This post is part of the Process Optimization Use Case Series where we’ll focus on different techniques to identify process inefficiencies, non-conformant activities, and improvement opportunities. These posts will be broken into two sections – how to do the analysis and how to configure the Process Optimization project.
When we design a workflow we design for both completeness and efficiency to ensure that everyone involved has an optimal experience. As part of the design of a workflow we will likely build in the ability to reassign work to the appropriate team to ensure that the task gets completed successfully.
Even if reassignments are part of the design of the process they are time consuming and impact overall productivity. Anything we can do to reduce the number of reassignments or how efficiently they are handled is a plus.
Like with most things, the first step in making improvements is understanding what is happening.
Many of us have been asked in the past to answer the question of “Who’s holding on to the tickets the longest?” (what I like to call the finger pointing report, or if you are a glass half full person the opportunity to improve report)
Or “Where are my incidents or cases Ping-Ponging back and forth between teams?”
Process Optimization can be used to help us get a better understanding on how often certain reassignments are happening, which hand-offs are taking longer than others, and where do we have these dreaded “Ping Pong” situations.
You can find other Process Optimization use cases here
How to do the analysis
This approach can be applied to any workflow(Incident, HR Case, Customer Service Case, etc) and requires you to configure a Process Optimization project with Assignment Group as the only Activity. (Setup is in the following section)
Open your project to the Analyst Workbench view
Initially the left hand panel shows us our different breakdowns that we can use to filter our process map. From that same panel we also have the ability to analyze all of the different routes that work has taken to get to closure via the Variation Analysis tab. This is very useful for Assignment Group Transfer analysis.
Click on the Variation Analysis Tab
You can scroll through the list and look at all of the different route combiniations.
But it is often more effective to use the filtering capability to narrow the list down by certain criteria like routes with the most steps or records or the longest average duration. The filter routes option can be used to help here.
For this example we’ll be looking for routes that have more than 4 steps, meaning there will be at least more than one transfer and we are only interested in routes that have more than 10 records(pieces of work) that have taken that trip.
Once the filter is applied we can use the “Sort by” option to adjust the list to show us the highest volume routes or the longest running routes. We will choose the routes with the most records.
The route that jumps to the top of the list is this Solana Customer Service Support to Solana Billing Support back to Solana Customer Service Support because it has the most records that have taken that path.
But our eye should be drawn to the second route on the list. Not only does this route have a high volume of tickets the Average Duration of those tickets is over 1 month. That is definitely something we should be investigating.
It looks like tickets that go to Solana Customer Service Support then to Solana Tech Support and then back to Solan Customer Service Support are taking over a month. Is that expected? Where is the hold up in that process? To start getting a better understanding lets isolate just that route. We can do that by selecting the check box next to the route and clicking the Show Route button.
Once the route has been isolated it tells an interesting story.
It’s taking 13 minutes for the ticket to initially get assigned to the Solana Customer Service group, then on average it is taking a day for that group to reassign it to Solana Tech Support, then its taking on average 4 weeks for that Tech Support group to get it back to the original Solana Customer Service group.
We’ve clearly identified – “Who is holding on to the tickets the longest”
We can then click on the step in the process to bring up more details about that transition. And use the histogram to identify if there are any outliers that could be impacting the average duration.
Then of course because we are an in-platform solution we have the option to drill down to the detailed records to continue our analysis and better understand what could be causing this delay.
For situations where there are a larger number of records we’d have the option of applying some machine learning based Root Cause or Cluster Analysis to help us better understand what is happening.
Are there other ways to do multihop or assignment group with Process Optimization, of course. There is an out of the box finding definition for Multihop issues and you can also use a breakdown on Reassignment count. But we’ll cover those in future posts.
How to configure your Process Optimization Project to do Multi-hop Analysis
If you are looking for a quick video(8 min) on how to create your first Process Optimization project you can find that here.
We will use the Incident table for this example but you can use the same steps for other workflows like Customer Service or HR Case.
- Use the left hand navigation to find your Process Optimization Workspace(Analyst Workbench)
- Click on the Create New Project button in the upper right hand corner.
- Enter a name for your Project. I’ll use “Multi-hop Analysis”. Click Save.
- In the Table Configurations related list click on the New button
- Configure the Table level information. You’ll need to provide a name value, select the table you want to mine(only tables with Audit log data will show), set your filter criteria(remember the best practice is to mine closed records for a relevant time period – no need to mine 2 years worth of data – a month or quarter is usually enough to get the insights on the inefficiencies in your current process). Then click Save.
- Click on the New button in the Activity Definition related list.
- Set Assignment Group as your Activity Definition Field and click Submit
- You will also want to add Breakdowns to your model to assist with the Analysis. We are only going to setup up Reassignment Count in this example you the steps would be the same and you can add up to 10 breakdowns per project. Click on the Breakdown Definitions related list tab and click the New button.
- Choose “Reassignment count” in your fields list and hit Submit.
- In the Related Links section of the Table Configure form click on the “Go to Project Definition”
- Click on the “Generate Model (Full) button.
- Once the Mining has completed click on the Open Analysis Workbench button.
You can find other Process Optimization use cases here
Additional Resources
