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Moving Beyond Automation to

Process Innovation
Having invested in automating back office processes to make them
more efficient and less costly, executive leadership today is focusing
on ways to increase the value delivered to customers through front
office processesany touch point where employees communicate
directly with customers.
This requires that you be able to move beyond automation to
innovation in delivering what customers value the most.
But there are certain prerequisites. When you move to energize
processes through innovations such as mobile devices, cloud-based
applications, social networking and telepresence (to name just a few),
success will depend on how well your document processes and
information infrastructure have been engineered to support them.
Innovating for Customer Value
When we review processes, the real criterion should be how well they
deliver whats of real value to the customer:
We can determine the value of a work activity by simply looking at
the customers willingness to pay for it. When work is strongly
requested by customers, we need to sense the core need behind the
request, and try to deliver the exact value the customer wants. If a
work process is not valued by customers, we should remove as much
of that activity as possible from the business.
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Automation has, and should continue to eliminate many of these non-
value add tasks, both in back-office and increasingly in customer-
facing business processes as well. But once automation has
accomplished our goals for efficiency and cost control, the focus needs
to shift to process innovation. The point is the customer doesnt see
value in your processes; they see value in services delivered to them.
For example, by automating your invoicing processes (either tackled
in-house or by outsourcing the entire process to a managed service
provider), you can help reduce error-prone and time-consuming

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Irie, Hiroyuki, Workstyle Innovation: A Proven Methodology for Productivity
Improvement and Organizational Effectiveness, Cisco Internet Business Solutions
Group (IBSG), September 2012.

Dominic Keogh, Marketing Director,
Ricoh Europe, Leader, Global Services
Competency Centre Marketing
Communications
About Dominic
Since joining Ricoh Europe in 1991, Dominic
Keogh has held a number of senior product
management roles in Europe and North
America.
After serving as Sales and Marketing
Director for Fuel, an industry training
specialist, Keogh returned to Ricoh Europe
as Marketing Director for Managed
Document Services (MDS), which also
incorporates the Outsourcing Services
Business.
In addition, Dominic is a Leader of the
Global Services Competency Centre
Marketing Communications team in Japan.



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manual processes, managing invoices more quickly and efficiently for
cost reduction, faster revenue recognition and smoother quarterly
closings.
But at this point, focus should shift to process innovation. For example,
arming and training staff with social media tools and techniques to
engage more deeply with customers via their mobile devices. They
enable them to understand customers better, and more effectively
attend to their concerns and needs, especially the exceptions, the
customer anomalies that do not fit easily into established procedures.
In this case, innovation can help turn whats considered a back-office
process into a customer-facing opportunity, with the potential for a
very real impact on retention and increasing the lifetime value of the
customer.
Process Innovation: A Retail Banking Scenario
Forward-looking banks across the globe are already innovating front-
office processes, using social networks and Web 2.0 technology to get
closer to customers, and better differentiate themselves.
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In the U.S., Wells Fargo supports customer contact through
Facebook and Twitter;
Spains BBVA aggregates account balances and transactions in
one place, categorizes the transactions, and automatically
generates special offers keyed to customers financial needs;


Fidor Bank, a German startup, relies heavily on technologies,
using blogs, forums, and an active presence on social
networking sites to communicate with customers.
Telepresence is making inroads in front-office processes through in-
house development leveraging publicly available applications like
Skype, or using a managed telepresence service.
How might this work? Say a customer calls or walks into a local branch
office trying to decide on the right mortgage for a new home. The
questions the customer needs answered the real opportunity for
engagement are best put to a bank loan origination officer not
available locally.

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Bussmann, Johannes, Paul Hyde, and Jrg Sandrock, Banking on Social Media.
strategy + business, Booz & Company, May 24, 2011.



Telepresence is
making inroads in
front-office processes
through in-house
development
leveraging publicly
available applications
like Skype, or using a
managed telepresence
service.


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If a managed telepresence service were in place, the customer could
speak live to someone with the right expertise via real-time video,
audio and interactive media set up at a dedicated booth or kiosk.
The bank officer and customer can review options, discuss and
change criteria and see the resulting payment schedules in real time.
And, with the required forms online, initiate a loan application with a
keystroke by automatically filling in already known information.
The customer could view and retain information in a useful format,
such as a loan workbook on screen, or have the information sent to
their mobile device.
Customers Expect Seamless CommunicationsCan
You Keep Up?
The ability to quickly find, collect and apply customer information is
fundamental to such a deeper engagement. A virtual presence does
little good if the customer ends up frustrated by lack of information,
or the inability to gather and submit the information required to
move forward. Waiting for a bank loan officer on screen is just as
frustrating as waiting for one in person!
Prerequisite to the success: the bank must have already automated
and optimized its document and information processes. Important
customer account information, accurate and up-to-date, must be
instantly available to both parties, e.g., credit rating, current
mortgage, debt, available loan packages, etc.
And it must be consistently available across all channels through
which banks communicate with customersbecause customers will
use any and all of them.
One of the main characteristics of empowered customers is their
expectation to have timely and personalized interactions with
businesses. Customers expect products or service when they want it
and almost as importantly through the channel they want to engage
through. As such, the proliferation of multi-channel customer
interactions presents business with numerous opportunities.
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To stick with our banking scenario described earlier, the data from
multiple sources within and outside the bank infrastructure (e.g.

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PInder, Aly and Omer MInkara, Voice of the Customer: Empowered Customers Bring
a Wealth of Business Insight, Aberdeen Group, April 2013.



Waiting for a bank
loan officer on screen is
just as frustrating as
waiting for one in
person!


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credit reports) must be able to flow freely across contact points, from
phone service centers, to tellers at distributed branches, to
telepresence-enabled loan originators.
This requires automatic interactions between different internal and
external processes and the coordination of information across diverse
channels of customer communication. Customers do not like providing
their basic information multiple times to the same organization:
address and telephone number or, in healthcare, basic health history
that is already on file.
Moving Forward with Process Innovation
The next time you review your processes for potential areas of
improvement, look beyond achieving internal efficiency and cost
containment goals. Evaluate how well they deliver value of most
direct benefit to customers, identifying and eliminating non-value-
added activities.
Look to process readiness to support innovation: If your staff is
empowered to engage the customer through mobile devices and
social networking, or is available through telepresence, would they
have the information of most value to the customer as fast and in the
format they need?
If you arent getting to process innovation fast enough (or it looks like
your competition is getting there faster), consider outsourcing to
managed service providers experienced in reengineering information
processes and infrastructures--and implementing innovations that
transform you customers experience.
For more resources on process innovation, process review and taking a
strategic approach to infrastructure, visit our website at
http://mds.ricoh.com/.
Ricoh Company, Ltd.
Ricoh is a global technology company specializing in office imaging
equipment, production and print solutions, document management
systems and IT services. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group
operates in more than 200 countries and regions. In the financial year
ending March 2013, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 1,924 billion
yen (approx. 20 billion USD).
The majority of the companys revenue comes from products,
solutions and services that improve the interaction between people



If your staff was
empowered to engage
more deeply with the
customer would they
have the information
they need as fast and
in the format of most
value to the
customer?


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and information.
Under its corporate tagline, imagine.change. Ricoh helps companies
transform the way they work and harness the collective imagination
of their employees.
Ricohs Managed Document Services (MDS)
Ricohs MDS approach is an extension and evolution of MPS, which
addresses the three fundamental functions relating to the entire
document management ecosystem of input, throughput, and output.
Ricohs MDS aims to streamline core business processes by focusing
on process, people, and technology and innovation to create a state
of continuous improvement. Ricoh aims to help organizations better
manage and leverage information for improved business outcomes
through a flexible, partnership-led approach. Services management is
the fundamental pillar to govern the print and document services
program, aided with expert consultancy as well as proven project and
change management methodologies. Ricoh is recognized today by
IDC, Gartner, Forrester and Quocirca as a leader in the industry.
www.ricoh.com
www.ricoh.com/mds/
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