Say ‘Goodbye’ to E-mails and Tickets in Shared Services. Say ‘Hello’ to Social Technology and Collaborative Governance

Although not quite a regular Facebooker, I occasionally find myself pulled into opening my FB account to see what's happening in there. One of the things that recently caught my attention was that Facebook has started tracking trends of emotional feelings, such as "feeling loved" or "feeling down" and many more emotions that we humans generally display. I immediately recalled the ‘90s Batman movie, "Batman Forever". The Antagonist, Jim Carrey, aka "The Riddler", develops a device that reads people's mind. These devices sell like hotcakes and eventually he manages to figure out the real Batman, "Bruce Wayne". Thoughts then... Reality now... I'm sure the data collected on these emotions that we dump on Facebook is being put to good use. Anyway, imagine if Shared Services could apply this to the organization: A mechanism to feed back real time analysis of what's working and what's not; which policies are yielding results and which ones aren’t. Taking this idea a step further, what if such a mechanism could virtually replace the hierarchal way of working that is so common across many organizations? Social technology for organizations, especially Shared Services, is enabling collaboration in ways that we could not have imagined even just a few years ago. The only difference that I see between Facebook and Social Technology for Shared Services, or even for organizations for that matter, is that collaboration on Facebook is generally without purpose, whereas collaboration in Shared Services always is and has to be with purpose. We have come a long way from the early days of e-mail. When it first emerged, e-mail was faster at distributing information and quickly replaced traditional, manual methods of moving files and memos across the organization. It has since become so central to everything that we do, that people all over the world are constantly glued to their inboxes to get work done. However, just like telegraphs and snail mail have become obsolete, the time of e-mail and tickets acting as the primary means of communication in a Shared Services is also fast losing its sheen. [inlinead] Here are 5 good reasons why your SSO should move away from traditional e-mails and ticketing systems to prepare for the future: 1. E-mails are push technology E-mails are generally controlled by the sender and the sender generally has the right to send information by including as many people as they like in the way they feel is right. This can lead to unwanted people receiving e-mails, each perceiving the information in their own way. I owe most of my communications skills to what I learned about communications at the Signal School of the Indian Navy. We were taught to be so disciplined in how we communicated, that even a dot, a space, and a comma were carefully planned to ensure we did not send out the wrong message to other warships in company. Messages had to be short and to the point to ensure speedy execution of the task at hand. In fact, when I left the Navy and joined the corporate bandwagon, I had a lot of trouble getting used to e-mails, with different employees writing e-mails in their own styles. To get a simple thing done, teams would exchange 100s of e-mails – whereas in the Navy we would get that same thing done with just one signal. The reason I finally got into Shared Services was because I found it closest to the way we worked in the Navy – a structured manner with process documents, workflows, ticketing systems etc. Finally I’d found something that felt like the Navy! 2. Tickets are bureaucratic Although tickets streamline the way things run in a Shared Services center, most ticketing systems are designed to make things bureaucratic. The common attitude towards people using the services of an SSC was, "Please raise a ticket". Generally, that turns off people who feel that an e-mail would do the job just as well. But the good part is that many technology providers of ticketing systems are now moving towards social technology to make tickets simpler and easier to access and operate. 3. E-mails do not add value to an organization’s knowledge E-mails can duplicate information. When working with large teams, data created and ideas exchanged via e-mail do not aggregate to improving the organization’s knowledge, but end up sitting in the inbox of employees, which adds no value to the organization. It would be better to actually use a social platform to log all knowledge in a single place, to ensure it is accessible when required. 4. E-mails kill productivity This is something I see in every organization: people using e-mails as a ball to kick around, sometimes with a lot of emotions attached to them. (Reminds me of the old video game PONG). But at the end of the day, the amount of actual work that gets done is still quite low. 5. E-mails are a pure waste of time In today's context of "real time data management" – especially in Shared Services, where large amounts of data are transacted daily – we need to be able to relate every transaction back to something meaningful. E-mails do not allow that to happen. Hence, they are a total waste of time. So, what should you be doing? Here are two strategies you should be implementing right now to take advantage of Social Media and become more productive in your communications. 1. Get onto a collaboration suite for your organization. It will reduce the e-mail traffic in your Shared Services Center, as you realize that all the information and data you need to get the job done is held in a single place, and you don't have to search anymore for knowledge. SharePoint is a great way to start. However, there are many more tools available that allow associates to collaborate seamlessly, thereby increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the Shared Services team. A collaboration tool continuously improves the quality of your organization as everyone logs in and transacts through it. A word of caution, however: Ensure that the knowledge going into the suite passes through a quality mechanism to ensure its relevance. There are several workflow driven apps that can do this in the suite. 2. Choose a collaboration tool with an inbuilt ticketing system. If not, pick up a Ticketing/Case Management tool that is user friendly. Most tools today have predictive search built in, whereby end users don't have to search endlessly or fill in lengthy forms. Since end users find these simple to use they will tend to opt for self-service via the tool, rather than approach the help desk. Just as we use Google search for everything we do, you’ll find employees getting what they need through the self-service portal, which will greatly reduce the load on your SSC. I come across a lot of Shared Services technology leaders who are developing collaborative ways of working to enable and link all data in the organization on a real time basis. The real value gained as a result is the ability to make the right decision at the right time. So, whether you are setting up your Shared Services or upgrading technology in your center, make sure you choose a technology that allows for easy collaboration, both internally and externally.

Say ‘Goodbye’ to E-mails and Tickets in Shared Services. Say ‘Hello’ to Social Technology and Collaborative Governance

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