In the digital age, information is – or should be – easy to find, access and use. Take Smartphones, for example. Today’s mobile phone offers Internet access, an array of applications including mail and social media, and a camera for the ubiquitous selfie – everything you need on the go is available in your pocket device.
Conversely, however, easy access to information in the enterprise is often denied to those who need it most. Many customer service managers, retailer order teams, call centres, telesales teams and service centres are struggling with outdated and cumbersome technology. Too often, their systems are complex and the user experience outdated. Sustaining internal response rates and efficiency goals can often be a struggle, ultimately hampering the organization’s customer satisfaction levels.
As the day-to-day challenges grow for all these industries, efficiency is likely to drop. These challenges often come with time-critical operations, quality service performance and efficiency-related metrics. So how can an organization remain efficient while maintaining its competitive edge?
First, let’s consider who is affected by the efficiency, or otherwise, of core systems. Essentially, anyone who needs fingertip access to customer information to meet performance targets: the list includes customer service managers, call centre staff, telesales teams and service teams. Additionally, any role involving processing orders ,claims, enquiries, telemarketing, help desks, or working with customer information through a business application. It goes almost without saying that any process efficiency could have potentially profound impacts.
The Truth – Stated in Black and Green
Every organization wants to extract maximum efficiency from their core business systems. Current systems are often inefficient – users find it difficult to locate information across multiple screens, and learning how to use theses outdated applications can be complex and time consuming. This ultimately hampers service delivery to internal and external customers. Take for example making an order over the telephone – the call taker will need to navigate many screens to create a customer profile, generate an order number, enter delivery and billing address, input payment details, choose delivery type and any number of other details.. If your line of business meets the profile sketched out above, productivity and customer experiences are very closely aligned and likely to be memorable for all the wrong reasons – namely long wait times, delays, and lots of needless questions.
These inefficiencies are unlikely to be purely procedural. It is more likely to relate to outdated systems which are slow to react and cumbersome to use. In short, customers and staff who use smartphone and tablet-style technology at home are bemused to discover the time it takes to do something which they consider to be quick and easy.
Research commissioned by Micro Focus uncovered the full extent of the issue. We approached 590 senior IT decision-makers in organisations with mainframes and green screen applications in their infrastructure were interviewed late last year. Among the highlights was the revelation that more than half didn’t feel that their applications – on which their business processes depend – were doing a ‘good job’. So they understand the problem. Application performance must significantly improve.
What does good look like?
The ideal scenario – agreed by 98% of survey respondents – would be to add more features, such as web access, CRM programs and common software packages to their core business applications. The ultimate aim would be to make systems more productive, create a more efficient workforce and improve customer satisfaction.
For 65%, productivity enhancements would include pop-up calendars and dropdown menus, while 49% believed that mobile access to the application would deliver these benefits and 47% thought a “modern, fresh and user-friendly” interface would make all the difference.
Clearly, that is a disparate range of potential resolutions and achieving consensus on how to achieve them was equally difficult for respondents, with 77% believing that modernizing, re-writing or moving to ‘off-the-shelf’ commercial applications was “too expensive or risky”. But if doing nothing is not an option, and agreeing a way forward seems impossible, what options remain?
Introducing Rumba+
Rumba is the code-free, no-risk user interface modernization technology that delivers results. The beauty of Rumba is that it retains what works in your current application but adds all the features of full modernization to achieve the improvements needed.
From the ‘on-screen’ additions such as Google Maps and VOIP that improves the service that people can offer through to the web, mobile and desktop access that enables users to significantly increase the number of places they can deliver that service from, Rumba represents the best in hassle-free, innovative technology.
Micro Focus Rumba+ has enhanced ‘green screen’ applications for thousands of customers around the world without replacing or rewriting the core business logic which is key to running their business. It’s easy, it’s fast and delivers results within weeks. One customer reported efficiency improvements of over 100%. Imagine what handling twice as many calls could do for your operation. Want to see the transformation for yourself? Watch this demo.
