Why Employees – Not Customers – Should Be at the Heart of Modernization

By Milan Shetti, CEO Rocket Software

It may sound counterintuitive since most people associate modernization with technology, but the focus of any modernization effort needs to be people. Whether its employees, partners, or customers, organizations are determining how to modernize their operations—and people matter in the modernization process. But one audience takes priority – and that’s employees.

With key workflows modernized, employees can accomplish tasks more efficiently, increase productivity, have higher job satisfaction, and add more value to their organization.

Let’s look at a couple of ways in which modernization enhances the employee experience and drives higher quality outcomes. 

Reduce monotonous work for employees

Mainframes process huge volumes of information every month, and even minor dips in efficiency can compound into significant costs. Many of these transactions consist of repetitive and time-consuming actions that are still manually handled by employees using green-screen interfaces that aren’t user-friendly. As a result, millions of dollars are spent paying people to engage with tedious systems.

No one enjoys spending their days on monotonous, repetitive work that they know automation could be doing for them. These types of tasks create frustration, burnout, and lead to high turnover rates, which costs an organization more time (and money) to find and train new employees—especially in today’s highly disrupted and competitive job market. Companies are already having a hard time finding good IT talent and retaining it because of the Great Resignation and the skills gap in mainframe computing. When employees are accomplishing more fulfilling work, their mental health and productivity improve – which correlates with business success. Modernizing employee workflows frees them from tiresome work so they can channel their talents towards growing the business and seeing rewards.

Drive better outcomes

Manual processes aren’t just time-consuming and cost-inefficient– they are also more likely to lead to user errors that risk impacting business outcomes. These errors may go unnoticed for some time, until the impacts reach across business operations or are discovered by internal or external audits. In the worst-case scenario, this can result in costly penalties and fines.  Businesses can minimize the likelihood of these types of errors and deliver higher quality, more precise results by modernizing and automating workflows.

Engaging automation can ensure around-the-clock compliance for highly regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, and cybersecurity that often rely on legacy technology. Rather than replacing a human, automation can support them to do better work and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. With this added level of quality assurance, employees can spend less time checking for and resolving errors and more time crossing tasks off their to-do lists.

Automating customer service and support workflows also brings added value to organizations. Converting time-consuming tasks like data entry, tracking and escalation into automated workflows allows your customer service representatives to focus on higher-value customer interactions instead of more operational tasks. This prioritizes the personal interactions that make a real impact on customer experiences.

Organizations can modernize the customer experience even further by implementing self-service tools like IT service desks and automated chatbots. These tools provide customer support and services that meet the expectations of today’s modern consumers. As a result, customers will be more satisfied with their experience, increasing loyalty and improving the business’s reputation.

Begin the modernization journey

The modernization journey involves multiple phases and should be responsive to changes within and outside of an enterprise. This means organizations need tools that can adapt to meet their evolving needs and teams to support them throughout the process. Learn more about how Rocket can help organizations get started or continue on their modernization journey.