The promise of service-oriented computing is giving IT professionals interesting ideas to think about. Practically every IT organisation has been asked to optimise resources, increase efficiencies, do more with less and improve user productivity. The notion of a flexible computing model that delivers just what users need is appealing.
Improving user productivity is a hot button for the IT industry, because it is an area where results can be the most gratifying - not only from an internal standpoint, but for external customers as well. It is not only about making tasks smoother for knowledge workers, it is also about better data integrity - and ultimately customer service.
Challenges of enterprise knowledge workers
Knowledge workers are those employees who handle complex transactions in an enterprise. They handle higher volumes of customer calls, provide more information, address more requests, deliver customer service and help generate revenue.
In a typical organization, knowledge workers face a number of challenges as they perform business tasks. These challenges keep knowledge workers from realising optimal performance, and ROI suffers.
One challenge is finding the information they need. A Delphi Group research study noted that service employees "spent 30% of their time just searching for information." When they turn to more expensive information alternatives, such as phone calls or meetings, costs increase.
Productivity also tends to decline as the number of applications users must access goes up. For a call centre, this kind of context switching can introduce errors and reduce response rates. In your organisation, you might have several people who have emulation sessions up and running on their desktops. But several of these sessions may be used infrequently throughout the day. If and when they are used, it might only be to get pieces of information, such as an address validation or a credit look-up, that are necessary for the normal processing of the company`s operations.
For users to get this information, it requires that they switch to a different session, copying and pasting data from one session to another, or to a Web site. They get the results, and then have to copy and paste these back into the main session.
Incorporating mainframe applications
Many of our customers are improving their users` productivity by incorporating additional data, from other mainframe applications or external sources, into their EXTRA! emulation sessions. Using Synapta Services Builder solutions to build Web services, the interactions from one of the infrequently used sessions - could be made accessible to EXTRA!
By using EXTRA! solutions to consume any standard Web service, you eliminate switching applications and the copy and paste operations - and results are returned much sooner. Fewer EXTRA! sessions on the desktop are required, so your mainframe overhead for those sessions would be lowered. In addition, training time and costs would be reduced, since there would be fewer applications to learn. Taking an active look at what operations could be converted to services can greatly improve user productivity.
Small tasks can be quickly and easily converted to services and incorporated into EXTRA! sessions. This does not require a big infrastructure or major changes from the way the user works today. As more of these tasks are built, the enterprise is building its collection of valuable services, based upon the needs of the users. The benefit would be a smooth migration toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
SOA flexibility and productivity gains
SOA can bring organisations greater flexibility in managing their information assets, while also solving user and departmental-level issues with more efficiency - improving the way users, data and services interact. SOA has the potential to ensure users spend less time finding the services they need to respond quickly.
What is important is to make the end-user less reliant on complex IT processes to get their job done. Any time you can reduce intervention and increase the amount of straight-through processing, you will increase efficiency, reduce the cost of the process and potentially eliminate errors.
Our real-world customers report increases in user productivity that have positively impacted their business results. In the future, we look forward to adding your success stories to theirs.
* "The new Web-based application has improved our call centre operators` experience and cut call times by a minimum of 30 seconds per operator per call. In the immediate short-term, this equates to more than $150 000 of savings." Adam Giles, Contact Centre Coordinator, Tenix Solutions, Australia
* "Our users like the new system because it requires no navigation and no extra training...we`ve reduced the time it takes for our staff to navigate, so it is definitely an improvement." Miguel Carvalho, Chief Administrative Officer, bcp bank, USA
* "It used to take 30 minutes for each transaction-now it takes two. We are bringing the benefits of a real-time experience to our customers." Joe Eckstein, Technical Solution Team Leader, AgStar, USA
Increase productivity in your organisation
Attachmate solutions help you improve enterprise user productivity. The design for Attachmate EXTRA! Mainframe Server Edition software was based on research observing users in high transaction environments. In one study, EXTRA! saved 10 seconds per call in a high-volume call centre.
From this industry-leading solution, to our Synapta family of service-enablement solutions that leverage your host assets and securely expose them as reusable services - we continually develop and enhance tools to make enterprise IT more efficient. More details are available at www.synapta.com and www.attachmate.com. Or call 800 426 6283 or (425) 644 4010.
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