Service Automation Equals User Experience Improvement

From Theory to Practice

Service Automation is one the most important topics nowadays. If you search for service automation via Google you can get almost 50 000 000 links. Most of them cover the theory of service automation and very few illustrate what an enhanced user experience actually means.

Let me try - naturally from the point of view of the user! I am going to use the Good Sign system as an example.

A New Age of Service Automation

From a purely usage vantage point even the most minute features may well be critical when assessing overall experience. Very small features can mean a lot of things.

Tangible examples of ease and efficiency? Real improvements or business as usual?

Consider a situation in which you want to transfer numerous servers or workstations or SIM cards from one organization to another. How would you go about doing that? Quite possibly, it would probably entail a good degree of manual labor, some spreadsheets and various software - all behind their own passwords, each with a unique user interface etc. It's lot of work.

Well, with Good Sign for example I can simply drag and drop the elements into their respective areas. The system then does the rest for me.

• changing the organization and user name
• checking and updating time stamps, rescheduling alarms
• provisioning change management
• updating billing information
• even ordering and managing services for moving the server from one place to another

And that's just to name a few...

Easily and efficiently, but how?

So where's the catch? It can't be that easy... With a good system it can and it is.

I am not going to go into technical details here like data caching and background procedures, as it is a topic for separate blog posts. Let me briefly describe our UI solutions at Good Sign.

Defining the Inter- and Intra-Organizational Structure

Generally, an enterprise or business has a complex organization structure including sub-organizations, departments, sub-divisions, etc. That complexity needs to be resolved. With Good Sign all organizational units (organizations, groups, departments, etc.) are presented hierarchically in the Organization Management Tree.

With the help of the Organization Management Tree we define both the inter- and intra-organizational structure according to your business needs. 

If you click on one of the organizational units in the tree, the grid next to it refreshes and loads data for this particular organizational unit. Now all you have to do is grab SIM cards - as in the example – and move them to another organization or department.

That's the drag and drop part - that's it!

Modern service automation increases efficiency and takes it to a totally new level.  You do not have to waste your time opening additional dashboards or dialogs in search of, for example, an organization and its assets. Everything is located in one place and logically structured.

Another daily task worth mentioning is adding services to a subscription, user, equipment or a vehicle. Again, a modern system like Good Sign has it covered (or rather - automated) for you!

Just select a subscription, person or an organization, check what options the system prompts for the selected unit, schedule services activation and click Update.

So does it all add up to user experience improvement? Absolutely. Furthermore, users can concentrate on more value adding tasks, and avoid expensive mistakes. Reporting quality reaches new heights and transparency is - finally - the reality.

There are numerous features I could walk you through, but blogging space is limited. Interested? Visit our website to see what features a service automation platform can offer for industries like ICT & Cloud or Power & Utilities.