Workflow Sample: Marketing

Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts

In the previous article, "Set Expiration to Post-Event Questionnaire", I have set "expiration to after 7 days" utilizing a Service Task. By setting a deadline for the questionnaire, it is possible to prevent the business process from staying stuck, even if it is not yet answered.

[Event_Acceptance-Questionnaire (Expiration)]

For the setting of "after 7 days, "data setting formula is used.
By writing "# now.addDays (7)", you can set "after 7 days" to "Expirtion (Date)" from the time (#now) when the token arrived in the "Expiration set" Step.

<"Expiration set" setting screen>

Other than that, in addition to the data setting formula expressing the date and time, there are;

2 hours 30 minutes later: #now.addHours(2).addMinutes(30),
the end of the month: #now.getLastTimeInMonth(),
5th of the following month: #today.getFirstTimeInMonth().addDays(4), and so on.

("Data setting formula" can also be used in other data items. For details, refer to "M227: Set to combine business data and arithmetic operations automatically")

In the previous article, we added a mechanism for conducting a post-event questionnaire, to a Workflow for accepting participation in events such as "small group seminars". Impressions and feedback about an event from participants obtained by answering a questionnaire, they are hints to change the next event to a better one.

However, with the Workflow in the previous article, you had to "wait until the questionnaire was answered". If all the participants answered the questionnaire immediately, your work would proceed smoothly. But unfortunately, it wouldn't go that way easier. Sometimes you wouldn't answer a questionnaire. (Neither do I...)

Thus, I am going to improve the Workflow by setting the expiration. If there is no answer even it comes to the expiration, the Issue is to be automatically terminated.

[Event_Acceptance-Questionnaire (Expiration)]

In the previous article, I introduced a Workflow for event participation reception of such as "Seminar by a small group".
It is desirable to be rid of correspondence in emails by a person in charge and to make the mechanism of reception into Workflow, also in the aspect of A: Data Management, and B: Flow Improvement.

After the event has been successfully held, you would like to hear from the participants for their impressions and feedback on the event. By listening to the participant's voices and reflecting them on the next event, "Event holding work" itself can also be improved. In case the event is a seminar, it will also lead to reviewing of the contents of the seminar.

Although there is a method that to prepare a Workflow for collecting "Post-event Questionnaire" and to transmit the answering URL (Form Start) to the event participants collectively, I will introduce a method that to standby for entries to the questionnaire (Form Standby) in the post-step of "Event acceptance flow", this time.

[Event Acceptance flow-Questionnaire]

How do you handle acceptance of participation for events and seminars?

When you assume 100, 500, 1000 applicants, you will try very hard to build an 'Automatic Processing System'.
On the other hand, however, suppose if it is the scale of 10, 20, 50 people?

An event acceptance for a "small seminar", for example...

The quickest way is to set an Email address for accepting, and let the accepting work to be "correspondence in emails by the person in charge". That has a good aspect as well. Whatever it is for, it is very important to take action quickly.

However, if it is supposed to become "an event that will be repeatedly held", you may better get out from the manner of "correspondence in emails by the person in charge" at some occasion. That is, eliminate the situation that "only the person in charge knows" about the operations, and make it (semi-automatically as much as possible) exactly to be [recorded].

A. Data management
B. Flow improvement

Once you have made it into Workflow on the basis of the two perspectives, [taking over on replacement] of the person in charge of the acceptance becomes easier. A collaborative response will be able to be realized quickly even when [reinforcement of receptionist personnel]. And even though if it is an event of "once a year", you will not fall into the situation that 'Do you remember how we did it last year?'.

[Event Acceptance flow]

Operation: Creation of Icons, Production of Posters, etc.

With the new Business Process definition, "requests" from internal company are now managed centrally.

Those requests of designing from such as the marketing department, the product development department, the sales department, ... are now efficiently handled as a "team". In addition, I suppose that the designers have become interested in each other's work so that contribute to the skill improvement of each designer.

Reference：Episode 574: Business Improvement in SaaS Vendor Operation (Part 1)、Episode 575: Business Improvement in SaaS Vendor Operation (Part 2)

Challenge: Cases where Not In Time for Delivery Schedule

However, there are still cases where it will not be in time for the "delivery date".

For example, when a request of "in a haste" comes, "regular requests" are affected. Particularly when large projects such as "release of new service" or "preparation of new campaign" become in action, various "requests in hurry" will occur. As a result, "regular projects that are flexible to deadlines" will not be in time for the due date.

It should be "a design team that can keep up production schedules" even by utilizing external resources.

[Designing request-Outsourcing]

Business: Design Production

A design team where "requests" from in-house come in one after another.

By improving the "Request form" (Starting step) of design creation, it has become possible to handle requests more stably than before. (Reference: "Episode 574: Business Improvement in SaaS Vendor Operation (Part 1)")

As we also prepared an automatic start event (Message Start Event), cases where the Process of "Designing request" is used as "sub-process" have increased as well. In other words, cooperation between business processes has been automated with API POST communication, by placing "call event" and "standby event" in the Business Process diagram (main process) of Sales department or Manufacturing department. (In short, the Process is started with data such as "title of requested item" or "details of requested work", and data such as "design report text" and "deliverable file" is returned at the same time when the work is completed.)

Furthermore, as we also opened to in-house the sample of the main Process to call out the "sub-process", designing work in various departments are to be integrated into the Process of "Designing request" in the future.

Challenge: Skills do not Improved

"Number of Issues been in charge" and "total amount" have been visualized for each designer. In addition, since veteran designers now control on work progress of "designers" as "receptionist", young designers will not commit "no-check delivery" (delivered without checked by anyone).

However, intrinsic? measure of value in designing is "quality".

With this Business Process as it is, I feel worry that the degree of satisfaction for designs in-house will be going down.

Is it impossible to become a Business Process capable of improving skills of the team as a whole a little more? Since we are improving its independency as a "Design request handling process", we would like to think about a mechanism that leads to skill improvement, not just a Business Process for simply to handle numbers of work.

Example of Business Process to call out [Designing request]

[Designing request-Reviewing]

Operation: Design work

The work of a design team is extensive.

There may be small projects such as "changing icons in SaaS products" and adding them, and there may be also major projects such as "interface development of new SaaS functions".

However... in addition to those, there may be a case where they are requested publishing of a "Customer story article" written by the sales team on the Website, and furthermore, to create a flyer containing the story. Moreover, for an exhibition planned by marketing team, there might occur project of Web contents production, and creation of posters , and so on...

After all, it can be said that it is "a team that continuously being asked for helping hands?" from the entire company.

Challenge: Efficiency Improve on Work that Occurred Passively

It is true that the design team is certainly demanded by everybody.

However, it is inevitable to be said that what they are doing is unobtrusive compared to the fact that the direct division "product development division" and "sales and marketing department" are acting on a daily basis. For example, it is like gift wrapping service counter in a department store. They are keep on giving decorations on outputs of the store as they are asked to do so. And when they notice, "passive attitude" has ingrained on themselves.

Even if they grumbled that if it was the architectural industry, rather, the "designers will move actively, and the engineering group such as "structural" or "environmental" would be passive, "demands from internal company" won't be gone... First of all, I'd like to consider a way to do this passive job in a handsome manner. (Since, even in accounting, human resource department, or IT department, they are handling these "passive job" brilliantly...)

Business Template: [Designing Request]

Operation: Web Article Production

I changed the Workflow of the article writing. (Reference: Episode 571: Business Improvement in Website Operation (Part 1), Episode 572: Business Improvement in Website Operation (Part 2))

It has become a flow leading to the skill improvement of "writers" as well as improving the quality of "articles" by this, I suppose.

In any case, a series of "article creation flow", starting with "Setting of provisional title" and leading to "output of web article", came to be smooth. It can be said that useless communication such as "going to check progress" or "going to ask for reviews" is completely eradicated.

Editor-in-chief: Launch the planning such as seasonal series
Editors: Determine provisional titles of individual articles
Writers: Write articles

It would be better to be expressed that the editor-in-chief, editors, writers have become able to concentrate in their own original role. (Though "rework" or "educational guidance" are not completely eliminated...)

Challenge: Problem of Out of idea

On the other hand, it has become to be discussed on the quality of "provisional title" which is an input to "article production flow".

That is, (though this might be an everlasting challenge for those owned media,) there would be a case where a mood which they are running out of idea for "provisional titles filled the atmosphere... such as "recently wrote a similar article", or "nobody would like to read"...

In this occasion, I would like to make it being able to suggest from the entire company about the ideas of articles (provisional titles) and plans of series.

If there are plenty of ideas, they will be a help for editors and the editor-in chief. And the quality of setting "provisional title" should increase.

[Article Idea Acceptance]

Operation: Review / Proofread

I changed it to work flow that "other writers" also participate in article review. (Reference Episode 571: Business Improvement in Website Operation (Part 1))

The writers interact each other "comments that lead to skill improvement" such as "opinion on the structure" or "alternative idea for headlines or title", while "point out mistakes to be corrected" such as typographical errors or errors in names or dates.

"Editors" has reduced the time spent on reviewing articles or instructing to writers, so that he can have time to think about "ideas for new feature" and to hold "study meetings".

At those "study meetings", actual mistake examples are reported, and discussed. actual mistake examples are reported. The steady improvement in skills will lead to 'productivity improvement'.

Challenge: Holding for Long Period

However, for the writers, it may be a problem that chances of reworking on sent back work are increased, rather than jobs of proofreading are joined.

In particular for a rookie writer, cases where multiple articles simultaneously come back to the Step of "2x. Rework" also occurred. And, in such a case, it becomes a situation that "time to review articles written by other writers" can not be taken...

Hmm, I think that it is better not to allow staying, by setting a deadline date and time on "3. Check" so that forcibly advance to the next Step.

[Article Proofreading-Time limitation]

Operation: Creation of Articles for Website

In some companies where they publicate a Website, it seems they practice "Proofreading on their articles".

It is not limited to commercial based "Curated contents site" such as medical & health sites or fashion sites, as well as in "Owned media" that is for outgoing information related to company's own, efforts for raising reliability on its articles are put.

For us, 'Editors" carry out some sort of "Proofreading and Fact-checking" through the Workflow as the following

"Editor-in-chief" launces projects such as seasonal series, etc.
"Editor" determines the temporary title for each article
"Writers" write the articles according with the title
"Editor" checks them
"Web designer" posts the articles and photos on the website

However, it is not in a system that we can assert that "all the outgoing information is proper".

Challenge: Quality of Primary Draft

Although there were various discussions, I decided to consider "improving the skills of writer" first. In particular, for the writers who are oftenly told to "rework" by the editors, I want to straight them up.

Although there are various ways of improving skills, what I chose is to make a policy that "writers themselves proofread articles written by other writers." It may seems kinda rough, but people say "One man's fault is another's lesson". Anyway, it is a strategy that to have the writer notice the point he or she should reflect on themselves by reading articles written by other writers daily.

I suppose that as the secondary Effects in the medium to long term, the sense of burden of proofreading which "editors" feel will also decrease.

[Article Proofreading]

Operation: Information Sharing to Multitasking Full-time Employees

"Overnight front desk work", "work related with Check-out in the morning", and "housekeeping on checked-out guest rooms"...

By visualizing internal information using Workflow, a full-time employee has become capable of various work operations. (Multitasking) That is, information that there was a complaint from a guest is shared with the morning front desk clerk from the night shift staff. And from the front desk clerk who deals with checking-out, information of "guest has checked out" is smoothly shared with housekeepers.

Consequently, full-time employees are now capable of joining works such as for "overnight front desk" or "guest room housekeeping", which used to tend to count on part-timers. And at the same time, phenomenon which part-timers to get "a chance to work as a full-time employment" has emerged. (as an unexpected by-effect)

<Example of work shift for full-timers>

Earlies (7 hrs work, 1hr break)
Lates (7 hrs work, 1hr break)
Overnight (12 hrs work, 1 hr break, deemed as 2 days attendance)

Challenge: Idle Time Still Occurs

However, especially in the late night hours, "idle time" (waiting time) arises inevitably.

If a full-time employee actively participate in 'night shift', he or she ought to undertake 'something productive work' even in the late night hours. So, consulting with a BPM consultant, I decided to challenge "originating a stuff blog" this time. (I also have anxiety that my expectation for "degree of multi-skill" to employees might be too much.)

By the way, there was an opinion that it would be enough to carry out "patrolling work" inside the hotel building more frequently. However, demanding "frequency to unnecessary" can not be said to be "productivity improvement". I suppose that safety is adequately guaranteed by "periodical patrol" already conducted

[Blog Write-Post]

Operation: Reception of "Information request"

Number of received information requests
Number of submitted estimates
Number of concluded contracts

Although it is a classic marketing method, "1) Number of received information requests" is an index that directly linked to "3) Number of concluded contracts". The correlation is extremely strong. Therefore, many companies set it up as KPI. Car dealer, insurance company, moving company, design office, and so on. It does not matter whether the scale is big or small or which type of business it is.

In the meantime, in order to realize a smooth Workflow, there are some companies that accept requests from customers at the "Form Start Event" of cloud based Workflow. By using a Workflow, downstream Steps such as "Address printing" and "Shipping" are also executed without mistake.

And the automatic transmission of the "Acceptance email" (placing an email transmission event) would be also "royal road". The customer can recognize that "the request was accepted". In addition, "Acceptance number" should be described in the text body. Doing so, the customer can make inquiry for questions through the phone or chat by tracking the "Acceptance number".

Challenge: Identity confirmation with Acceptance number only

"Process serial number" (# {processInstanceSequenceNumber}) is convenient for "Acceptance number". After all, KPI management is easy with it.

But at the same time, it is also a "number easy to infer". For example, when "cancellation of application" came by telephone or chat, it may be a situation inevitable to confirm "identity verification". In other words, if you are asked to cancel acceptance number 123 in a sincere voice, you may accept it as it is. But when you face a person who is likely to be malicious, you will confirm the identity by asking "email address". This could be called customer discrimination.

However, if it is a long number like a cipher text to be a "hard to infer number", it will be inconvenient. Not only "KPI management" becomes troublesome, but also it is hard to verbally tell on the phone, and it is rather difficult to guarantee that it is unique. Hmm...

[Information Request Correspondence]

How to announce personnel information

The task of "announcing information on personnel changes (change of assignment or position) to in-house" is tricky.

There are various types, such as promotion / relegation / recruitment / retirement / leave of absence / department transfer / seconded ... and also individual circumstances differ from each other.

As a feeling of a HR staff, he or she may want to let everybody know about it a few months in advance, if was a case where, for example, "a happy retirement of an employee who has been trustworthy". Whereas, in the case where "being headhunted by a competitor", HR may want to keep that secret. Also in the case of "taking a leave for family care", there are people who want to positively let it known to their colleagues or related people in advance (in consideration of breach of confidentiality obligations), while some other people may want remain in silent.

Basically, we should solemnly switch the "information that is secret within the HR department" to "information publicly known inside the company", according to the "prescribed disclosing rules". (Personnel notice)

Challenges on practical operation

In Japan, many companies adopt "in-house posting" as a publication method.

However, with the way of printing on paper and stick it to "bulletin board" or "wall", there is only few chances of looking at if, for employees who go out often, who are on long leave or teleworkers. On the other hand for staffs of HR, the tasks of "posting the notice at a fixed timing" or "stopping the posting at the scheduled timing" is unexpectedly a big burden.

Whereas, other companies adopt the way of "announcing verbally at morning briefing". However, also it must be said that it is difficult for people who are on long leave and teleworkers to obtain the same amount of information as attendance at the morning briefing. Moreover, there are also risks that 'date of change' or 'change department' etc. are not accurately conveyed because of being verbal.

[Personnel Change Information Publication]

Analytics tells 'particular building company is in trouble'?

In the last article and the one before the last, I introduced you (nearly unmanned) Workflows that informs "trends of web access of the last week" to in-house.

Once this business process is in operation, employees will be able to check the latest information obtained through the "Google Analytics Reporting API" every Monday morning by e-mail. As the result, daily work for "Customer support" or "Sales" will be more efficient.

However, it might be better if "Information that is not in Analytics" is written as well. That is, it may be possible to gain deeper understanding and insight on trend information such as "links that a lot of inflows" and "Pages that referred by specific customers", if it also has included information which is not in Analytics such as;

'delivered a press release on last Tuesday'
'held a user seminar on last Thursday (in which the particular building company participated!)'.

API acquisition of calendar information as well

The following Business Process Definition is a mechanism in which information of the events of last week, that have been written in the in-house calendar for "Public relations schedule and exhibition schedule" (Google Calendar), is added to the email notification.

When operating this Workflow, employees who would receive notification emails will be able to see "related information that may have affected Web access" at the same time.

[Website Operation Report 3]

Ranking on popular pages

In the last article, I introduced you a way of automatic generation of "weekly reports" by automated communication with "Google Analytics Reporting API".

The point was the automated Step (Service Task Addon) which automatically retrieves data aggregated in the following rule.

Dimension： ga:hostname, ga:pagePath, ga:pageTitle
Metrics： ga:pageviews, ga:sessions

In this Step, "List of web pages that got a lot of access" is gathered into a multi-line text. If you set to "filter" something like "ga:pagePath=~/blog/" you can also automatically get the ranking of "web pages under blog folders".

Notification email that is embedded these texts would be very useful information for Marketing team.

Tens of thousands of other patterns of aggregation method

But now, I would like to aggregate data of Google Analytics in more different perspectives.

While in the previous example, ranking was retrieved with the above "three dimensions" and "two metrics", Google Analytics has about 260 dimensions and about 230 metrics. In other words, a wide variety of data aggregation is available, by changing its combination.

For example, when you aggregate not only on the aspect of site contents ("Behavior (BEHAVIOR)") but also "AUDIENCE" or "ACQUISITION", you should be able to extract information such as "What kind of people are accessing?" or "What kind of site has it been derived from?".

Reference: Dimensions & Metrics Explorer

[Website Operation Report 2]

Is it an analysis tool, or an aggregation tool?

Anyone who is involved in the web industry knows about the existence of "Google Analytics".

Although I might not need to explain again, "Google Analytics" is a service that is to know the number of visits and visitors on particular website, and it is an indispensable tool for people who work in the industry, for surveying such as "popular pages" and "unpopular pages" or "investment effect of online ads".

On the other hand, for many people it can be said "a too much functional tool".

In order to display the information which you want to see, you must go through complicated procedures because its multifunctionality. Even those who log in to "Google Analytics" every week, to make "in-house weekly newsletter" for example, actually use only a few functions of it. Therefore, many people use "custom reports" (dashboards) and "custom alerts" (email notifications) trying to make the every time work efficient.

No abnormality in aggregated value this week!

The following Business Process Definition is "Website Operation Status Reporting Process" to be conducted weekly. Every Monday morning, "a draft of report that aggregated data of Google Analytics has been inserted" will be prepared. Therefore, marketers can complete a report for the entire company just by entering a brief commentary. You do not need to log into "Google Analytics" unless remarkable changes occur.

[Website Operation Report]

"Want to share translated document with the team..."

Indeed, "Share by Email" is not so bad. A translated sentences would be shared quickly with the team by a setting to send automatically to Team ML (Mailing List) upon completion of translating. Feedback about mistranslated or brushing up might be obtained.

However, it would not be happy that when a person who has received an email wants to reply, he or she must reply by email. Enterprise Social Networking is the mainstream for in-house information exchange, nowadays.

The Workflow definition below, it is devised to post to [OpenChat], which is an Enterprise Social Networking of Questetra, upon completion of translating. It allows co-workers to Like immediately on a High-quality translation.

[Translation Process-OpenChat Post]

Instruction manual sentences that described in multiple language
Manuscripts of Website (HTML)
Source codes

A Creation flow for these drafts ought to be devised to record (not only "Number of characters", also) "Hash value" automatically.

A Hash value is a "Message digest". It is also referred to as "fingerprint". In short, it generates "32 of hexadecimal characters" (in the case of MD5 method) from any data instantly, allowing to validate data falsification of even a single character. (For more details, please see Wikipedia, etc.)

In the following workflow, [Auto-steps](Service Task) of "Hash generation (MD5)" and "Hash generation (SHA256)" have been arranged. Both of them will be available when you conduct feature expansion with [Addon XML]. (Questetra BPM Suite v11.1. Releasing in early September?)

[Translation Process-Hash Value]

I definitely want an Auto-step icon that is needed in this business!

Everybody who designs Business Processes (Modeling) tends to desire to automate various processing.

In version 11.1 of Cloud-based Workflow, "Questetra BPM Suite", which we are going to release at the end of August 2016, you will be able to use additional Auto-step icons. More specifically, your original auto-step icons will be available by; obtaining packaged "Add-on XML" and importing it as Additional feature file (Process Model file).

You will get these [Add-on XML] mostly by

Downloading from Questetra's Website
Provision from third-party

Whereas, it will be also capable of creating yourself, as you can guess from the words of "Add-on XML".

The following is the same "Translation Process" workflow that I have introduced you in the last post. And in which I made a substitution to [Script Step] with self-made [Auto-Step].

[Translation Process-Add-on]

"I can hardly get rid of mistakes in Catalogue mailing..."

You want to correspond to "Request for a Catalogue", which you have accepted via published web form, as quickly as you can. However, it won't be a joke if you made mistakes in the "Address" or "Company name" that the customer has entered. When creating "Cover sheet" with Microsoft Word by Copy & Paste, for example, made mistake that shifted ane line of the record in the list to be referred, and results in complaint,such as

Our company name is not like this.
There is no employee in the name of this.

In the worst case, it might be a "Personal information leakage incidents".

In the following Business Process, "a personnel in charge of accepting" checks entries via web form

if the address was not inappropriate such as erroneously submitted in the middle of the input?
if the address was not nonsense for mischief purpose?
if it does not contain abbreviations or unnecessary space?

After the check, "Cover sheets PDF" will be generated automatically, then "a personnel in charge of Mailing" will print it out and enclose the Cover sheet with the Catalogue. No manpower be involved, there.

The excellent point is that not a "list" will be created in this business operation. The risk of information leakage will be extremely reduced. And as soon as the sealing job is completed, data such as "company name" and "telephone number" will be automatically added to the Cloud-based database. (Although it is apparent, it is also assumed a flow to ask "Sales representative" in case of receiving a message such as "Want an estimate together".)

[Catalogue Request Correspondence]

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