Easy-peasy business process digitisation
According to Gartner research, the global content services market is valued at USD10.7bn and grew by 11.7-percent in 2018.
As a major player in multi-industry software products and solutions, German-based Easy Software (Easy), is looking to snag a huge share of that growth.
The EASY ApiOmat platform which enhances Easy’s core business in digitising content and running automated workflows, will be a key component to achieving this, together with the company’s strategy to double the number of their partners in Asia.
Easy’s CEO Dieter Weisshar said, “We have been in the area of digitising content for 29 years.
“But digitising processes, doesn’t make it a better process. It may run faster, but it’s not necessarily the best,” Dieter pointed out.
Winning business process experiences for customers, partners, employees
Brands like Apple, Amazon and Tesla, do not only have one of the highest revenues in their respective industries, but they are experience makers.
Whether a company sells to consumers, to other businesses or even to their internal stakeholders, the experiences they create for these segments are significant. In fact, these experiences are the main point to any digital transformation journey that is taking place right now.
And when any important process within an organisation is digitised, be it for human resource, invoice, contracts, or customer facing application, user experiences can be collected as real-time feedback, also known as experience data or X-Data.
“I think today, most people do not look only at pricing and product factors. They want to have their shopping experience be exceptional as well – they want to be well-treated, with full service.
“The experience is even more important than the product, potentially.”
Some examples of these are the platform owners like WeChat and Grab. They do not only offer instant messaging services or e-hailing services. Instead they have integrated other services onto their respective platforms to be able to offer e-wallets, food delivery and so on.
‘So, the experience companies who can create great customer experience will succeed, not the best product or the best price, but the best end-to-end experience.
“That’s why it is so key to measure (experiences),” Dieter emphasised.
Experience management with rapid prototyping
The traditional way of executing business processes tend to be very paper-based, prone to repetition, prone to human error, as well as was very time-consuming.
Now, Easy proposes to have have all these digitised. And they have done this for over 13,600 customers with a degree of success.
With digitisation, processes get faster and repetitive work is reduced so that the workforce can focus on more value-adding work.
With an experience management solution, every step of the transaction can collect feedback from different stakeholders like customers, suppliers, or even a potential talent.
This is a way of measuring the experience.
After this, the process can be fine-tuned instantaneously, or rapid prototyping can be applied to discern how the process can improve. For example, a presentation at an exhibition booth can produce a QR code for prospects to feedback at – was the presentation well-received, were there any areas missing or lacking?
“This is how we can instantly change our way of working, from the the feedback we receive,” Dieter explained.
He added, “If you look at the area of rapid prototyping and creating digital use cases, we have recently acquired ApiOmat which allows you to create a digital prototype within a day, and a minimum viable product (MVP) that is ready for market with 80-percent functionality, within 4 weeks.
“This is how we speed up the process.”
ApiOmat is a platform that is able to connect to legacy IT systems, and works with connectors for creation of mobile apps. Available SDKs can add further support for voice input and even virtual reality.
This way, companies can start fast and incrementally build a product to see how it can create value.
Easy business process best practice
According to Dieter, their connectors can connect to any ERP solution.
Established ERP solutions may miss support of certain business processes, and this is where Easy’s connectors would plug into transactional systems, take the core business process that needs to be differentiated either by being optimised and efficient or differentiated in terms of experiences to stakeholders – Easy’s solution would take that and make the experience work.
Dieter also claims that Easy is able to connect different ERP solutions within an organisation, and give the business transparency and visibility across the processes involved.
“That is how we connect the dots,” Dieter concluded.