Case study: Federal government
Workflow automation solutions unlock significant efficiency gains for government agency
Table of contents
The primary office responsible for overseeing enterprise services (ES) across ten functional departments within a federal agency faced challenges due to outdated knowledge management systems. Existing systems did not differentiate simple from complex tasks and provided little transparency as tasks moved – or didn’t move – toward completion. As a result, the central ES office had no reliable information on where and why bottlenecks were occurring. This posed serious risks, such as lost requests for critical information or significantly delayed benefits distribution.
Eagle Hill partnered with the agency to provide workflow automation solutions, helping them design, build and drive adoption of eSwitchboard 2.0, a centralized task tracking system.
Goal
Design, build and drive adoption of a centralized task tracking system to increase operational efficiency, analyze enterprise service effectiveness, and improve performance through data workflow automation.
Unconventional consulting leads to breakthrough results with workflow process automation
Faster process completion notification to the ES team
Performance metrics tracked
Ten offices’ tasks unified into one automated workflow
The challenge
Timeliness of task completion, inefficiency, and lack of transparency were the client’s main impetus for improvement. The agency was navigating a time-consuming process in which users had to download reports and manually process information through a series of formulas. Not only could this sometimes take weeks to generate one report, but it also risked introducing errors with potentially serious ramifications.
The roadmap: How workflow automation solutions guide the way
Led requirements gathering process. First, we facilitated discovery sessions and asked the right questions to uncover challenges with the current systems and brainstorm priorities for the desired future state. We also used our day-to-day observations in the office to contribute another perspective on new system requirements.
Synthesized feedback into key requirements. Eagle Hill analyzed the stakeholder feedback and synthesized it into key requirements to design a project plan for eSwitchboard 2.0 to go into development.
Translated user requirements to the technology build team. During the agile development build sprints, our team worked closely with the agency’s Office of Information Technology to bridge relationships and balance priorities across various teams.
Excelled user adoption. To achieve optimal end user adoption of eSwitchboard 2.0 and Performance BI Dashboard, our team deployed a multi-pronged user adoption strategy and communications plan. This included clear talking points, user guides, and resources highlighting system benefits and support like training, office hours, and quarterly check-ins. We also established a Community of Practice (CoP) for sharing best practices and feedback.
Today, Eagle Hill’s eSwitchboard 2.0 innovations track timeliness automatically, right from the initial task submission, allowing the client instant and accurate access to critical information. With complete user adoption and buy-in, our client no longer faces the risk of delayed tasks resulting in critical mistakes.
