top 10 ways technology can support hr transformation

HR SHARED SERVICE & CONTACT CENTER

SOLUTIONS

Top 10 Ways Technology can Support

HR Transformation

- 2 - © 2011 Neocase Software

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Table of Contents

1. SELF SERVICE THAT’S EMPLOYEE CENTRIC ............................................................................................3

2. A KNOWLEDGEBASE THAT’S INTELLIGENT AND INTEGRATED ..............................................................5

3. HR BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT THAT’S CONFIGURABLE AND AUTOMATED ...........................7

4. EMAIL MANAGEMENT THAT’S CONSTRUCTIVE AND CONFIGURABLE .................................................9

5. SLA MANAGEMENT THAT’S PROACTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE ............................................................. 10

6. DASHBOARDS THAT ARE REAL-TIME AND TRANSPARENT ................................................................ 11

7. CASE MANAGEMENT THAT’S COLLABORATIVE .................................................................................. 13

8. REPORTING THAT’S INSIGHTFUL AND ACTIONABLE .......................................................................... 13

9. SURVEYS THAT PROVIDE INSIGHT AND INCREASE SATISFACTION ..................................................... 14

10. DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS THAT ARE FLEXIBLE AND THAT FIT .......................................................... 15

ABOUT NEOCASE SOFTWARE ..................................................................................................................... 16


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“We are seeing a shift from organizations throwing old technology at problems to looking at flexible new technologies that leverage self-service and shared services functions, deliver more streamlined capabilities and robust analytics, and organize existing systems around enhancing HR service delivery more broadly.” Towers-Watson, 2011-2012 HR Service Delivery and Technology Research Report

Clearly, the time is right to consider new technologies for HR Service delivery; technologies that

not only deliver core modules like self-service, case management and a knowledgebase, but also

include capabilities to increase efficiencies in current services, and components that enable the

HR service center to broaden its portfolio of services through tools that standardize and

automate advanced HR processes within a single platform; advanced analytics that go beyond

identifying problems, to identifying solutions, and flexible deployment options to fit any IT

strategy.

This paper explores the Top 10 key components in HR Service Center technologies, and their

benefits to the HR organization.

1. SELF SERVICE THAT’S EMPLOYEE CENTRIC

The Self Service HR Portal is arguably the greatest lever for reducing the time and cost of

service delivery. Some organizations have seen the volume of inbound requests drop

by as much as 80% after deploying employee self-service. Those results are enabled

when the HR Portal is designed to be “employee-centric.”

Employee-centric means that the content displayed in the HR Portal will be relevant,

and apply specifically to the exact employee that is logged into the HR Portal, whether

that “employee” is front-line staff, a manager, retiree, applicant, HR business parnter or

3rd-party provider. For example, a front-line employee in New York will see different

information when inquiring about a Leave of Absence than would a Division manager in

Munich.

Giving the employee easy and immediate access to answers through the knowledgebase

has always helped to reduce the number of new cases for HR. Beyond the

knowledgebase, there are several other ways that the HR Portal can free up time for HR,

while enabling the employee to do more for oneself. For example, if an employee

can’t find an answer, the ability to submit a question from the HR Portal directly to HR

eliminates the need for a separate phone call or email.


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A high percentage of calls and emails to HR come from employees checking the status of

existing cases. Exposing prior cases through the HR Portal will further reduce the

number of inbound calls and emails. But perhaps one of the greatest untapped value

points in self service is that of process delegation and process automation.

According to the 2011 HR Delivery Practices Survey, published by the Shared Services

Institute, “Organizations continue to receive transactions and inquiries through a

multiplicity of channels. Some of the more commonly used channels, such as text

emails and forms submitted via email/fax/mail, can cause issues with inbound data

integrity and costs associated with manual handling and error, suggesting opportunity

for improvement.”

HR professionals spend considerable time doing mundane paperwork; collecting

information from employees, and processing that information. The typical HR

organization might maintain dozens of forms - word documents, PDF’s or even paper

documents that are given to employees, filled out by employees, returned to HR, and

re-entered into a system or spreadsheet for further processing.

The ability to replace these documents with digital “smart forms” and guide employees

to those forms in the HR Portal makes it possible for HR to delegate the information

gathering to the employee, and for the employee to submit the information directly into

the case management system where configurable business rules can automate

subsequent steps in processing.

Once the initial data is captured and validated by the smart forms, automating

subsequent processing steps like managerial approvals can further streamline HR


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business processes. For example, if an employee completes and submits a Tuition

Reimbursement Request through the HR Portal, a business rule can automatically route

that request to the employee’s supervisor for approval, before sending it to HR.

The ability to configure and expose process-specific “Smart Forms” through the HR

Portal, and delegate more of the processing to employees and their managers

significantly reduces the time and effort that HR professionals must spend on these

processes.

Managers will need additional capabilities in the HR Portal, from knowledgebase

content dedicated to managerial procedures, to capabilities for creating cases

concerning their direct reports, as well as the ability to monitor cases and issue

approvals, as appropriate.

As more HR shared service centers incorporate the HR Business Partner Role into their

structure, these Business Partners will require a means to seamlessly interact with HR

on behalf of their employee customers, by initiating and managing various processes

through a convenient HR Portal. A configurable role-based HR Portal can improve the

efficiency of the HR Business Partner, enabling one to serve a greater number of

employees..

Finally, the HR Portal should allow flexibility of design; the ability to fully brand and

configure the HR Portal to seamlessly integrate with existing Employee Self Service and

Manger Self Service tools, so that employees and managers can have a single and

inclusive user experience that makes their lives easier.

All told, the HR Portal should serve as a “one-stop-shop” for all employee types; the

single place to go for all answers, information, processes and resources that previously

required direct intervention from HR professionals. The more ways that an organization

can leverage the HR Portal to serve every employee type, the more time HR will have to

dedicate to strategic initiatives.

2. A KNOWLEDGEBASE THAT’S INTELLIGENT AND

INTEGRATED

Pre-built integrations between the knowledgebase and the case management process

add greater value to the knowledgebase. A Recommendation Engine pushes the right

content to employees through the Portal and to HR agents working in the Case

Management module.

The “right” content means several things; typically, 20% of the articles in the

knowledgebase are used to resolve 80% of the inquiries. A dynamically updating display


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of these popular articles gives both employees and HR agents single-click access to

common solutions.

The “right” content is content that matches an employee’s specific role, division,

location, benefits plan, or other criteria that determine the correct response to a

question. And the “right” content also means enabling the content to be presented in

the employee’s own language through multi-lingual capabilities, when an employee is

using the Portal.

The “right” content also means a complete and comprehensive set of content.

Knowledgebase managers are challenged to keep the knowledgebase fully-stocked with

current, accurate answers to the questions that employees are asking. Knowledgebase

reports identify “gaps” in the knowledgebase; questions that are being asked, and for

which no content is found. These reports help the knowledgebase manager to optimize

the value of the knowledgebase to the service delivery process.

Finally, the “right” content means content that’s engaging. According to the 2011

Gartner Research Report, “HR Shared Services: Optimizing the Technology Options,

“Multimedia content is becoming more common, as leading organizations use video to

explain policies and provide updates to employees.” Therefore, an HR Shared Services

Knowledgebase must support videos and other forms or rich media.

Having the right content in the knowledgebase is only useful if it is accessible to the

person that needs it, with minimal effort, minimal clicks, and minimal “search time.”

Recommendation Engines are intelligent software agents that submit keywords and

information through advanced algorithms and automatically search the knowledgebase

to find and deliver high probability answers to the HR Agent working in the case

management module or to the Employee who’s using the Portal. The Recommendation

Engine reduces and eliminates the time spent searching the knowledgebase, and

improves the precision and accuracy of the responses.

An Intelligent Knowledgebase also has auto-learning capabilities. As the most

experienced agents select articles, and assign them as solutions to cases, the Auto-Learn

engine will “memorize” their selection criteria, and incorporate that into future

searches. This makes the knowledgebase “smarter” over time.

The Knowledgebase is especially valuable to first tier HR Generalists, because it gives

these less-experienced agents the ability to answer questions that require greater

knowledge than those agents possess. This effectively decreases to the cost of

operating the contact center.


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Integration points between the knowledgebase and the case management process

enable HR professionals to be more efficient by reducing the number of steps required

to resolve and close a case. When an HR Agent identifies the right article, he frequently

needs to copy content from the case into a final “response” within the case record.

Single-click integration between the knowledgebase article and the case record make

the process more efficient. Other integration points enable the agent to convert the

article to a PDF file, and email to the employee with just two clicks of the mouse.

These integration points between the knowledgebase and the case management

process are particularly valuable in assuring consistency of response. Levels of

knowledge and experience can vary among first tier HR Generalists. The integration

points and Recommendation Engine assure that different agents will provide the same

response to the question, from different employees. By effectively “increasing the

knowledge level” of first tier agents, the integrated and intelligent knowledgebase

maintains a lower cost of operation.

Intelligence in the knowledgebase can also increase first call resolution and the accuracy

and consistency of answers given. Integration points between the knowledgebase and

the case management process and reduce the time and keystrokes required to fully

process a case, increasing the overall efficiency of the case resolution process.

3. HR BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT THAT’S

CONFIGURABLE AND AUTOMATED

Not all requests in an HR Service Center are cases of the “one-and-done” variety that

can be resolved with a single answer. A complete case management solution should be

able to support virutually any process that occurs within the employee lifecycle. When

a service center manages complex processes like Leave of Absence, Employee Relations

or On Boarding, and if it has no software solution designed for the processes, they’re

usually managed using external forms, spreadsheets, homegrown databases, paper,

email and other manual processes. These approaches are time consuming, prone to

errors, and provide little opportunity for insightful reporting.

Business Process Management tools enable a shared service center to standardize and

automate complex processes to drive greater efficiency, consistency and customer

satisfaction.

According to the 2011-2012 Towers-Watson HR Service Delivery Research Report,

reengineering HR processes has been the top initiative of the HR organizations

surveyed. This demonstrates the need for a service delivery platform that can

accommodate multiple HR business processes.


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2011-2012 Towers-Watson HR Service Delivery Research Report

4 key components enable business process automation and management:

Multiple Case Form Template designed to capture process-specific data and

information. Case forms that are laid out with the required information fields

for specific functions are simpler and result in far fewer errors than generic “all-

in-one” case forms.

Business Rules that monitor the information that’s captured in the form, and

trigger appropriate actions to automate processing.

Analytical Reports that measure the process performance through Key

Performance Indicators (KPI’s), identify areas of low performance in order to

make decisive improvements.

Integration to core HRIS solutions to enable a 360-degree view of employee

information.

Business Process Management tools in an HR Service solution can dramatically expand the value of the HR service center, by enabling it to deliver a broader portfolio of services, and in a way that’s automated, efficient and measurable.


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4. EMAIL MANAGEMENT THAT’S CONSTRUCTIVE AND

CONFIGURABLE

In the ideal HR Services world, all requests would be resolved through Self Service.

While the HR Portal is rightfully viewed as the optimal service channel, many HR Service

centers continue to receive high volumes of email. The email channel can be especially

prevalent in centers that serve former, retired, or other employee types who may not

have access to a HR Portal.

An HR Case Management solution should serve as a “Single Point of Contact” to capture

all employee correspondence, regardless of the of which channel the employee used to

deliver the correspondence. All correspondence should be automatically routed

directly into the Case Management solution, and displayed within the Agent’s desktop.

According to the 2011 HR Delivery Practices Survey by the Shared Services Institute,

Email is the second-most prevalent Input Channel. The report also suggests there are

costs associated with the manual processing of requests via inbound email.

2011 HR Delivery Practices Survey by the Shared Services Institute

Automating inbound Email means having the ability to create rules that read and

interpret email, and based on administratively-defined criteria, create or append a case,

route the case to a defined agent, team or queue and further process the case.

The primary advantage of inbound email processing is that HR Agents will spend less

time opening, reading and converting emails to cases, and more time resolving the

cases.


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HR Representatives also send a lot of emails as part of the case management process;

emails to update an employee on the status or resolution of a case, emails seeking

managers’ approvals or emails to external business partners. The low-to-no-value time

spent writing emails, attaching emails to case records, or copying and pasting between

the email and the case record can consume a considerable amount of the agent’s time.

Configurable Email Content Templates enable situation-specific messages to be

“stored” within the business process, and merged with information from the case

record, along with the appropriate recipients’ email addresses, according to the

business process. What this means to the HR organization is that the right message is

pre-written within the context of the case process, and personalized to the designated

employee, manager or other recipient.

Where regulations exist that forbid certain types of information from being transmitted

via email (i.e. HIPAA in the United States), outbound emails are kept fully compliant

because the system administrator has complete control over which fields from the case

form are included in the email template.

Email Rules and Content Templates save HR Agents significant time processing cases

where email is involved. Process-specific templates eliminate the need to “re-create the

message” every time and control the messages that are sent, thus improving

consistency and legal compliance.

5. SLA MANAGEMENT THAT’S PROACTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE

According to the 2011 HR Delivery Practices Survey by the Shared Services Institute,

“the use of Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) has been hailed as a cornerstone practice

in shared services.”

A complete HR Shared Services solution requires the ability to create and maintain rich

service catalogs and SLA’s. This means being able to create an unlimited number of

SLA’s for different HR Processes, and for different employee groups. While the Service

Center is responsible for managing and closing each case within its defined SLA,

individual agents cannot be expected to know all entitlements.

A proactive SLA solution will automatically assign the correct SLA to a case, calculate and

assign a deadline, and prioritize that case for the agent, within their overall case load.

The agent should be able to simply focus on managing the case, and delivering service.


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An Alert Engine and Business Rules should be configurable to notify agents and Team Leaders of

upcoming SLA deadlines, and transfer or escalate cases as necessary to assure their timely

resolution.

Finally, Performance Analysis Reports should present SLA achievement rates across several

parameters, and provide the ability to “drill down” through the data to quickly identify the

cause of low SLA achievement rates.

When an HR Service Center is equipped with the tools for pro-active SLA Management, they can

tailor service offerings to meet customer needs, while having the confidence and peace of mind

that they will be able to deliver on their commitments to drive customer satisfaction.

6. DASHBOARDS THAT ARE REAL-TIME AND TRANSPARENT

In a fast-paced shared service center, an agent can too easily get “lost in the weeds,” if he

doesn’t have a clear and concise view of his entire workload. An Agent Dashboard should

provide an uncluttered view of real-time information, to help the agent work efficiently, and in

control, much like the dashboard in an automobile.

An agent’s dashboard should guide the agent through his cases in a prioritized order, according

to SLA’s. Case deadlines are automatically calculated based on SLA’s, and cases are sorted and

grouped accordingly, to make the agent’s job easier and more productive, while the Service

Center can be confident that it’s maximizing SLA compliance.


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7. CASE MANAGEMENT THAT’S COLLABORATIVE

With more organizations expanding the size and scope of their HR Shared Service centers,

there’s a growing need to tap into the knowledge of multiple resources, subject matter experts

and centers of excellence throughout the resolution process. It’s becoming more important for

a case management solution to support a collaborative, team approach to problem solving.

The ability to transfer cases to agents based on workload and availability or expertise, or to

temporarily sub-contract a case to a third party business partner is becoming more valuable, as

the right expertise is often distributed throughout multiple locations, inside or outside the

organization.

Similarly, complex problems are more efficiently managed and resolved when sub-tasks can be

generated and distributed to the appropriate experts, in the form of “child cases,” so that

multiple experts can work simultaneously toward an expedient resolution.

These kinds of collaborative features help to reduce the average processing time of a case,

assuring complete resolution at a lower cost, and while increasing employee satisfaction.

8. REPORTING THAT’S INSIGHTFUL AND ACTIONABLE

Peter Drucker, the man who “invented modern day management” famously said, “If you can’t

measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Successfully managing an HR Shared Service center requires the business insight to understand

exactly where and how improvements can be made through operational reports and executive

reports that provide insight for tactical and strategic improvements.

Traditional business reporting provides a view of what has already happened; how many cases

of various categories were processed last month, by whom, and how quickly. While these

reports reveal the highest and lowest performers, they tend to stop there, making it difficult to

determine the actual cause of the low performance.

Performance Analysis go past the “we have a problem” stage, and into the “here’s the

solution” stage.

Performance Analysis Reports support rapid analysis of a problem by highlighting trends and

isolating the root cause, through 3 key characteristics:


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Key Performance Indicators including SLA Achievement Rate, First Contact Resolution,

First Agent Resolution, First Team Resolution.

The ability to “drill drown” through the data to view problem areas at progressively

more granular levels, until arriving at a root cause.

The ability to export data to familiar tools such as Excel, for further analysis.

In a February 2011 article, the International Customer Management Institute stated, “no

single KPI has a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than does first-call resolution (FCR).”

The Shared Services Institute 2011 HR Delivery Practices Survey reports that “slightly more

than nearly half of HR call centers aren’t measuring first call resolution.” It’s quite likely that

they don’t measure it, because they have no easy and effective way to capture the data.

Performance Analysis reporting enables the optimization of each process, so that expectations

can be exceeded, while costs are controlled. The reports provide the insight to organize and

staff teams to improve efficiency, while identifying training opportunities.

9. SURVEYS THAT PROVIDE INSIGHT AND INCREASE

SATISFACTION

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

Bill Gates, Microsoft


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The ultimate measure of the success of any customer service organization doesn’t come from

the inside; it comes from the outside – if the customer isn’t satisfied, the service wasn’t

successful.

An important, but often overlooked part of the service delivery process is closing the loop with

the customer; getting feedback. A complete HR Service Delivery platform includes the tools to

capture this feedback, measure customer satisfaction.

A solution should include the tools create and distribute satisfaction surveys to its customers in

a way that the “customer” can easily respond to the survey, providing the information from

which the service center can measure satisfaction and respond to feedback.

10. DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS THAT ARE FLEXIBLE AND THAT FIT

According to the 2011 – 2012 HR Service Delivery and Technology Research Report by Towers-

Watson, 54% of the organizations surveyed currently use, or plan to implement a Software as

a Service (SaaS) solution. SaaS has rapidly become the deployment of choice for many

organizations, because of its lower up-front cost, quicker deployment, and lower maintenance

requirements.

However, the same report also indicates that 46% of companies “have no plans to use SaaS.”

The reasons for not “going SaaS” are based on security concerns, or the typically higher cost

over a longer timeframe.

A system with flexibility deployment options – one that allows a company to implement the

solution within its own data centers or use the applications on a subscription basis, allows the

service center to align the deployment with its preferred IT strategy.

The business of HR Service Delivery is constantly changing. Employees are expecting and

demanding a higher level of service. At the same time, the greater enterprise is demanding

more strategic value from HR. For HR to answer to the demands of both constituencies, it

needs a technology platform that will enable it to provide more services, at a higher level of

automation.


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ABOUT NEOCASE SOFTWARE

Neocase Software is a leading SaaS provider of HR solutions for shared service and contact centres. It empowers global corporations to manage and optimise their shared service and contact center operation performance and processes through its uniquely adaptive and award-winning technology platform.

Founded in 2001, Neocase Software has been consistently delivering innovative solutions for human resource operations that focus on flexibility, easy integration and low total cost of ownership for its customers while enabling them to deliver the highest level of service to employees and customers alike and therefore increasing employee and customer satisfaction. Neocase customers have seen tangible results such as productivity gains, cost savings, faster case resolution and most importantly increased satisfaction and retention.

Designed for quick implementation and ease-of-use, the Neocase Software solutions are available on SaaS or on premise. Only Neocase offers the elements of a proactive shared service centre solution that simplifies how your employees, customers and partners work with your smart agents. For more information about Neocase Software, visit www.neocasesoftware.com