Q: Let me begin by asking about the relationship between WM Promus and your clients/customers. How would you describe it?
A: We work very closely with our clients. What’s key in that relationship is trust. Trust and reliability. That’s the focus for us. It’s essential because we’re not here to sell technology to organisations; we’re here to deliver something that adds value. As a consultancy, we offer guidance and our expertise. If our clients don’t trust us and know that they can rely on us, it’s difficult to help them with strategy planning or to advise them about what technologies will resolve their issues.
Q: But can I check – you do sell technology licenses?
A: We do indeed. We’re a software and services consultancy. What I mean when I say “we do not sell technology” is that we’re mindful of our client’s real need – to improve an organisations profitability and sustainability – it’s not about the technology, it’s about the end goal. That’s why we are vendor-agnostic. WM Promus partners with leading technology vendors but, for us, it’s not about one ‘BEST’ tool or ‘BEST’ vendor. However, there will be a tool or technology solution that best meets YOUR needs. We work with the best technology solutions but remain vendor agnostic. Working with our clients means taking account of everything – not just the technical aspects of a tool or the licensing costs but other things. What support are they looking for? What’s their internal skill set? What’s the current strategy? What’s available marketplace –wise? There’s lots to consider. And that’s what we do. We take into account what matters to our clients. What it is they need. What is their starting position and so on. It is essential to know your clients and what their business issues are. And also – to keep on top of how happy they are with what we provide them.
Q: And how do you know if they are happy?
A: That’s a good question. Firstly, there’s the obvious. Each client has an account manager and through regular contact, they ensue that we are well aware of any pain or challenges. Also, from the get go, anyone at WM Promus who gets involved with a project or client in anyway is fully briefed. In addition to this is that we’re big promotors of mapping a customer journey. It’s a great start to improving the client experience. It’s something our account managers do throughout the year. Everyone at WM Promus knows how easy it is to believe you are delivering a great service but without standing in the customers shoes and trying to experience what it feels for like them, you could be way off. For example, we will even look at how our invoicing is done. Is there a better way to do it? Not just better for us but better for our clients. In fact, it was doing exactly that which inspired us to create a bot – that’s a software robot – to automatically handle large parts of our invoicing. One of our business areas is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) so it made sense to ask ourselves how can we improve our client’s experience with RPA. And of course, the great thing about RPA is that it delivers 100% accuracy. Perfect for invoicing.
Q: So you leverage your own technology services to drive improvements for your clients.
A: Yes. That’s exactly it. It makes total sense for us to implement RPA internally when it’s an area we are working on with so many clients. In fact, AI, Machine learning, RPA and workflow automation is getting huge interest in the legal sector. RPA really is an opportunity to drive improvements without having to run a major IT project. It’s an easy technology to introduce because the benefits are so obvious to a firm’s workforce. We’re not talking about ripping out existing technology or applications – it’s about software doing the repetitive tasks your employees do (and often hate doing!) – only better. In terms of customer experience, bots are ideal for things like service ticketing, processing customer forms and applications, client onboarding, contact center operations, – a whole load of stuff related to the overall customer experience.
Finally, given that we are talking about automating processes – is there a concern that we introduce too much technology? Are we in danger of introducing unintended negative impacts on the customer experience?
At WM Promus, we love technology – as you would expect. But we’re fully aware that humans beat bots hands down at some stuff. Humans are empathic. They have emotional intelligence. Humans are ingenious. There’s a role for humans and a role for bots – each doing what they’re best at. Leave the bot to get on with the boring process stuff. Humans don’t want to work every day of the year. Why would we? Bots can run for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Your employees will drive improvements using their emotional intelligence. A role for each. It’s the human-bot collaboration that will work – that’s what will deliver improvements. That’s the future.
Back to what I mentioned earlier about the customer journey – it’s not the introduction of technology that causes negative impacts. It’s when organisations employ technology for technologies sake – feeling pressurised to “digitally transform” without pausing to reflect on what their customers need and how you can help them.
Again, another lightbulb moment for us was realising how many customers wanted to use RPA but were very unsure where to start and also reluctant to make a huge initial investment. So we came up with the option of providing RPA as a service. It means our clients have a highly scalable solution with a monthly fee that depends on bot usage instead of an upfront large license fee before seeing any ROI. I mean that’s what organisations want. Isn’t it? A simple solution to automate business processes with no technology overheads. Our product, DigiAssist, offers the benefits of RPA – digital workers on demand, improved efficiency, increased productivity, enhanced accuracy, timeliness, 24/7 availability, operational flexibility and data confidentiality – with the additional benefits of SaaS – lower running costs, reduced time to ROI, increased scalability and ease of use.
We’re back full circle. Knowing what our clients need has informed our growth strategy. Making sure that we grow in the right direction means we can better support our clients. It’s symbiotic. And essential.