2020 got off to a fantastic start for Dynamo’s Service Delivery Centre cluster with our first sector specific event, which sold out in days!
Automation Innovation, hosted by BT at their Gosforth site, saw 4 fantastic speakers take us through the journey from pre automation, to mistakes made and lessons learned, before we considered where to find the right talent and what to do with people freed up by low level processes being automated.
Accenture’s Helen Waller offered insight into where to start. How you choose the right processes for automation and what you need to get in order before you begin, as well as a look at what becomes possible in terms of scale if you make all the right preparations. Helen shared with us Accentures ‘unwritten rule’: Never automate a bad process.
Lesley Pearson made a special visit to the North East from her usual base in Bristol, where she heads up Contact IVR & Routing for BT, to talk about BT’s automation journey and the challenges they’ve faced. These include working with systems that have been in place for many years and how difficult it can be to change the way something is being done, particularly when it’s on such a large scale. Lesley’s talk demonstrated that even contact centre giants like BT, who began automating while many weren’t even thinking about it yet, still have obstacles to overcome and a need for continuous reflection and improvement.
What do you do when things don’t quite go to plan? P&G’s Sinead Devine was happy to tell us about times things haven’t quite worked out the first time and how to ensure success from an initial failure. Sinead also touched upon how challenging it can be to bring your organisation on the journey with you and how to try and get key stakeholders on board, including pairing a service centre professional with a techie to collaborate on a project.
Attendees broke off into discussion groups to reflect on what they’d heard and how it compares to their own organisation’s automation journeys, before we heard from Institute of Coding’s Xander Brouwer about the strength of the IoC in the region and how they’re able to support with up-skilling existing workforce and supporting people into moving on into more meaningful roles.
The key topics of discussion were reflected in a panel discussion at the end of the evening and focused around:
People – getting them on board with automation, finding the right skills to automate and re-skilling the existing workforce
Planning – where to begin, who to work with and knowing which tech to use
Process – which processes to begin with and getting it right, how to manage and understand all the data generated
We’ll be looking at these talking points to consider how Dynamo can best support businesses through this journey. To be the first to hear about our future Service Delivery Centre events sign up to our newsletter now: http://eepurl.com/gR5DPH
