tools and best practices to optimize hr processes, and further expand tier zero

© 2012 Neocase Software All Rights Reserved

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BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR HR

SERVICE DELIVERY

Tools and Best Practices to Optimize HR

Processes, and further Expand Tier Zero


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Contents

All “Cases” are Not Created Equal ...................................................................................................... 3

A BPM Primer .......................................................................................................................................... 4

Design the Process .............................................................................................................................. 4

Forms Creation .................................................................................................................................... 5

Service Level Agreements ................................................................................................................... 6

Integration to other HR Systems ......................................................................................................... 6

Test the Process .................................................................................................................................. 7

Deploy the Process through Service Catalogs..................................................................................... 7

Monitor and Analyze the Process ........................................................................................................... 7

Monitoring Tools ................................................................................................................................. 8

Analysis Tools ...................................................................................................................................... 8

Optimize the Process .......................................................................................................................... 9

Summary and Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 10


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”Many organizations have moved HR administrative processes to a shared-service model, but

fewer organizations have optimized HR service delivery.”

HR Shared Services: Optimizing the Technology Options,

Thomas Otter, The Gartner Group: September, 2011

A key reason that so many organizations fail to optimize service delivery is because they’re

delivering services through inefficient processes; processes that involve disconnected steps, multiple

transfers and manual administrative work. These factors add time and cost, but not value.

In that same report cited above, Mr. Otter also states:

“As shared services mature, we are seeing an increasing focus on tools and processes to bring

tighter process control and measurement to running the HR shared-service center.”

High-performing organizations have incorporated Business Process Management (BPM) tools into

their HR Shared Services technology platforms. And many of these organizations have done so

through a “Software as a Service” model, or “Business Process as a Service” (BPaaS).

This paper will describe the features and benefits of these “BPM” and “BPaaS” functionalities within

HR service delivery.

All “Cases” are Not Created Equal The typical HR service center handles requests that range from the simple…

“What’s my health plan deductible?”

… To the complex

“I need to transfer an employee to another division, half way around the world.”

While the simple request may only take two minutes, the complex request may take several weeks

to complete, involve multiple sub-tasks, the collaboration of specialists, and multiple approvals.

Within those complex requests lies greater potential for efficiency improvement, productivity gains,

and strides toward Transformation.

Most organizations have no single solution to effectively manage complex processes. Therefore, a

single complex process is managed across two or more applications; a basic case management or

ticketing solution, email folders, spreadsheets, point solutions, and yes, even paper.

The result is inefficiency and waste through manual steps, mistakes and rework.


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Complex Service Request may include Global Transfers, Employee Relations issues, certain types of

Leave of Absence and literally dozens of others. Unlike simple service requests, complex requests

can require the involvement of multiple parties from employees to managers, HR Business Partners,

Shared Service Center Representatives, Subject Matter Experts and external business providers.

Complex Service Requests also require the collection of specific data and information. There are

multiple sub-tasks, decisions points, approvals and required communications at every step

throughout the process.

Complex Service Requests are complex HR Business Processes, and therefore, require a Business

Process Management approach, instead of a simpler Case Management, or “Ticketing” approach.

Gartner defines business process management (BPM) as “a management discipline that treats

business processes as assets that directly improve enterprise performance by driving operational

excellence and business agility.”

If an HR Shared Service Center is to fully optimize its operations, it must apply a Business Process

Management approach to each of its Complex HR Processes.

A BPM Primer Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach to making an organization's workflow

more effective, more efficient and more capable of adapting to changes. BPM is a cyclical, ongoing

initiative to drive continuous improvement within every HR process, by cycling through the following

stages:

1. Design – Visually mapping the process to

expose each of the steps.

2. Test – Evaluate the process through

simulation.

3. Publish – Publish the process to Service

Catalogs to the right employees.

4. Analyze – Measure the process against

Key Performance Indicators.

5. Optimize – Revise the process based on

analytical findings.

Let’s look at each stage in more detail, and how the right tools can drive them successfully.

Design the Process Gartner identifies Business Process Design as a Key Skill in the March 15, 2012 publication “15 Skills

Critical to Business Process Management Success.” Specifically, “the ability to visually depict and

examine (HR) process models, based on information gathered from business process discovery.”

This means having a visual mapping tool built within the core application, thus fully integrated with

the same tools that later build, deploy and analyze the process. A visual, or graphical process map

Design

Test

Publish Analyze

Optimize


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enables the HR process owner to more intuitively understand how a process works and where

potential bottlenecks lie.

In HR, processes change frequently, and the HR Service Center regularly takes on new processes.

Therefore, it’s critical that HR be able to create and update its business processes, without being

dependent on scarce IT or technical resources.

An important characteristic of any visual or graphical process builder for HR Service Deliver is that

the tool be useable by the non-technical HR user.

Forms Creation A high percentage of HR Processes begin with an employee or manager submitting information

through a form (Paper, PDF, web-form, or other format), and continuing a process using additional

forms. Therefore, having the ability to easily create process-specific forms is an important

component of Business Process Design.

Like the Process Design tool, the Forms designer must also be intuitive enough for a non-technical

HR Process Owner to use effectively, to reduce reliance on IT or technical resources so that HR

Processes can be deployed faster, and at a lower cost.

Smart Forms should be configurable with fields to capture specific data and information for virtually

any HR business process. Different forms may be needed at different stages of the Process, to hide

or display particular data fields, based on the user profile. Forms should also integrate with

employee data from the core HRMS, to minimize data entry, and provide a higher quality user

experience.

The use of “Smart Forms” within the Employee Portal as a Process starting point, and within

subsequent stages of the Process offer the following advantages:

1. Enable HR to “delegate” data collection to the employee at the “point of request” and

throughout the Process.


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2. Proper and complete data capture enforced through configurable form properties will

minimize the need for process re-work.

3. Configurable Business Rules act on data captured within Smart Form to automate

administrative steps such as routing, approvals, and other steps otherwise performed

manually.

4. The Smart Forms integrate with Service Catalogs and employee profiles so that employees

and managers will see only those Smart Forms relevant to their roles and attributes.

It’s here that we can further leverage “Tier Zero” by pushing more HR processes out to the Portal.

Example of a Smart Form for Tuition Reimbursement.

Service Level Agreements The overall success of an HR Process requires succeeding from two different perspectives:

1. Did the Process produce the desired / intended outcome?

2. Did the Process do so within the agreed-upon time frame?

While the “design” portion will create a path to the correct outcome, the capability to build “timing”

elements into the overall process, and its various stages will assure the Process outcome is delivered

on time. Therefore, it’s important that SLA functionality be fully integrated with the Process Design

tools.

This will also lay the foundation for Process Monitoring and Analytics, discussed later in this paper.

Integration to other HR Systems Just as many HR Processes involve collaboration of multiple players, automated Processes may also

require “system collaboration,” or sharing of data between the Service Delivery/Request

Management system, and core HRMS, ERP and point solutions. For example, completing a Leave of

Absence process may require access to vacation or PTO data that is stored within a Payroll or core


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HRMS. In order to seamlessly access this data, the BPM module should be equipped with a set of

“Connectors” to support integration to other systems.

These “Connectors” must be versatile enough to support the actual transfer of data between

systems, or presentation of data from another system via i-Frames. Data transfers should be

supported in real-time through web services, near-real time, or on a schedule basis via flat-file

imports, bi-directionally; to and from other systems. These tools must also be compliant with

Enterprise Architecture strategies, though providing event callouts or Web services for data

exchange with other systems.

The important point is this: Connectors between the HR Service Delivery platform and back-end HR,

ERP and 3rd-party solutions comprise an important component of Business Process design, to

eliminate the need for HR representatives to enter data twice or to access multiple systems to

execute a process.

Test the Process The Gartner research further identifies as a key capability of BPM tools is the ability to simulate

changes to a process in order to evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness. Testing the process

involves making adjustments; removing steps, changing automation. A Graphic Process Designer

makes it easy to quickly make changes to effectively expedite the evaluation of an HR process.

Deploy the Process through Service Catalogs After an HR Process has been Designed and Tested, it’s ready to be deployed. But deployment of an

HR Process doesn’t mean simply making the Process available for universal use. Typically, a Process

will apply to a specific segment of the employee population. For example, the Leave Absence

Process differs from one country to another, and in the United States, twelve different states and

the District of Columbia each have their own Family and Medical Leave Laws (FMLA).

These important differences create the need for an effective method of assigning and aligning the

right Process to the right employees – and also, the right HR Service Teams who will be serving

those employees. The best practice for managing Process Deployment is through the use of

“Service Catalogs.” The Service Catalog is a list of services that the HR Service Center provides to its

customers, including a description of the service, and the timeframe for fulfillment (SLA).

Hence, an HR BPM solution should provide the ability to Deploy Processes in a targeted manner, by

publishing each Process within one or more Service Catalogs.

Monitor and Analyze the Process To improve a process, it’s essential to understand where and how the process should be changed.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”


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Peter Drucker

Knowing where to change a process requires having the right insights about process performance;

insight gained through analytical tools. The tools will need to allow the user to “drill down” into the

data in order to measure the individual steps and stages within a process, to understand how each

step of the process is performing, and to isolate the root cause of performance issues.

Managing and optimizing a process requires two types of business intelligence:

Monitoring Tools Real-time process-specific metrics enable a manager to see process execution as it’s happening, and

at a glance, deliver the insight to make quick, tactical shifts to optimize the performance of a

Process, based on its current design.

Dashboard view of real-time Process-specific volumes and metrics

Analysis Tools Performance Analysis tools measure each process against a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

such as: Average Processing Time, SLA Achievement Rate, First Contact Closure, First Agent Closure

and First Team Closure. The tools should also measure each step, or stage in the Process, and

support Root Cause Analysis to deliver the correct insights to a process owner, in order to make the

right modifications to a process design, in order to increase its efficiency and effectiveness.


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Graph displaying the average time to complete each step within a Relocation Process

The performance analysis tools should measure each process against a set of Key Performance

Indicators (KPI’s) such as: Average Processing Time, SLA Achievement Rate, First Contact Closure,

First Agent Closure and First Team Closure. The tools should also measure each step, or stage in the

Process.

HR Processes presented against five Key Performance Indicators, with “drill-down” at Leave Type.

Optimize the Process If the Performance Analysis reports reveal bottlenecks, the next step – Optimizing the Process –

means going in, and making changes to the process by removing steps, automating communications,

changing or eliminating a transfer, or making some other change that will increase the overall

efficiency of the process.

This Optimization step is the one that many organizations never reach, because making changes to

an existing system process can be difficult or cost-prohibitive; it may require software customization,

scarce IT resources, time, or other limited resource. Therefore, the BPM toolset should provide a

way to change processes with minimal time and effort.


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“Clearly, a prerequisite for performing business process optimization and simulation is having an

explicit business process model. This business process model graphically shows how the business

process execution and associated strategies are interrelated”

Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012, John Dixon,

The Gartner Group, July 2012

The graphical process model should be the same as described earlier in this paper, at the Design

stage. The HR Process owner should be able to easily “see” the step that needs to be changed,

within that same visual editor, and simply click into that step, and make the change using an

intuitive toolset.

Having the capability to make process changes with an intuitive visual tool means the HR Process

Owners can implement process changes without help from IT or technical resources. This reduces

the cost of system ownership, and enables faster roll-out of new and revised processes.

Summary and Conclusion As more HR Shared Service Centers move toward higher levels of maturity, they’ll inevitably take on

more complex processes. Having the tools and capabilities to take a true BPM approach; tools to

effectively design, test, publish, analyze and optimize their processes, an HR Service Center can

deliver more services with fewer resources. This means having more resources available to invest in

strategic initiatives, and deliver greater value to the organization.

In summary, a comprehensive HR Business Process Management Toolset requires the following

capabilities:


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1. A graphical, visual Process Design tool for designing and building processes with minimal

reliance on IT resources.

2. An intuitive Smart Form builder for designing forms to use in the Processes.

3. Versatile Connectors to ERP, HCM and legacy solutions, to automate processes through data

integration.

4. A Service Catalog module to deploy and align the right Processes to the right Employees.

5. Dashboards that monitor Processes in real-time.

6. Performance Analysis Reports to analyze Processes, and reveal areas for improvement,

through drill-down and root-cause analysis features.

Finally, having the capability to choose between deploying these BPM tools on premise, or in a cloud

computing environment, means any organization can incorporate these tools within their preferred

technology framework.