It’s an automated world after all: Our webinar featuring Forrester Research and Rogers Communications
On the webinar, special guest Forrester Vice President Rob Koplowitz, shares insights into how a well-orchestrated COE allows organizations to centrally vet technology, determine if (and how) a process should be automated, and identify process improvement opportunities at scale. It also provides a forum for centralized skills, improves enterprise governance, lowers organizational risk and provides “a teach to fish” model for self-service automation.
What is a COE?
A center of excellence centralizes and leverages scarce, expensive skills and/or technology that are deployed across the business at scale.
Not everyone will be a process expert, but anyone can optimize business processes with a strong COE. It’s important to have process experts at the core of your COE team who are managing process data infrastructure, security, and integrity. If experts are governing the core technologies, then automation can be deployed at scale across any department in the business.
We don’t all need to be experts but we could all use an expert to turn to. That’s when the centralization of particular skills becomes crucial.
COE and Scalability
Businesses are embracing the idea of radical automation. For years, industries like telecom, banking, insurance, manufacturing, and more have been pressured to automate. However, since COVID, of course, the demand has only increased. And now more industries like retail, healthcare, and government are putting automation at the forefront as well.
Enabling citizen developers is crucial for scalability. This means we’re empowering LOB users to be their own citizen developer – working alongside the COE team. When we empower people across the business, we can automate on a larger scale.
Benefits of a COE
Nintex Senior Director of Product Marketing, Holly Anderson presented the key benefits of a highly functional COE. The benefits include:
- Clear, consistent, and definitive processes so there’s no confusion or risk of human error.
- Connected systems and people. No more chasing approvals around the office. The technology will connect systems and people when necessary.
- Visibility for stakeholders into automated processes – understand what is happening at any given time and expose bottlenecks.
- Agility. Make changes quickly. As disruptions occur, you can react quickly with automation.
How do you know which technologies to incorporate in your COE?
We get questions like this all the time. How do you know which technology is going to fit best with your organization? Consider the following things when building your COE:
- Understand who will be involved in building out automation solutions in your organization. Find out your plans so you can get the right tools to enable more people.
- Look for low-hanging fruit to quickly demonstrate the value of a COE and the technology. Choose technology that allows you to get started very quickly.
- Consider technology that easily adapts to change or disruption so you can maintain agility within your COE.
COE at Rogers
Rogers Communication’s Senior Manager, Solution Delivery Maninder Dhaliwal brought the discussion full circle by sharing how Rogers, a leading Canadian telecommunications company is using K2 Software as a fundamental component of its COE. Dhaliwal’s team implemented a Workflow Hero program that delivers self-service automation solutions across the organization.
In the Workflow Hero program at Rogers, Dhaliwal and his team partner with employees in every department across the business – ensuring people are equipped to successfully automate their own processes. To do this at scale, they provide monthly training sessions, give people access to sandbox environments, and have rigorous testing standards before implementation begins.
Since the Canadian telecom company began its process automation journey three years ago, Rogers supports 15,000 users in every business department. So far, 50 applications have been added to their Center of Excellence platform. Over 85 business processes have been automated, optimized, or updated through the program.
A COE for your organization
Every company can benefit from a high-fidelity COE. Watch the webinar on-demand to learn how the Nintex platform can enable your organization’s COE.
If you’d like to learn more about implementing a COE in your organization, contact Nintex today. We’ll be glad to explore the possibilities with you.