Originally published in Computer Weekly on 5 Oct, 2016
Businesses are failing to offer staff the service levels they expect for internal company services, such as human resources and finance, says Fruition Partners survey
Enterprises are investing in automating and streamlining customer services but are neglecting the services they offer staff, who have high expectations because they are used to consumer levels of service from internet companies such as Amazon.
Fruition Partners, part of CSC, questioned 400 CIOs and found that internal services are often immature, the cloud is underutilised for staff services and organisations are using up to nine different tools to provide some services.
In its Service Revolution Barometer, Fruition Partners found that only 21% of organisations can offer services from departments such as human resources (HR), IT, finance, facilities and legal as a self-service, and a mere 24% of enterprises have service level agreements in place for service provision across all business functions.
According to research, businesses across the UK and US are wasting £8.15bn by not offering unified employee services over the cloud. Instead, they are using different tools to offer services.
“If you look at life as a consumer, almost everything is now delivered to you as a service. If you want to buy something, book an appointment or get some information, you simply click a button. But in the enterprise, you still have to make phone calls, send an email or push paper around,” said Paul Cash, managing partner at Fruition Partners UK.
Internet-based companies such as Uber and Amazon are showing the way with automated cloud-based services enterprises, but they need to do more to introduce similar service levels for staff in areas such as HR, IT, finance and facilities.
The enterprise is years behind providing the experience that employees receive in their lives as consumers. At the heart of the problem is the fact organisations think in terms of what a corporate function should deliver, rather than what an internal user really wants.
This matters not just because employee satisfaction is important, but also because there is the potential to drive significant return on investment (ROI) through delivering services in a joined-up, automated, online way.
The research revealed that, of all departments, the corporate IT is closest to offering “everything as a service”. Some 65% of IT departments said all services could be accessed in a self-service manner, and 82% said most or all IT services are documented in a service catalogue or directory.