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Frictionless HR – the platform and the partnership

Jill Weber
March 5, 2021

I’m not the first person in history to note that the nature of HR services is changing. My colleagues Robert Dutcher and Felicia Jones have already written respectively about bringing the human touch to HR services, and about removing barriers to HR innovation.

But there’s another aspect to the question that I think it’s worth exploring here. I think we’re all agreed that the change we see in HR is being driven by the expectations people have from their online experience as consumers – but if businesses are to meet these expectations, how should they go about it?

In short, what should be on their shopping list?

HR platform selection criteria

It might be best to start at the end, and work back. The ultimate goal is to provide a consumer-like experience. The selection criteria therefore ought to include all-channel access, with chatbots and embedded knowledge that enable people to serve themselves as much as possible – in an easy and natural way, and regardless of the nature of their query.

But this has implications for the back end. As we’ve seen in previous articles on this topic, HR services can only help with requests as varied as laptop requisitions, holiday bookings and training registration when all the relevant functions are integrated with one another – as well, of course, as being linked to HR. The shopping list therefore also needs to include a means of breaking down siloes, and replacing them with a single, seamless proposition. It’s what we at Capgemini call the Frictionless Enterprise.

In order to remove these obstacles between business functions, the organization needs either to develop its own solution, or to work with a service provider that can design, build, and perhaps even operate the model. If the choice is to work with a service provider, it would be wise to select people with relevant experience. If they’ve developed solutions for other large enterprises, that would of course be useful. If they’ve built one for themselves, and developed best practices from their own experiences, so much the better. Plus they will, naturally, need to have the appropriate infrastructure and geographical reach.

Service complexity

In short, it’s about working with experienced people, and on a unifying platform. The unifying point is particularly important. The human resources function is not alone in finding that the complexity of service management is threatening to get out of control.

It’s not just that the expectations of customers and employees alike are rising. Across the business, technology is changing amid demands for greater agility, and for leaner, more automated processes. Supplier portfolios are increasingly volatile, regulatory requirements are constantly changing, and cost and profitability pressures are growing – especially in a mid-pandemic and post-pandemic world.

Integrated benefits

A comprehensive platform such as ServiceNow can provide a business ecosystem that addresses these service issues. It can deliver:

  • Improved service quality, with an integrated supplier portfolio and a single line of sight over it
  • Robust and business-wide governance and control, ensuring alignment, cooperation, and accountability
  • Cost savings and operational efficiency, reducing duplication across functions and suppliers, and improving processes
  • A great experience for users – whether they are customers or employees
  • Rapid and flexible innovation, within an established framework that includes pre-configured automation tools and a service governance and operating model

When it’s implemented by an experienced service provider, the benefits of an approach such as this can be considerable. For instance, and specifically in an HR context, ServiceNow forms the basis of Capgemini’s Digital Employee Operations (DEO) model, which has delivered tangible business outcomes that include employee satisfaction score of over 90%, ticket turnaround times that are 20% faster, and an 80% increase in first-contact resolution.

The right platform, and the right partner

To summarize, HR services and employee expectations are indeed changing, which is why organizations need to find a platform and a partner that can bring everything together, for the good not just of the business, but for the many people it employs.

To find out how Capgemini’s Digital Employee Operations Powered by ServiceNow enhances your employee experience through implementing next-generation, digital HR operations, contact: jill.weber@capgemini.com

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Jill Weber

Jill Weber leads a global competency of over 800 certified process consultants and ServiceNow experts who help accelerate our customers’ digital transformation journeys to service excellence.

Jill Weber

Expert in Infrastructure Transformation Services, Service Integration, ServiceNow Practice

I lead a global competency of over 800 certified process consultants and ServiceNow experts who help accelerate our customers’ digital transformation journeys to service excellence.  I have over 25 years’ experience in service and enterprise management consulting, including digital SIAM and tools transformation strategy, planning and deployments.