Achieving Operational Excellence with Work-Relay and Neostella

Project management is extremely important. Without it, business operations and processes can be disorganized and fragmented, forcing unnecessary workloads on project managers as well as projects coming in not on time, budget, or target. Project management on its own, though, is sometimes not enough, with some form of project management technology and partner know-how needed to manage the more complex aspects of an organization with many different processes and technologies.

Work-Relay is an expert at transforming the complex into simple, digestible workflows for organizations. Combining Work-Relay’s Business Process Management (BPM) for Salesforce software with Neostella’s expertise in hyperautomation technologies, an organization can achieve operational excellence and efficiency with the best partners in their respective business models.

Why is Project Management Important?

Project management is to organizations what maps are to explorers. A map is a foundation for an explorer’s success, containing the route, coordinates, any variables that might impede safe passage, and end destination, while project management is the foundation for a project’s success, outlining the project’s scope, budget, timeline, key players, and objectives.

Like a map that keeps an explorer on the right path, good project management can help:

• Keep organization on track
• Position an organization for success by establishing clear objectives
• Ensure strategic alignment and viability

However, project management can be difficult when factoring in business operations where multiple departments, services, and databases add to the complexity.

Better Manage Interdependent Processes and Business Operations with Work-Relay

Given the uncertain economic times, a solid project management partner is more important now than ever before. In addition, having a good hyperautomation strategy is crucial, with Gartner predicting that by 2024, hyperautomation will help organizations reduce operational costs by 30%. 

However, not everything can be automated, which is why it’s important to consider a vendor that can find that sweet spot between project management and hyperautomation. Work-Relay’s BPM intelligent software lays the groundwork for project management by automating the coordination, management, and optimization of time-sensitive, repetitive, and complex processes. Our expertise with hyperautomation can then deploy the technologies to streamline those complex processes.

For a closer look at Work-Relay’s capabilities, let’s break down a use case involving Uniti, a leading fiber networking solutions provider. Work-Relay helped Uniti enhance business operations efficiency by combining Uniti’s complex operational processes into a cohesive and accessible format.

• The challenge: Uniti’s project managers were experiencing unsustainable workloads due to managing many interdependent business operations in Salesforce
  • Further complicated by Uniti’s expansion, the workload increased project volume, product and service growth, and various mergers and acquisitions.
  • Additionally, the system for categorizing within Salesforce was time-intensive, as one Uniti work order might need several different classifications of data (called objects) that all required to be “linked” together.
• The solution: Work-Relay’s native Salesforce solution to organize repeatable and automated processes within projects
  • Work-Relay assessed Uniti’s needs, seeing the need for a solution to address two different areas:
    • Problem One: New fiber optic network projects need organization on a project management level utilizing common time management tools like Gantt diagrams and progress scorecards. In this way, all information relating to a Uniti project could be organized visually.
    • Problem Two: Uniti projects also need structure around a series of repeatable processes unique to that specific project. Each job needs to reflect categorical objects that would be linked together and associated with that project. 
  • Armed with a better understanding of Uniti’s unique business needs, Work-Relay worked with the Uniti team to develop a Multi-Order Tool (MOT), which defined eight commonly used objects in Salesforce that linked together to track the life of an entire Uniti project. Some commonly used objects include:
    • Customer order
    • Primary contact
    • Location
    • Products ordered
• The result: streamline previously disparate and complex business operations 
  • Now, Uniti can establish – and stick to – a project completion timeframe, resulting in an increase in installation volume across 25,000 customer connections.

Business Process Management vs. RPA

By itself, Business Process Management (BPM) is not a new concept, with varying definitions and interpretations over the years. However, in recent years, BPM and automation have emerged as a powerful combination. More specifically, BPM and Robotic Process Automation can complement one another and be a winning combination for an organization’s digital transformation initiatives.

While there are many definitions of BPM, Tech Target describes it as, “BPM is a business discipline that helps companies better understand and improve how they operate so they can streamline workflows, boost overall productivity, eliminate waste, lower costs, and increase agility, scalability and process efficiency.”

In short, BPM evaluates and maps existing processes and workflows to determine how they can be made more efficient. Robotic Process Automation, on the other hand, is programmable software that instructs bots to mimic human actions to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks.

Working together, Work-Relay’s BPM automates the coordination, management, and optimization of complex process information enterprise-wide while Neostella’s hyperautomation solutions automate the repetitive steps that must occur within those processes for optimal efficiency.

Benefits to Work-Relay’s BPM Application

Just like anything else, an organization’s business operations can have many points of failure. With the right software, however, you can not only fix these points of failure but proactively address future points of failure.

With Work-Relay’s BPM software optimizing business processes, your organization can:

1. Streamline and tighten up workflows
2. Create more points of connection
3. Identify areas for business agility and scalability
4. Reduce costs

Business Process Management might not be a new thing but as a branch of hyperautomation, it could just be the next best thing. To learn more about Work-Relay and Neostella, visit our partner page.