Project Portfolio Management

Guide to Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

by with No Comment Atlassian

Did you know that project portfolio management (PPM) plays an important role in the success of companies? It is a valuable tool for any company that wants to grow and be successful because it helps companies achieve their goals and is no longer just an option for those involved with multiple internal projects, especially those that are very large and complex, but a necessity.

Managing multiple projects can be a daunting task, but with project portfolio management it doesn't have to be! It provides a holistic view that integrates multiple projects into a coherent portfolio and aligns them with strategic objectives. This approach allows decision makers - from CEOs and CIOs to project managers - to see the individual project details and understand how these projects are interconnected and contribute to the overall business goals, making it easier for those responsible for managing the project portfolio to make the right decisions about whether to stop or continue a project, whether to shift resources, etc.

Project portfolio management is critical to business success and enables competitiveness and agility. We will look at its key values and how the integration of technologies such as Jira can increase its efficiency.

Understanding project portfolio management

What is project portfolio management?

Project portfolio management is a strategic approach that enables organizations to manage and evaluate their projects as a cohesive portfolio to ensure they align with overall business objectives. Unlike traditional project management, which focuses on the successful delivery of individual projects, PPM takes a broader perspective. It looks at the entirety of projects as a whole and provides a holistic perspective that is crucial for organizations. This approach helps to manage the complexity and interdependencies of multiple projects, which can have a significant impact on the success of the business.

Project portfolio management with Jira - A dashboard
Project portfolio management with Jira

What does project portfolio management do?

PPM creates clarity and control over the project landscape. It evaluates the alignment of projects with strategic objectives and allocates resources accordingly. This ensures that the most valuable and strategically aligned projects receive the attention and resources they need to be successful.

The most important elements of PPM are

  • Strategic orientation: It ensures that every project in the company is in line with the organization's goals and strategies, thus enabling well-founded decisions on resource allocation.
  • Resource management: It enables a more efficient allocation of resources by treating the projects as a uniform portfolio.
  • Risk management: It involves the identification, assessment and management of risks at portfolio level. This approach helps to mitigate risks that could impact multiple projects and ultimately the organization's strategic goals.
  • Power measurement: PPM involves assessing the performance of the entire project portfolio against strategic objectives and key performance indicators. This assessment is important to make adjustments and ensure that the portfolio is on track to achieve the desired results.
  • Control: Effective project portfolio management requires clear governance structures for transparent decision-making based on strategic objectives.

Managing multiple projects can be difficult for companies. To be successful, project portfolio management is not just about executing projects correctly. It's also about selecting the right projects. PPM provides a structure to evaluate the potential return on investment for each project. This helps those responsible to decide which projects should be prioritized, postponed or cancelled.

Project Portfolio Management

At a glance: Challenges for companies that PPM mitigates

  • Complex project management: It rationalizes the management of several interconnected projects, reduces complexity and improves coordination.
  • Strategic misalignment: It aligns the individual projects with the company's overarching strategic goals and ensures that each project contributes to the overarching goals.
  • Inefficient allocation of resources: It optimizes the allocation of resources across the entire project portfolio and thus prevents over- or under-utilization.
  • Inadequate risk management: It provides a holistic overview of the risks in all projects and thus enables better risk identification, assessment and mitigation.
  • Poor decision making: Improves decision making through comprehensive real-time data and insights into project performance and progress.
  • Inefficient processes: Streamlines workflows and improves operational efficiency through standardized processes and clear communication channels.
  • Budget overrun: Helps with better budget management and control, reducing the likelihood of projects exceeding their financial allocations.

Why even the smallest company needs project portfolio management

Project portfolio management is essential for companies that work on several projects at the same time. It ensures that each project is aligned with the company's overall strategic goals and helps to drive the business forward. PPM provides a comprehensive overview of all projects and helps to prioritize them.

Managing complexity and interdependencies

There are often many projects that overlap and compete for the same resources. Project portfolio management provides a structured approach to managing this complexity by enabling decision makers to recognize the connections and collaborations between different projects. This understanding is crucial to avoid resource conflicts and ensure that each project complements and supports the others, rather than being isolated.

Strategic orientation and prioritization

As companies grow, it becomes more difficult to keep an eye on their goals. Project portfolio management helps to align projects with the company's goals. It prioritizes projects based on their potential impact and alignment with long-term goals. This ensures that resources are allocated to projects with the highest strategic value.

Optimized resource allocation

Large companies must use their resources efficiently in order to be successful. Project portfolio management supports companies in this by allocating resources effectively. Project portfolio management gives you an overview of all current and planned projects so that you can identify and eliminate resource bottlenecks. This ensures that the right resources are available for each project at the right time. By optimizing resource allocation, you can achieve your project goals more efficiently.

Better decision-making

Making informed and agile decisions is critical. PPM provides a data-driven framework for decision-making that offers insights into project performance, risks and benefits. With a clear understanding of these factors, leaders can make quick decisions that adapt to changes in the business environment or shifting strategic priorities.

Risk management and risk mitigation

Major projects can be associated with considerable risks for companies. Project management allows you to identify and assess these risks at a portfolio level. Companies can develop comprehensive risk mitigation strategies to safeguard the entire portfolio by understanding how risks in one project can impact others.

Measuring performance and value

To manage projects effectively, it is important to evaluate their performance against predefined KPIs and strategic objectives and provides tools and metrics to measure this performance and help determine the value of each project to the organization. This evaluation is critical to ensure that projects are aligned with business objectives and to make the necessary adjustments to improve performance.

How to introduce project portfolio management in companies

1. initial assessment and planning

The first step is to assess the existing project management landscape. Identify gaps and align the framework with the organization's strategic goals. Develop a plan that defines the objectives, resource allocation, timeline and milestones.

2. involvement of stakeholders

The involvement of the most important stakeholders is crucial. This group includes executives, project managers and IT staff. Clear communication about the benefits and changes that PPM brings is important to gain the support of the organization.

3. adapting the PPM approach

Adapt the framework to the specific needs and culture of the organization. This customization should take into account scalability for future growth and change.

4. integration with existing systems

Smooth integration with existing systems is essential. This may require technical support to integrate new tools and customize workflows, with a focus on data migration and integrity.

5. piloting

Carry out a pilot phase with selected projects or departments. This step helps to identify potential problems and enables adjustments to be made before a comprehensive rollout.

6. training and support

Provide comprehensive training to ensure that all users are familiar with the new system. Set up a support system that provides continuous support, especially in the initial phase after implementation.

7. monitoring and continuous improvement

Continuously monitor the performance of the PPM system after implementation. Gather feedback to iteratively improve the system and ensure that it effectively meets the needs of the organization.

8. verification and scaling

Review the project portfolio management system regularly based on the defined objectives and key performance indicators. Be prepared to scale and evolve the system as the organization grows and needs change.

By following these steps, large organizations can implement a project portfolio management system that enhances their strategic project management capabilities and aligns with their overall business goals.

Project portfolio management: tools and technologies you can use

Implementing effective project portfolio management in an organization requires the right tools and technologies. These tools enable smoother project management processes and provide key data and insights for informed decision-making. Some categories of tools and specific technologies can significantly enhance capabilities.

Comprehensive project portfolio management software solutions:

Jira

Jira is an all-in-one solution and is characterized by its versatility in the management of agile projects. It enables detailed tracking, planning and reporting, making it ideal for various project management requirements. Other software solutions are Microsoft Project and Primavera from Oracle. These platforms offer robust features such as detailed project planning, resource allocation and budget management.

Collaboration and communication tools:

Platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana or Confluence are essential for effective communication and collaboration within the team. They streamline interactions and ensure that all team members are up to date.

Document management systems:

Efficient document management is the key to effective project management. Systems such as SharePoint and Google Drive enable the secure and accessible storage, sharing and organization of project-related documents.

Advanced analysis and reporting tools:

Tools such as Tableau and Power BI are essential for analyzing project data. They offer advanced analysis and reporting functions and enable those responsible to make data-based strategic decisions.

Risk management software:

Risk management is another important aspect. Special risk management tools help to assess, prioritize and mitigate risks across the entire project portfolio to ensure better control and foresight.

Resource management tools:

Solutions such as Smartsheet and Resource Guru are well suited for managing and allocating resources in projects. They ensure that resources are used optimally and avoid over- or under-utilization.

Agile project management tools:

For those who use agile methods, tools such as Jira and Trello Functions that are specifically tailored to agile project tracking, e.g. sprint planning and scrum boards.

Customized development platforms:

When special requirements need to be met, platforms such as Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce enable the development of customized PPM applications and thus offer tailor-made solutions.

In summary, selecting the right tools and technologies is critical to successful project portfolio management. These tools should be selected based on the organization's specific needs, size and project management methodologies to ensure that they contribute effectively to the process. Jira, with its comprehensive features, is a versatile all-in-one solution suitable for various project management needs.

Project portfolio management with Jira: A game changer with practical applications

A great way to implement project portfolio management is to Jira. By integrating PPM with Jira, you can benefit from a more dynamic, technology-based solution that delivers unprecedented results.

In a recent case study, existing project portfolio management tools were evaluated and specific requirements for an efficient solution were defined. The result was a comprehensive dashboard in Jira that displays all projects with relevant data, including planned and consumed man-days, percentage progress of each project and linking efforts to individual tasks.

The most important elements of this integration included

  • Implementation of a customized workflow: As part of the integration, new task types were defined for functions such as monthly reporting and project planning with resources in order to streamline the process and increase the efficiency of PPM in Jira.
  • Automations and script improvements: The creation of automations in Jira made it possible for necessary information from projects to be automatically available for portfolio management. Scriptrunner was also used to create scripts to extend certain functions and create simple applications that are not possible with Jira automations, e.g. hiding fields or setting write permissions for a field.
  • Resource planning and approval process: As part of the project, a resource planning process was developed that incorporates Jira Service Management's asset management and Jira's standard features. An asset was created for each functional team within a project so that project managers could assign tasks to these assets and initiate an approval process for the required resources.
  • Test and put into operation: The project lasted around five months, during which an agile approach was chosen. The functions were prioritized and tackled using the Jira Advanced Roadmap. Daily stand-ups ensured that progress was tracked and upcoming tasks were coordinated within a cross-functional team.

Jira transforms enterprise PPM by providing a platform that integrates with existing workflows, provides real-time tracking and improves collaboration. It streamlines and scales processes, aligns them with strategic business goals and drives business success.

Find out more about the case in this current Success Story: Project portfolio management with Jira.

Conclusion

In summary, it can be said that the strategic implementation of project portfolio management for large organizations that want to increase their Project processes streamline and align with overarching business goals. With tools like Jira offering comprehensive solutions, organizations can effectively manage diverse project portfolios, ensuring efficient resource allocation, risk mitigation and improved decision making. Jira can also be used to Processes digitized and automated become. The impact on a company's operational efficiency and strategic agility cannot be overestimated.

By taking a tailored approach and using the right tools and technologies, companies can not only optimize their project results, but also drive sustainable growth and secure a competitive advantage in the dynamic business world. PPM is a key pillar in the architecture of successful project management, as companies are constantly evolving.

Project Portfolio Management
Process digitization and automation with Jira

Digitization and automation of processes with Jira

by with No Comment Atlassian

Are you currently considering digitizing and automating the processes of your sales teams? But you're not sure why or how to go about it? Then ask yourself if this scenario sounds familiar to you:

Someone finds an interesting product online, has a question about getting started or about pricing, and sends the company an inquiry. At this point, it happens all too often that the question is not followed up by an answer.

It seems relatively easy to send a customer or prospect a response to their inquiry. But it often happens, especially with SMEs, that inquiries get lost.

This article explains how we have automated and digitized our sales process with Jira.

Overview

  1. Status quo before the automation
  2. Define goals together
  3. Using Jira to digitize a sales process
  4. Digitization and automation in 6 steps
  5. Additional options for automations
  6. Conclusion - Jira, automation and reporting
  7. Our Best Practices
  8. Vision and outlook

Status quo before the automation

We also had to deal with exactly this challenge in our team.

Inquiries about our services and products accumulate through many different channels. These include contact inquiries via our homepage as well as via social media or by telephone.

After an extensive rebranding and search engine optimization of our homepage at the beginning of 2021, these inquiries as well as the interest in our services increased rapidly. While we had established internal responsibilities to create and manage an overview of incoming inquiries. However, due to the number of questions, our channels were overloaded, which meant that individual customer inquiries were lost and often answered weeks later.

Find out why you should digitize your business processes and what benefits you can expect here: Read the article.

Define goals together

As a team, we believe in offering the best possible service to interested prospects and potential customers. That's why we decided to fundamentally restructure and improve our process and implement it with Jira.

To implement our project, we defined 3 basic goals in advance, which we wanted to achieve with the Jira project:

  1. Collect all requests from the different channels in one place (Kanban board) in order to be processed mutually by several team members.
  2. Setting a deadline of 24h until the first contact occurs with a new contact or a new request. For this we have set a SLA of < 24h in the Jira project.
  3. Reduce the manual workload via automations in Jira and automate certain intermediate steps. Since we currently don't have our own sales department, this is particularly important for us.

Using Jira to digitize a sales process

To achieve these goals, we needed an established, digitized sales process that could be easily automated. Jira offers numerous advantages for the implementation of sales processes. Jira makes it possible to integrate all content into one platform and one board. Teams can continue to work efficiently because all necessary customer information as well as information about the communication that took place is stored in the system and can be easily accessed.

In this article, we would like to show you what the concrete implementation with Jira as a basis for sales processes looks like and how we use Jira and workflows for our own sales process.

Jira is a versatile project management tool for departments such as finance, marketing, human resources, and sales. Sales managers can use Jira to channel incoming leads, send automated responses, track processes, or manage quotes.

In Jira, tasks and processes are managed via workflows. A workflow represents the steps of your process and the status that a task (here the request) goes through.

Managing existing and new customer inquiries becomes noticeably easier when you visualize your sales workflow and respond directly to questions about your products or services.

Learn more about Jira and our consulting services

Design of our sales process

At the beginning of our project, we created a conceptual workflow and the individual steps in the process.

The first steps to set up the workflow were:

  1. Brainstorm about the different types of requests.
  2. Evaluating the channels of which requests are coming in.
  3. Detailed discussion, planning, and description of each step in our workflow for new requests.

To create a workflow that meets our requirements, our company's IT and business development experts pooled their content and knowledge. The result represents a flexible workflow with individual processes as well as intermediate steps and partially automated processes.

Even with the most precise planning, it will happen that further adjustments have to be made at a later point in time or additional optimization potential is discovered. This is where a major advantage of Jira comes into play: Changing workflows and automations is uncomplicated and quick, without having to adjust the entire project.

Creation of a Jira project

After defining your own workflow, it is time to integrate it into Jira. To do so, a new project must be created first.

  1. To do this, click on Projects > Show all projects
  2. Then click in the upper right corner on Create project
  3. Select base project* >Enter the name and the project key.

We recommend using the base project template as it provides the best way to track, prioritize, and resolve requests.

Creating the Kanban board in Jira

  1. Next click on Boards > Show all boards
  2. And then in the upper right corner click on Create board
  3. Select Canban board > Select board from an existing project.
  4. Enter the name and select the project that was just created

After the board and project are created, click the Project Settings button to configure preferences such as automation, workflows, SLAs, and users and roles.

Sales Process Kanban Board
Kanban Board in Jira

Digitization and automation in 6 steps

The following tasks and settings must be adjusted after the project and Kanban board have been created:

  1. Automatic conversion of requests into tickets by linking the various channels
  2. Creation of a workflow and the individual statuses
  3. Defining the SLAs
  4. Creation of automations for different process steps
  5. Kanban board configuration including columns and swimlanes
  6. Definition of responsibilities and notifications

This section provides a rough overview of how we implemented our sales process concept into Jira using workflows and automations. Due to the scope, the following points are only a small insight into the project. If you are interested, we would be happy to discuss the project in detail in a separate meeting.

1. Automatic conversion of requests into tickets

To begin with, it must be ensured that all incoming e-mails containing inquiries are automatically processed by the system. To achieve this, Jira needs to integrate the email system. This setting can be changed under Project Settings > Email Request . Make sure that…

  • you have the authorization to manage the project.
  • public registration or adding clients is enabled for your project to ensure that you receive new requests.
  • have your email channel enabled so that you can use your sales email address to create new requests.
  • have set up an appropriate request type and selected it, so that the requests created from emails are assigned this request type.

After the setup, the incoming requests are transferred and automatically converted into tickets. All requests are thus on one board, which enables the team to work together on these requests without having to keep an eye on the various inboxes.

2. Creation of a workflow as well as the individual statuses

Furthermore, a workflow must be created. For a flexible workflow, it is important to select a Software Simplified Workflow Scheme and to create a link between the individual statuses so that the status of each ticket in this workflow can be transferred to any other status. This creates high flexibility and ease of use. Using the Simplified Workflow, the contents in the Kanban board (including columns and statuses) can be changed at any time.

The workflow for the sales process can then be adapted to an individual, personalized workflow based on the requirements collected during the conceptual design phase. A sales workflow structure can look like the following:

Defining the SLAs

Good customer service ensures that customers remain loyal to you. An important part of good customer service is responsiveness. With Jira, you can achieve good responsiveness and keep your sales team on track by setting SLAs on how quickly requests should be handled. We set the SLA in our workflow to 24h. If the SLA time remaining to review a request is <60 minutes, our assigned team members will be notified.

SLAs can track the following properties:

  • Respond to all inquiries within X hours.
  • Completion of high-priority requests within X hours.
  • Warning about the expiration of an SLA at X minutes before expiration.

Creation of automations for different process steps

In addition to SLAs, additional automations can be created. You can add "When" triggers, "If" conditions and "Then" actions. These parameters define the process and create the automation. For example, for the initial meeting with a new contact, we implemented the first step of our sales process with automations. Thus, a new contact receives an automated mail in advance that we have received his inquiry and are taking care of his request. The status of the request is changed from New to Confirmed.

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Additional options for automations

As a next step, we would like to set a first meeting with the interested party to talk about their request and to present our services and way of cooperation. For this, a specific assignee from the team must be associated with the ticket. Furthermore, the ticket must be given either the label lead-de or lead-en.

If, for example, the user XY is set as assignee and the label lead-en is set, the contact will receive an automatic email from the user XY with his meeting link in English. To kick off this automation, the ticket in the Kanban board only needs to be dragged to the Schedule Appointment status field.

Example: Automation Rule

WHEN: status changed > IF: issue matches status = Schedule appointment AND assignee = User XY AND label = lead-en > THEN: send email = Template "Answering contact" AND transition issue = Waiting for appointment AND add comment = 'XALT Bot: Invitation to phone conversation sent'.

Other automations include simple acknowledgement of receipt, a reminder to the customer if there is no response within 72 hours, and an update of the ticket status to Appointment if the customer has signed up for a time slot via the meeting link.

Conclusion - Jira, automation and reporting

In our automated Jira project, we can now answer and process requests easily and flexibly. Due to our SLAs and the bundling of all requests on a project and Kanban board, no requests are lost anymore and we can provide a good service to all contacts. Through tracking and document management in Jira, it is still possible to easily provide all stakeholders with information about the customer, their interests, and relevant documents such as quotes or contracts.

Additional benefits of the implementation are Jira's extensive reporting feature, which gives us insight into how many requests have arrived at the board and how their process flow has taken place.

"Anything that can be digitized will be digitized." - Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Our Best Practices

Our sales process works without an extensive sales team. There are two project owners who have the task of processing the existing requests and ensuring that none of them are lost. The workflow is designed flexible and open, so that consultants who want to process a request themselves have the opportunity to do so according to the workflow. For the various steps in the workflow, from the initial contact to the preparation of the offer, internal contacts with the necessary knowledge are also stored, which can be contacted in the event of a blocker.

In our internal projects, we always follow the philosophy of creating a holistic system consisting of the input of different stakeholders, which in turn creates output and value in different directions, such as customer service or marketing. For this very reason, we have kept our workflow flexible and merged different departments, such as Marketing and Sales, for the project. This ensures that different teams and groups in your company work together, creating synergy effects and team spirit.

Our marketing managers therefore also have access to the project and the Kanban board, which allows them to view the progress of a contact in our sales funnel. The marketing team can accordingly plan marketing activities and provide contacts with further, informative and relevant information about their request.

Vision and outlook

If you think one step further, you could also include Operations personnel and when the status reaches the Offer column, an email is automatically sent to Operations with all the necessary information.

The created quote is sent and the status on the Kanban board is moved to the Closed Won or Closed Lost column depending on whether the quote is accepted or rejected. This again activates an SLA that sends an internal reminder to Operations after 14 days, for example, to check payment receipts.

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Advantages of digital business processes

Advantages of digital business processes

by with 2 Comments Agile

Digital transformation, cloud technologies, and automation of business processes are key topics in enterprises around the world. This is hardly surprising, given the fact, that new technologies enable businesses to be more productive, save resources, or provide a better customer experience at any given point in time.

By digitizing business processes companies can expect to achieve a broad variety of benefits. Continue reading to find out which benefits of digitized business processes you can expect to gain.

Why digitize?

According to McKinsey research, by “digitizing information-intensive processes, costs can be cut by up to 90 percent and turnaround times improved by several orders of magnitude”. Your particular situation will dictate the return on investment, but such digitization has tremendous potential in most businesses and is worthy of an investigation to look for the best opportunities.

If you take into account, that countless companies still rely on manual or analog business processes, this isn’t surprising. Using pen and paper, Microsoft Excel sheets, and having to print out documents just to sign them and then scan them again, isn’t state of the art.

Time is of the essence, not only to free up resources, but also to stay ahead of the competition. Replacing outdated techniques with modern (and cloud-based) software solutions can help you get urgent improvements done in one fell swoop.

Organizations can automatically collect data that can be analyzed to determine the efficiency of processes, identify cost drivers, and identify the root causes of risks. The monitoring of performance data in real time enables managers to proactively address problems before they become critical.

Cost reduction and time saving are just two of the key benefits of digital business processes you can expect.

Further advantages of digital business processes

Streamlining workflows

The inputs and outputs that go into a process can be difficult to monitor with manual processes. In contrast, digitalizing your processes lets you explore and automate each step and decision in a way that removes pain points. It reduces process friction and optimizes workflows.

Using preconfigured kickoff triggers, decision points, notifications, and centralized task details, your team can keep things on track. Especially when you are streamlining processes between business units, across locations, or even across distributed workforces.

Merge different data silos

Using a process digitization platform that facilitates flexible system integrations enables your team to break down data silos that slowed productivity and hold back improvements. By digitizing processes, your team can stop spending time and money on the cumbersome, costly, and time-consuming process of pulling data from multiple sources and instead use tools to request data in real-time.

For example, in order to improve your digital product, you can use tools that pull data from customer service, usage data from your apps, and data from sales meetings. This way, you’ll easily find out, what your users really need and want.

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Ensure adherence to compliance guidelines

If you digitize and improve documentation management, you'll be able to meet compliance and safety requirements in a timely, accurate way, regardless of the practices you use internally or the regulations you follow.
Specific measures can be added and an auditable record of each step can be automatically generated by a tool like Jira, so you can keep track of compliance. This way, you can prevent important steps from being missed in a regulated process.

Learn how to digitize and automate a process with Jira: Read the article.

Enabling and accelerating business growth

By focusing on getting their work done and engaging with each other, rather than searching for documentation or researching ideas, your team will be able to focus on their mission and more strategic matters.
As a result, going digital will enable your organization to modernize its processes while also accelerating the growth of its business.

According to Gartner, digitizing ITSM processes alone will reduce operational costs by up to 60% by optimizing and automating customer support requests and providing valuable information beforehand.

This might also interest you

Advantages of digital business processes

Advantages of digital business processes

By digitizing business processes, companies benefit from a whole range of positive effects. Learn more in this article

Show me the advantages

Success factors - Why you should not hesitate

You don’t have to look far to start improving, but what you can do is start with the one that generates the biggest impact.

Determine what your digital process should look like and what you want to achieve.
Using digital tools allows you to revamp the entire process and built It up from scratch. As mentioned, you can integrate automation in certain steps. For example, send out follow-up emails in HR processes to inform applicants about the current status in the hiring process. Doing so enables you to reduce turnover times to your desired minimums.

Start by defining your goals

Starting at the back and defining what you want to achieve by going digital enables you to approach unbiased.

Deliver an exceptional experience along the entire customer journey

Digitizing only some stages along the customer journey will improve efficiency and performance in certain areas (and to some extent improve customer experience), but in order to deliver a truly unique experience, the entire journey should be accounted for.

To improve the customer experience, you need to involve all teams involved along the customer journey. That means product management, development, sales, marketing and consulting teams.

❗️To make the experience truly remarkable, add the customer to the equation. Talk to him about his expectations, desires, and where he thinks you can improve. This allows you to create processes centered around the customer.

This way, you can create processes that are focused on the customer.

The process digitization team needs support from all functions involved in customer contact if it is to improve the customer experience from start to finish.

This also means that you should not forget the internal processes. Project management, customer onboarding, marketing automation or sales.

Recruit the talent you need to make it happen

Digital transformation isn’t a simple task. Next to the right approach, enterprises also need the right people and skillsets to get started. In order to digitize processes quickly, companies can start a center of excellence that facilitates new skill sets and roles.

Another approach enterprises use is to closely work with digitization experts and consultants on a long-term basis. Hiring external partners for just a single project only tackles one problem at a time but disregards the big picture. Build lasting relationships with vendors and grow together.

Summary

Digitizing processes is more than just moving existing ones to digital tools. Questioning the status quo and imagining what the future should look like encourages you to think differently. To get started with digitization and transforming your business, choose one or two key processes, develop best practices and implement them company-wide. Once this is done, start scaling from there.

Remember: To succeed and to leverage all positive benefits of digitizing business processes, you have to have defined a specific goal beforehand and hire experts in the field of digital transformation. May they be internal staff or external consultancies.

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Digitized business processes for an improved customer and user experience

Digitized business processes for an improved customer and user experience

by with No Comment Agile

Customers buy from companies that offer them the best, most seamless, and easiest digital experience.

In today’s world, speed is everything. Being the first on the market and fastest on delivering new features or fixing bugs or shipping products within a day improves user experience and customer satisfaction. Digital business processes are an incremental part of realizing this and are a must-have in a globalized world to meet the expectations of your users and customers.

Automating and digitizing processes for a consistently positive customer experience?

As consumers, customers, and employees, we are spoiled. Big eCommerce companies like Amazon have achieved almost a 100% rate of automated direct-to-consumer processes. This enabled them to offer a unique and seamless user experience along every touchpoint; from the initial contact to receiving the package at our front porch and even returning it to their warehouse.

We log in to our bank account and every transaction we have ever made can be easily checked. Transactions are automatically processed by your banks' ERP system and transmitted to a web interface. All of that happens in an instant and without any human interaction.

Remember, when you had to call an airline to book a flight for your next business trip or holiday? Remember all the hassle you had to go through? You had to talk to customer service, transmit your payment information, only to get confirmation and tickets by mail. Today you just need to search for flights on the internet, pay and you’re good to go.

Customer Experience the key to success?

How about B2B sales processes? Ask yourself, how long does it take for your enterprise to answer contact form submissions? One hour? One or two days? Even Longer? Do you have an automated delivery system to notify people in charge? Do you automatically follow up after a certain period? Do you send out an automated thank you message after form submission?

Customers want to be engaged quickly. If they don’t hear from you sometime soon, they most likely move on to one of your competitors.

So, if you take a closer look, digitized and automated business processes are everywhere, hard to miss, and part of our daily lives.

Wondering what benefits you can gain from digitizing and automating business processes? Find out more here.

Digitalization is on the rise and more important than ever before

Business processes are being fundamentally revamped in many industries to meet customers' and users' expectations. Companies that get it right can offer lower prices due to lower costs, better operational controls, and fewer risks.

But just digitizing an existing process is not enough. These processes tend to be biased, hard to go through, and not state of the art.

Digital processes should be easy to follow and built to simplify individual steps for your users or customers. You definitely should not just copy and paste an analog process into a digital environment but rather redesign and rebuild it from scratch and merge best practices with digital capabilities.

This means,

  • cut project steps that don’t add value to reduce complexity,
  • reduce the number of documents needed (often one is more than enough),
  • automate decision making steps and notifications,
  • and reduce the number of approvers to a minimum.

Digitized business processes and data collection

To meet today's standards and to outpace your competitors, acquiring and analyzing data is key to business success. Digitized corporate processes enable you to collect key data more easily and subsequently make better decisions. For example, you can collect customer support data on SLAs to improve your ITSM process, or customer behavior data in digital marketing to improve website content, ads, and KPIs.

Yet, digitizing corporate processes is just the beginning. To match the reimagined processes, operating models, skills, organizational structures, and roles often need to be redesigned.

Business team collaboration

Marketing or sales teams need to closely work together and include data in their decision-making process to delight customers along their entire journey. Marketing, for example, may learn how long and how often a specific visitor has already spent on specific pages before contacting sales. This data in return can be used by sales in future customer meetings.

Customer support and success teams can use digital tools such as Jira Service Management and well-designed support portals in conjunction with a help center to build a self-service solution. This allows them to focus exclusively on high-priority support tickets that require personal customer interaction. According to ServiceNow and Gartner, using modern ITSM solutions reduces face-to-face contact by 40% and 72%, respectively, compared to contact by phone and email.

Redesigning and digitizing a process is the first step. To fully leverage digital possibilities, new roles have to be created in your teams. Roles like Data Analyst / Scientist and User Experience Designer are two of the most important.

Conclusion

Processes can be digitized and automized for countless reasons, or business teams. But before you start, you should ask yourself: “What purpose and goal do I want to achieve?”

Getting this done beforehand simplifies the next steps and questions you need to answer. Questions like, what tools or software do we need? Do we need to hire new staff that manages the digitization, or are responsible for reaching the desired goals? How do I make sure that existing staff are able to use the new tools? Do I need to onboard them and hire an expert?

Going digital enables you not only to increase performance or to save money but ultimately will delight your customers (directly and indirectly) and thereby improve customer experience and happiness.

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Advantages of digital business processes

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Application process with Jira

Fast and efficient application processes with Jira

by with One Comment Atlassian

"The biggest challenge I face right now is long lead times. Active candidates want a job NOW or as soon as possible. In my own company, the time to fill positions has increased from about a month to two months now. It's always difficult to retain the best candidates during that time period..."

- Glen Loveland, HR Manager, Global Talent Acquisition of CGTN

In many growing companies, a standardized and formal application process is needed. Among other things, to manage the effort of onboarding additional employees or hiring new ones. Part-time consultants, external recruiting firms or HR departments are often not an option for smaller companies due to the high costs involved. Therefore, it makes sense to get involved with HR management early on and build an internal application process, thus ensuring the next phase of the company's growth.

Each new application increases the administrative capacity. For small, growing companies, ways must therefore be found to manage this effort efficiently. One of the first tasks is to make the basic processes as efficient as possible. Choosing the wrong tools often requires a lot of manual effort. That's why the best approach would be to use software that automates much of the administrative work of the application process. In our opinion, one of the best tools to achieve this is Jira Service Management.

A quick note to all readers: If they've never heard of Jira Service Management, they should take a look at this Product Guide. It will give you a brief overview of the tool and how to use it: Jira Service Management & Ticketing.

How our solution works

Jira Service Management (JSM) is a versatile project management tool for departments such as finance, marketing, sales, and human resources. Among other things, HR managers can use Jira Service Management to recruit new employees, track applicant interviews, or manage applicant pools. Basically, JSM can be configured so that each new application automatically creates a ticket, which you can assign to individual employees or teams (e.g. HR). In doing so, your entire applicant management is greatly simplified with a visualized workflow. With this, you can also react quickly to comments on applications and adapt quickly to changes. For example, you can quickly ask applicants to submit work samples, references, etc. via the comment function. In Jira Service Management, you can: (1) Manage tasks and processes through workflows. (2) Show steps and status of a task in the workflow. (3) Customize the type and manner of the workflow. (4) Modify individual specific tasks or the entire flow of the workflow.

A standard Jira workflow might look like this:

Here is a brief overview of what is possible with Jira Service Management and the benefits of using Jira for recruiting. Furthermore, we explain how we plan and manage our HR processes with the powerful Atlassian tool.

1. tracking of applicants

An important application for Jira in recruiting is applicant tracking. Tasks for applicants, such as uploading all important documents, are created automatically with it.
Depending on how you design your application process, you can set your candidate's ticket status to 'done' when the process is complete. If they still have other tasks to complete, such as background checks or administrative work, they can set the task to 'in progress'. In addition, special subtasks can be set up under 'in progress', such as 'call' or 'invite' if you want to get to know applicants better after the initial screening. Such tasks can be repeated each time a new candidate enters the application process.

2. manage relevant files

When recruiting for a job opening in your company, you often receive hundreds of applications with different attachments. With Jira, managing these documents is very convenient. All you have to do is select a specific ticket and click on the attachments icon. All relevant documents are added there automatically with an automated workflow.
Additionally, their team members responsible for recruiting can easily communicate the progress of an application in the comments section within a single ticket. Additionally, other team members can be mentioned in the internal comments, allowing for smooth and streamlined team communication.

3. creating an individualized Jira workflow

With Jira Service Management you can manage workflows, tasks and subtasks and complete them in parallel. Jira is a versatile tool that can be adapted to the requirements of your application process and your team. For example, the status workflow can be tailored to your process, even if it includes multiple intermediate steps (e.g. multiple interviews per applicant).
In addition, you can create a modifiable Kanban board to keep track of your recruiting stream and progress.

4. measure performance

Since Jira is a project management tool, you can accurately measure the performance of your workflows and your team members. For example, the average time from application to hire of your candidates. Thanks to the detailed reports, it's easy to identify potential bottlenecks and eliminate them before they become problems.
Formalizing and automating hiring workflows also leads to a more productive and satisfied workday for recruiters. With Jira, you ensure that your responsible team members can spend more time reviewing candidates, which also leads to better and more thoughtful candidate selection.

5. onboarding

Finally, you can also use Jira for the onboarding process of your new employees. We recommend that they customize and enhance their onboarding process in the Jira project with team-building events. You can easily record all important information, such as equipment provided or training results needed for onboarding.

How we implemented our Jira workflow

Over the past year, our teams have grown rapidly. The large number of new applications and onboardings has presented challenges for our HR specialists. As a result, we had to go through new applications every week, manually reviewing them and creating a series of identical topics and tasks. Ultimately, we decided to set up a new Jira workflow. In the workflow, several steps are automated, including the creation of various specific subtasks, descriptions and text templates.

First steps and basics

The first steps to setting up our workflow were: (1) Brainstorming about the various open positions in our company. (2) Planning out each step in our new Jira workflow. For the workflow, our IT and business development professionals pooled their knowledge. The result was: a workflow with individual processes in 5 superordinate steps as well as automated intermediate steps and required action fields. Here you can see a short excerpt from our workflow from the steps 1. application receipt and 2. application verification.

Despite the carefully thought-out steps, our workflow had some shortcomings at the beginning. After the first practical use, however, we were able to quickly identify these shortcomings and the workflow was adapted. This is another advantage of Jira: changing workflows and automations is quick and easy. Changes can be made at any time without having to adapt the entire project.

Creation of Jira workflow and Kanban board

Once you have defined your own workflow, it is time to integrate it into Jira. To do this, you first need to create a new project.

  1. Click on Projects > Show all projects
  2. Click in the upper right corner on Create project
  3. Select the basic project* > Enter the name and the key of the project

*We recommend using the base project. This offers the best possibilities to track, prioritize and resolve requests (or in other words: applications).

  1. Click on Boards > Show all boards
  2. Click on Create board in the upper right corner
  3. Select Kanban board > Board from an existing project select
  4. Enter the name and select the project you have just created for the board

After the board and project are created, click the Project Settings button. Here you can set automation, workflows, SLAs, and users and roles. We show an example of how we designed our workflow and Kanban board. We are happy to provide more information upon request. There is also detailed documentation on customizing workflows in Jira from Atlassian: Jira Workflow Overview

For the Kanban board in our Jira project we use 7 columns with a total of 22 Status. For a fast workflow it is important: (1) To choose a simplified workflow schema. (2) Create a cross link between the individual statuses. Thus, the status of each ticket in this workflow can be transferred to any other status. This creates flexibility, ease of use, and a simplified workflow for the Jira project. With the simplified workflow, the content of the Kanban board (including columns and statuses) can be changed at any time.

E-mail forwarding

After that, you have to define that all applications received as e-mail are automatically linked to the project. In other words, all email applications should automatically create a ticket in your configured project. To achieve this, you should integrate Jira with your email system. This setting can be configured under Project settings > E-mail request change. Make sure that you have the...

  • Have permission to manage projects.
  • enabled public logon or adding customers to your Service Desk project.
  • have set up appropriate request types as required visible fields.

Click hereto learn more about receiving requests by email. See the following guide for the Email Troubleshooting if you encounter any problems while setting up the e-mail channel.

After the setup, the incoming applications are now transferred and automatically stored in Jira Tickets converted. This allows your team to focus on applicants immediately without having to manually deal with multiple inboxes.

Automation with Jira

Automation is one of Jira Service Management's greatest strengths. The simplest example is automation after receiving an application. When someone applies to your company, a ticket is created and the ticket is moved to the "New" column with an "Open" status. The goal of this automated process is to thank applicants for applying to us and let them know that we have received their documents and will review them in a timely manner.

You can "If"-Trigger, "If."-conditions and "Then"-Add actions. These parameters determine the flow and generate the automation. The automation for receiving the application must be set as follows:

IF: Issue created OR status changed > IF: Issue matches status = Open > THEN: Send email = Template "Reply Applicant(s)" AND Change Issue = Request/Application confirmed AND Add comment = 'XALT Bot: Request/Application received and confirmed' AND Change Issue = Assignor changed to User XY AND Alert User = User XY

You can also additional automations as SLA (Service Level Agreement). This rule alerts you or the assigned person when SLAs are at risk, so you can keep track of time-critical issues. For example, assigned users can be alerted after a certain time if a request or application has not been processed within a given time. We set the SLA in our workflow to 16h and automation:

IF: SLA remaining time = at risk (30 min remaining time) > IF: Problem applies = all problems > THEN: Alert user = user XY

Individual adaptation for your benefit

Of course, application processes vary from company to company. Therefore, you should complete the following tasks so that our workflow fits your individual process:

  • Customize the workflow to your application process. Pre-Screening, General, Shortlist
  • Create an issue for each role and use subtasks to track candidates
  • Customize the Kanban board to create the desired view of your HR stream
  • Implement and use text templates and your CRM system

Conclusion

The benefits of Jira Service Management are extensive. Because Jira is, in contrast to other tools from the recruitment sector, very inexpensive (from 10USD/month) and has significantly more functions. Furthermore, it is very easy to use (even for people who do not come from the IT industry). Furthermore, Jira allows automated workflows, which makes it possible to achieve enormous efficiency and speed.

Especially as a small and growing company, it is important to be able to react quickly to an application. Valuable applicants are otherwise invited to the next, larger company for an interview and are lost to you. A fast workflow is a first step to solve this problem.

This blog post is intended to provide some initial guidance. Of course, we welcome feedback and are happy to provide more detailed information on our workflows, templates and processes. Further information is also available on our solution page Jira Applicant Management Tool to find.