquiring the skills it needs?
Find out what people really want
In order to make your organisation attractive to the most talented workers, you have to know what your target candidates want and ensure you can give it to them.
Pay and benefits will always be important, of course. In another recent survey by the REC, 42 per cent of employers that had struggled to recruit candidates responded by increasing the salary on offer. However, Kevin Green, chief executive of the recruitment industry body, stressed that “throwing money at the problem isn’t a long-term solution”.
In many cases, applicants will be interested in much more than financial incentives. A study by Office Genie found that the proportion of employees who view bonuses as the most powerful motivation is the same as those who are incentivised by flexible hours (33 per cent). Around a fifth of respondents said a shorter working week (22 per cent) and more praise (18 per cent) would encourage them to work harder.
Essentially, it comes down to understanding the sort of people you want to bring in to your organisation and what drives them. Showing a willingness to be flexible and tailoring benefits and incentives to individuals could make your business much more attractive to talented jobseekers.
Develop from within
Strengthening the skills base within your organisation isn’t always about recruitment. It’s perfectly possible that the raw talent and potential your company needs to grow is already present in the workforce, but just needs some support and nurturing.
If your attempts to find the skills you need in the candidate market aren’t bearing fruit, consider shifting your focus to your existing workforce. Is it possible that focused training and skills development could equip the employees you already have with the additional capabilities the business needs?
One of the big benefits of training up existing staff is that you already know them and they already know you. The risks and financial commitments of taking on a brand new employee are significantly reduced.
In April 2017, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) called on the government to prioritise additional skills funding for the workplace, to avoid the UK “sleepwalking into a low-value, low-skills economy”. It warned that, currently, UK employers are conducting less training and investing less in skills than other major EU economies.
Don’t underestimate older workers
It’s easy to fall into the trap of overlooking a solution to your skills quandary that has been right under your nose all along. One example of this is underestimating the potential of the more senior members of your workforce.
The first assumption might be that older workers can’t match the skills of younger professionals in areas like technology, but becoming entrenched in this sort of thinking could be hugely detrimental to your organisation, particularly in the long term. It has been estimated that, by 2050, over-50s will be the largest participating age group in the workforce.
People who have spent several decades in employment could offer the kinds of soft skills and life experience that are proving increasingly tricky to find in younger generations. It’s difficult to teach these attributes, but it’s perfectly possible to equip someone of any age – particularly today’s increasingly tech-savvy older generation – with enhanced skills in areas like coding.
Gareth Jones, chief information officer and head of labs at people consultancy the Chemistry Group, made this point in a recent article for Tech City News. He wrote: “Tech needs to firstly highlight ageism as the ugly, archaic phenomenon it is, and then secondly move forward to educate tech firms as to the long-term positives that profile-based hiring can bring.”
Collaborate with educational institutions
When it comes to finding a long-term solution to Britain’s skills shortages, one of the most valuable things employers can do is form productive, collaborative partnerships with educational institutions. If the country is to succeed in developing the sustainable pipeline of talent for long-term economic growth, that has to start in schools and universities.
Some employers are already doing their bit to drive skills development on a local level. In an article published in the Guardian in February 2016, Mike Boxall, higher education expert at PA Consulting Group, highlighted the example of the Birmingham Skills Engine.
This alliance of universities, colleges, employers and public bodies from across the Midlands was formed to strengthen the capabilities of the local workforce. On a practical level, the initiative involves sharing resources and new approaches to learning, offering focused career guidance to students and using an online skills exchange to match talented individuals to local opportunities.
Offering some predictions for the future, Mr Boxall said sustainable careers will require “flexible, transferable talents such as complex problem-solving and cross-cultural team working”. He added: “We need to move away from teaching functional skills that are outdated almost as soon as they are learned and focus on real-world learning experiences.”
Addressing skills shortages is one of the biggest tests facing UK businesses, government and educational institutions in the 21st century, but it is a challenge that can be overcome.
Lizzie Crowley, skills adviser at the CIPD, said Britain must “take the high road as a nation”, with “government, employers, education and business support groups working in partnership to boost investment in skills and create more high-value, high-productivity workplaces”.
VERINT ACCELERATES AUTOMATION INNOVATION WITH NEXT IT ACQUISITION
In a blog post before the holidays, I discussed eight areas to consider as part of your automation and AI strategy. I also suggested a four-part automation innovation strategy framework to consider as part of your 2018 automation strategy planning.
How fast are organizations adopting AI in your industry—and how does your organization compare?
For a quick benchmark on the adoption and investment in AI technology by industry segment, check out Exhibit 1 in the recent McKinsey and Company article What AI Can and Can’t Do (Yet) for Your Business. The chart shows that financial services, high tech and communications companies lead in the use of AI application as well as on the likelihood to spend on AI technology. Laggards include construction, education and consumer/packaged goods companies.
There is a lot of hype about AI these days—and thus an understandable amount of trepidation and concern. But there is also a lot of opportunity for those who leverage AI in the right way for their organization and its business needs.
Ongoing innovation in artificial intelligence technologies—such as machine learning, robotics and natural language processing—positions companies for accelerated growth by helping them modernize their customer engagement operations through greater automation.
Conversational AI-powered intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) are generating a large amount of interest. Verint announced the acquisition of Next IT before the holidays as part of ongoing plans to expand its customer engagement automation capabilities. Next IT is a provider of conversational artificial intelligence-powered intelligent virtual assistants. Check out TheNew York Times Business Day Markets page for more information on the acquisition.
Here are a couple of automation innovation examples powered by Next IT:
At Alaska Airlines, the "Ask Jenn" intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) provides customers and Alaska Airlines employees an efficient and modern self-service experience. The implementation of Jenn not only helped increase customer engagement—it also reduced contact center call volume.
The airline also eliminated the need for the online “live chat” support channel, because Jenn was able to handle those customer engagement areas. Jenn has become the most popular spot on the "Contact Us" area of the company’s Web site and continues to help drive customer engagement excellence.
Charter Communications determined that 38% of incoming chat requests were for user name retrieval and password resets. Charter has been able to better serve customers by helping them use self-service for password reset and other routine tasks.
The adoption of an IVA decreased the amount of time it takes customers to reset their passwords by nearly 50%, and the organization experienced nearly 5x ROI within the first six months of implementation.
Your customer engagement automation strategy can help you drive a sustainable competitive advantage in 2018 and beyond. How will you take advantage of all the opportunities that automation and AI offer? Your competitors are probably asking themselves the same question.
8 simple ways to manage your cash flow as a franchisee
A key part of running a franchise is to do with balancing the books. No matter whether you operate a single franchise outlet or multiple stores, manage your cash flow as a franchisee well if you want to succeed. It doesn’t matter what size your business is, the same rule applies to all – manage your cash flow well if you want your franchise to thrive.
One of the advantages of investing in a franchise operation is that detailed profit and loss accounts will be available from your franchisor, based on similar-sized franchises that are already trading. These accounts will be a useful indicator for you to successfully manage your cash flow.
If you want your franchised business to run smoothly, increase efficiency and maximise profits, follow these simple cash flow tips.
1. Know your break-even point
It sounds obvious but do you know what your franchise’s break-even point is? If you do, you are on the right path to efficient cash flow management. If you don’t, it’s worth finding this out as it will form the basis of your business’s financial goals.
If your franchise is seasonal, for example, the demands on cash flow may vary at certain times of the year, so it’s important to know what your break-even point is. Make sure you have this figure in mind as it will come in handy when you’re making key financial business decisions.
2. Reduce debt on your balance sheet
Reducing debt will undoubtedly have a positive effect on any franchisee’s business. Businesses want to keep hold of their cash reserves and will choose to take full advantage of any credit terms offered.
To reduce debt on your balance sheet, look at your terms. Are you offering the same lines of credit as your competitors? Could you look at an earlier payment date for your sales invoicing without risking customer retention? Explore these and put the right measures in place to succeed.
Take a look at your admin processes and see what can be improved
3. Review your admin processes
Do you know how efficient your franchise’s admin processes are? A lot of franchised operations have clear admin processes in place, as detailed in their franchise operations manual. It’s worth following them for tried-and-tested results if you’re not doing so already.
However, by doing a review, you might identify processes that can improves how your cash flow is working – and that’s something beneficial that you could speak to your franchisor about.
One area that can have a positive impact on your franchise’s cash flow is credit control. Perhaps it’s worth reviewing your current procedures to see if you can achieve faster payments from your customers. If you need further help with this, work in conjunction with your franchisor.
4. Recruit the right employees
Effective staff recruitment processes will have a positive outcome on your franchise’s cash flow. Recruiting new employees can be an expensive process, especially if the wrong people are taken on. Meanwhile, having a high turnover of staff could have a knock-on effect on areas such as training, where additional funds need to be spent to get new staff up to speed with your processes.
To combat these issues, put the work in to recruit the right employees the first time round, who have the skills required to do the job (and will only need training to enhance their roles). Create a working environment that engages and enthuses your staff, and encourages them to stay with you for the long haul.
And as far as your salary bill goes, keep up with the going rates of pay in your franchise territory. It might be one of your franchise’s highest outgoings, so it’s worth keeping a close eye on this. Any successful business needs great staff, so weigh up the costs against productivity to avoid putting a strain on cash flow.
5. Take advantage of supplier credit lines
Keep hold of your business’s funds and maximise your cash flow by taking full advantage of credit lines offered by your suppliers. This is a good way of helping to avoid temporary cash flow hitches.
Invest in your relationships with your suppliers and pay them on time. If a temporary cash flow issue occurs and you’re unable to cover an invoice, contact them immediately. Speak to them about your situation and see if they can extend your credit.
If they are willing to do so and you make a new arrangement, stick to it. An important element of business is trust – it takes time to build but can be broken in an instant. Remember, communication is key.
A contingency fund can make a big difference to your business if an unexpected event occurs
6. Have a contingency fund in place
Budgeting for the unexpected is important. With the best will in the world, sometimes a hitch can occur out of the blue that could make a dent in your firm’s finances. These unexpected expenses can hit a business hard, therefore it’s essential to have a contingency fund in place.
7. Avoid splashing the cash if you don’t need to
Rein in your business spending by only purchasing the items that are essential to your firm. It can be tempting to spend lots of money on your business when you’re making a healthy profit but you never know if leaner times are just around the corner, so spend wisely.
8. Use technology to manage your admin
Take advantage of technology that will help you to manage your franchise’s finances and admin, and keep your business in great shape. Invest in cloud accounting software, as it will help you to stay on track with your finances and show you how your franchise is performing instantly.
Not only will it save you time and money, it’s an ideal option if you’re out of the office and need to access invoices and quotes – you can do so on a device such as mobile phone or tablet computer.
You can also use your accounting software to take the headache out of lengthy admin processes by ensuring you are compliant with tax rules and regulations.
Having easy access to all of this information will enable you to get on with running your franchise without being bogged down with endless paperwork – and missed deadlines.
By managing your franchise’s cash flow effectively, you’ll be able to save time, reduce costs and identify potential opportunities to develop your business. Get your cash flow working for your franchise and you’ll be one more step on the way to maximising your investment.
JOIN US: ADMINISTRATION FOUNDATION COURSE WITH DANE SMITH FEB. 12-15
The four-day Administration Foundation course is integral to administrating the Communications Center (CC) system. The course is designed to give you an in-depth knowledge of more advanced CC administration. Hands-on exercises will help you learn how to optimize your contact center for faster call handling and improved customer satisfaction.
Here are the details:
Course: 4-day Intermediate CC Administration Course
Date: February 12th – 15th
Location: Dallas, TX
A few of the things we will cover during this four day course include:
How CC delivers calls (call routing) • Using skills-based routing • How agents use TouchPoint • Understanding supervisor functionality • Companies vs. departments • Creating and editing queues • Working with agent login classes • Delivery Patterns • Configuring alerts, service level, modifiers and wrap up templates • Introduction to Snapshot • Out Dial and Auto Dial Queuing • Using auto attendants to distribute calls • Using progress announcements, position in queue, and ETA in queues • One touch keys • Configuring and optimizing callback • Auto reply announcement • Multilingual announcements and call flows Using and Configuring Survey • Deep dive into reports • Reducing abandons and hold times based on reports • Creating personal reports • Scheduling reports • Reporting on auto attendants • Using Reports to troubleshoot • Email • Web Chat • SMS • Multimedia templates Troubleshooting • Troubleshooting tips • Recognize and fix common issues Security • Security best practices • Security classes vs. user security • Functions vs. objects Utilizing Queries in the Call Flow • Customer Queries • Query Database
People Science: How to know your employees as well as you know your customers
Every day, 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data is created. That’s so much data that it would fill 10 million Blu-ray discs – which, stacked up on top of each other, would reach the height of not just one but four Eiffel Towers.
And that’s growing every day. In fact, 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years. The age of big data is well and truly here.
As a result, companies have a wealth of information about their customers at their fingertips – from their buying habits, to their style preferences and lifestyle choices. Companies know what type of products different consumers prefer, how they like to engage with their brand and when they may be most likely to buy from them.
And, as a result, their buying experience is constantly optimised, improved and tailored to each consumer.
But what if you had the same level of insight and visibility concerning your employees? What if you knew where every high-potential employee could add most value? What about how your staff prefer to work? Or who is likely to become a flight risk?
Imagine the impact on your company’s performance if you tapped into this and knew your employees as well as your customers.
You could revolutionise the way you work and engage with your people, designing great workforce experiences that enable your employees to do their best work – ultimately improving performance and productivity. All due to increased workforce visibility achieved through better data reporting, analytics and actionable insights.
The answer lies in using People Science in your organisation.
What is People Science?
People Science means applying data-driven approaches to improve workforce visibility – and how you both manage and engage your workforce. It’s about understanding people and their behaviour in your company, and generating more actionable insights to help you make better business decisions about your workforce.
People Science is more than just people analytics. In practice, it means not just mining data and reporting it – but analysing it and gaining actionable insights to test hypotheses and identify solutions.
Analysing data about your people can lead to them having a better experience in the workplace
How to use People Science in your company
With People Science, you can use data to develop stronger and predictive insights about your people and their motivations. Those insights can be applied to make more informed evidence-based decisions. The data can then be used for predictive purposes, so you can start to understand and make decisions based on people’s behaviour and motivations.
Currently, sales, marketing and operations teams are using data to plan and measure objectives and gain actionable insight and visibility, meaning they can demonstrate the value of their contributions to the business and its bottom line.
So too should HR and people teams as the department responsible for any organisation’s biggest asset: its people. That’s what People Science is all about.
Five steps you can take on your People Science journey
Apart from a simple headcount report, fewer than 50% of organisations today can deliver same-day metrics such as top and bottom performers, skills gaps, and attrition levels.
In fact, only 34% of companies are currently using data and analytics for making people decisions, according to our recent research report. In this world where some businesses currently operate on spreadsheets, or struggle to aggregate data from multiple sources, the ambition to use People Science to boost visibility and drive business performance will involve several steps.
People data
The journey starts – and you should start – with having accurate and accessible people data. That means your business should hold all its data in one place and one system – a single source of truth.
People reporting
Establishing a single source of truth enables the next step, which is to begin people reporting. This is the most common requirement for your HR and people teams, which may already create charts and dashboards to visualise the data and create those all-important report packs for the board meeting.
This enables your HR and people leaders to access simple information such as headcount reports in seconds instead of days.
People analysis
From there, the next step is people analysis, where you can analyse the data and identify trends. You should dig into the detail to explore the why behind the what. What are the consistent patterns? Why are they occurring? And what can be done about them? For example, identifying those most likely to be a flight risk, or those least engaged.
People insights
Next is establishing people insights; here, you should test hypotheses and predictions based on the analysis already done. If your HR and people teams have made assumptions based on the analysis they hold, then here is where they test those to ascertain if they are correct and, as a result, identify solutions.
This might mean identifying why employees might be a flight risk and understanding the different possible factors or explanations behind this.
People Science
Finally, use these solutions to make smarter business decisions and design better ways of working is the ultimate end goal. In the example of identifying those most likely to leave it, would mean knowing not only why but what can be done to fix this and implementing a solution. Organisations that do this use People Science.
People Science can play an important role when it comes to recruitment
Putting People Science into action
The benefits of using People Science in your organisation are vast. Caoimhe Keogan, VP of people at SoundCloud, uses data to find the right people to hire. “We spend a lot of the time analysing the data we have available in a hunt for nuggets of insight that could ultimately prove to be valuable in our hiring processes,” she says.
Soo J Hong, chief human resources officer at WeWork, also says it isn’t just about accessing data and then reporting it. It’s a matter of being analytical and deriving useful insight. “For every interview we do, we have a very simple scorecard: thumbs up or thumbs down,” she says.
“We look at this data retrospectively against the hires we make, comparing it with the interviewing panel that were involved with hiring that person. We then look at how the hire is doing after 90 days or even six months.
“This way we can start to see who the best culture testers are in our company from an interview panel standpoint. It is amazing to see in the data who is most effective at candidate assessment.”
Why you should use People Science – and why now
With People Science, you can boost workforce visibility and design better insight-driven workforce experiences for your people to ensure you attract and retain the best.
Low unemployment and the war for talent have given people choice, meaning you need to work harder to recruit high-performing talent. This is magnified by a culture of employee mobility, especially among millennials, meaning retention is more vital than ever. And every employee has different needs and priorities.
Isn’t it about time you start understanding these different motivations? Isn’t it about time you start knowing your employees as well as you know our customers? Isn’t it about time you gain just as much insight from your workforce as you do from our other business functions?
Isn’t it about time you began using People Science in your organisation?
WHY AUTOMATED QM IS THE NEXT STEP IN IMPROVED CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Ovum believes the major benefit of Automated Quality Management is the freeing up of valuable supervisory time from scoring to be used for coaching and other agent support efforts.
In today’s customer care environments, a strong quality management (QM) system is crucial to moving customer engagement interactions to the next level of performance excellence. For many years, companies have used QM software and techniques to optimize their customer service operations. These tools have been essential to agents and supervisors in performing their daily operational duties as they strive to optimize the customer experience and ensure agents perform at high levels and deliver a high level of competitive differentiation.
A core necessity of strong QM is the recording of agent/customer interactions to allow supervisors to review agent performance across a broad range of situations and businesses to measure, train, and correct agent performance as required over time. In most organizations, recorded conversations are periodically sampled and reviewed by the supervisor or member of a dedicated quality team in time for monthly, quarterly or annual agent evaluations.
Biases are inadvertently introduced into this process because the sampling could be made unfair by the selection and evaluation of calls that may have been recorded at a less than desirable time, such as when an agent was having a bad day or feeling ill. In addition, agents’ perceptions that the QM process is biased could undermine the effectiveness of the observations, their response to the scoring of call evaluations, and the subsequent review with their supervisor or quality coach.
Modern technology allows for an Automated Quality Management (AQM) process that provides more fairness for agents and is more useful to supervisors. If every call is recorded and used to automatically feed pertinent information to supervisors, the bias can be eliminated, giving the supervisor access to all of an agent’s calls, as well as the ability to measure all agents immediately, and do their evaluations “on a level playing field.” Automating the review process and the automated reporting of quality scores, or the highlighting of important KPIs that are missed, can free supervisors from these very repetitive tasks and allow them to devote more time to important face-to-face agent coaching.
Since agents would have the ability to self-monitor based on automatic feedback and system transparency, they can implement improvement processes themselves in real time. However, even with automated notification by which agents can self-monitor and take corrective action based on feedback, many are unlikely to do so unless transparency into performance gaps is accompanied by additional coaching or supervisory assistance. In fact, Ovum believes the major benefit of AQM is the freeing up of valuable supervisory time from scoring to be used for coaching and other agent support and improvement efforts.
In practice, an effective AQM system has the ability to issue alerts to the agent if certain performance thresholds are missed, which can prompt the automatic scheduling of coaching or the pushing of e-learning sessions to drive improvements. When automation of the QM process is handled properly, management can eliminate the issue of depersonalization of the agent/supervisor relationship, which can become an issue with some QM systems.
The bottom line is that AQM provides the ideal method of fairly and consistently measuring an agent’s performance, enabling organizations to quickly implement changes in methodology, train agents when needed, and optimize customer interactions, ultimately leading to improved satisfaction and greater employee engagement.
Top enterprise tech tools you need to win as a modern CFO
What’s the outlook for the future of chief financial officers? As a CFO, do you believe you have the capabilities to manoeuvre your enterprise for the challenges to come?
Today, you are under more pressure than ever to provide a genuine and tangible impact to your business. You have to provide the essential context needed for good strategic organisational decisions and collaborate with the wider organisation. And while you’re doing that, you need to keep departments in line, making sure costs are constrained while opportunities are progressed. Understanding how to use enterprise tech tools is vital to achieving this.
According to research from Ernst and Young, 47% of global CFOs say their current finance function doesn’t have the right mix of capabilities to meet the demands of future strategic priorities. Meanwhile, the average CFO receives information too late to make decisions 24% of the time, according to research from the Aberdeen Group.
Finance has always been a reporting function but senior finance executives understand that today it needs to be a data-driven reporting centre, driving business initiative and strategy.
A survey by Aberdeen in 2016 called Excellence in Financial Management identified top pressures experienced by people working in financial organisations. The leading one was the corporate mandate to improve accounting and financial data quality.
Nick Castellina, research director for Aberdeen’s Business Planning and Execution practice, says: “The finance department is not only a strategic source of decision-making across organisations of all types but also a potential source of efficiencies that add to the bottom line.
“By being better able to monitor and measure more advanced performance metrics, make predictions and act quickly, CFOs can cement themselves as the key player in a business’ success.”
Big data and predictive analytics
Using analytics doesn’t mean using data for data’s sake – it means using information from all parts of the business to be a true business partner to a CEO. In accountancy, big data and analytics are particularly useful around risk management, fraud detection and commercial analysis – spotting patterns others would most likely miss.
To do what your business demands, you need to look at enterprise tech solutions that offer fast and easy access to real-time financial data, while providing capabilities that allow senior finance staff to use it to make decisions. Research by Aberdeen reveals best-in-class companies are more likely to have implemented predictive analytics.
Top performers rely on analytics. Source: Aberdeen Group
Organisations with predictive analytics are also 3.3 times more likely to have real-time updates to financial metrics.
Nick says: “Not only can these organisations use this information to help ensure compliance but it will also enable CFOs to scrutinise potential courses of both financial and operational action.
“Being able to monitor, measure and model more financial and operational criteria will enable automated alerts that can make decision-making significantly easier and more effective. And using capabilities such as scenario analysis will take their decision-making to the next level.”
Predictive analytics can particularly benefit you and your finance department when it comes to cash management. Insight into cash balances – and the analysis of how to use that cash – is key to unlocking working capital. It will also support you in cash forecasting and improve your ability to invest working cash effectively.
Aberdeen says organisations using analytics are 4.3 times as likely to be able to optimise and automate hedging strategies, as well as 87% more likely to have the ability to invest end-of-day surplus cash.
Better working capital management. Source: Aberdeen Group
Piers Moore-Ede, head of digital at Company Debt, says you should augment your traditional role with a knowledge of data analytics and work more closely with CIOs in general. He says: “The biggest challenge for CFOs doing this is managing the increasingly vast amounts of data and gleaning what’s important from it.
“Whatever industry you’re in, you will have to learn to see yourself as a technology company first and foremost. Those CFOs who are at the forefront of this transformation have a grasp of both data analytics and finance, meaning they are in a unique position to grasp and define corporate strategy.”
Adrian O’Connor, founding partner at Global Accounting Network, says: “The clients that we work with expect nothing less than a CFO who has a firm understanding of how big data can be harnessed to support wider organisational strategy.
“Advanced Excel is no longer enough. Like any systems or cultural shift, the biggest three components are strategy, technology and people. CFOs wishing to implement big data in their organisations need to get the mix of these three right to drive the changes home.”
Financial automation tools
Broadly speaking, automation allows you to focus on advising businesses, rather than number crunching. Adrian says: “Automated data analysis not only provides insight to help inform future business decisions but also frees up the CFO’s resources to concentrate on strategy.
“It drives down reliance on human capital and gives the board a wider set of analytics on which to base their decision making. This means one can analyse a far greater breadth of factors in coming to decisions.”
Automation that can make financial processes faster and smoother for the data-driven and technology-savvy CFO, improving the quality of data and increasing the productivity of finance and accounting staff. You should look at automation as it can:
Minimise manual intervention in financial operations and other accounting-related tasks such as ledger entries and reconciliations.
Auto-populate. This could involve using data from Enterprise Management and ERP systems to populate filing templates.
Reduce the potential for human error.
Increase and expedite turn-around.
Improve the use of staff time through a reduction in manual process.
You should also understand that there’s a correlation between organisations that have committed to “improved financial transformation” and higher adoption levels of automated reporting solutions.
Automation and a commitment to financial transformation. Source: Aberdeen Group
It’s worth considering the use of automation in your role – there are many reasons for this, including:
Automation can improve financial data by supplying it with context and a clear story. Aberdeen says users of financial reporting solutions featuring automation were 5.4 times as likely to provide narrative analysis with presented data.
Automation allows data and analytics from various transactions to be aggregated. This is because of dimensional reporting, which allows multiple codes to be used to generate charts from compounded sets of data. Users of financial reporting with automation are 87% more likely to have the ability to perform multiple dimensional reporting.
Real-time metrics improve the quality of related downstream data and the efficiency of prepared reports. When inputs are uploaded in real time, rather than in batches, it reduces the turnaround time needed for complete reporting and avoids gaps in financial data. Users of financial reporting with automation are 80% more likely to have real-time financial metrics.
You should take note of a figure by Aberdeen that shows the differences between “leaders” and “followers” in financial management. There is a significant overlap between leaders using solutions featuring automated reporting when it comes to key performance enhancing capabilities.
Just like the leaders do. Source: Aberdeen Group
What other enterprise tech should you keep track of?
Adrian O’Connor believes you should closely watch the rise of blockchain, an emerging technology that has huge potential to impact the way finance does business. Originally developed as part of the digital currency bitcoin, it has since evolved as a viable application for key ledgers and reconciliation.
At its heart, blockchain is a record of transactions that can be any movement of money, goods, assets or secure data. Many companies are at an early stage of blockchain adoption or investing in vendors working on the technology.
Adrian says: “I predict that knowledge of blockchain technology will be an increasingly sought-after skill in 2018 and beyond. Senior finance professionals’ mix of business and financial nous will position them as key advisers to companies approaching these new technologies looking for opportunity.
“Moving forward, the most sought-after professionals will be those who can advise on blockchain adoption and act as the bridge between digital specialists and business stakeholders.”
Advanced AI technology such as machine learning has the potential to take automation a step further by removing the need for rule-based machines, instead using learning technology. Machine learning technology, for instance, could allow suggestions to be made on matching payments to invoices.
Adrian believes the process element of accountancy will be increasingly emulated by technology such as artificial intelligence. However, he believes people are vital, particularly in making the best use of this type of technology.
He says: “Systems are becoming increasingly automated but people are still needed to implement and manage software, update codes in line with ever-shifting legislation and analyse findings with the advantage of emotional intelligence.
“Machine learning can enable robots to spot established patterns but if your organisation is on the cusp of identifying and exploiting a brand-new revenue stream, it’s likely to be a human who spots the opportunity.
“Innately human skills such as creativity and rapport remain the preserve of people. While machines can crunch the numbers – often with greater efficiency due to larger sample sizes – professionals need to be in place to police systems and put the ‘human brakes’ on – particularly as self-learning systems begin to make higher level judgement calls.”
Enterprise tech means more time for strategy
Adrian adds: “The rise of automation within finance has placed a fresh emphasis on the importance of innately ‘human’ skills such as creativity. And as process-led tasks are increasingly delegated to technology, senior finance professionals have the capacity to take on a larger chunk of C-suite responsibility.”
This increase in responsibility is already happening. On average, five functions other than finance now report to the global CFO, according to McKinsey. More than half of CFOs say that risk, regulatory compliance, M&A transactions and execution report directly to them. Meanwhile, 38% of CFOs are responsible for IT, with some even managing cybersecurity and digitisation.
McKinsey also states that, for the most part, CFOs know their role will continue to change and they will be expected to adjust the course.
Besides finance, they are also having to focus on strategic leadership, organisational transformation, and performance management – 72% of CFOs said they are either significantly involved or one of the most involved executives in allocating employees and financial resources. As well as lead strategically, CFOs are expected to manage their teams to success.
Expectations on what you can deliver will be constantly rising. KPMG’s View From The Top report says 63% of CEOs from high-performing organisations believe the CFOs role will increase in significance over the next three years. Adrian says: “Of course, desired skill sets depend heavily on the existing strengths of the rest of the top team – but there is no doubt that the CFO is morphing into a bigger, more challenging, role.”
