Understand your core requirements to pick the best partner says a Skan client

The Situation: With HFS hot vendor Skan, we recently discussed “x-raying your organization”, it’s differentiated approach to data collection. To help us further understand how it works in action, we have connected with one of Skan’s clients, a provider of legal products and solutions. Any enterprise seeking process improvements might be interested to discover the results.

As enterprises delve deeper into their digital transformation initiatives, their need to tackle technical and process debt becomes critical. Exhibit 1 shows the explosion of investment in process intelligence tools. HFS has written extensively about how enterprises leverage them to tackle the challenges of technical and process debt and provide complete transparency and enhanced understanding of their complex processes.

Exhibit 1: Process intelligence (process mining and discovery) is one of the leading emerging technology investments for enterprises

Sample: HFS Pulse H2, 2021; 600 executives across Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Research, 2022

The relationship with Skan began after a deep dive into the process intelligence market

We will remember 2020 for many reasons, but for this organization, it marked the beginning of a relationship with Skan. The chief automation officer of this global legal services firm told us the firm completed a thorough evaluation of the process intelligence market before choosing to partner with Skan. They explained that process intelligence was not only about bringing automation to the business but also defining a clear path for success. For the legal services firm, that meant detailed process measurement and process design, which they believed Skan was uniquely positioned to help with.

After analyzing the market, the legal services firm’s team recognized that many traditional solutions deliver insights from analysis of events data captured from the likes of SAP (typically termed process mining solutions). However, by capturing user-level interactions, Skan delivered a scalable, non-invasive integration that fit the legal services firm’s requirements. Its chief automation officer summarized their must-have for a process intelligence offering perfectly:

For me, process intelligence has to be rapid, non-intrusive, and less dependent on other technologies.

– Chief Automation Officer, global legal services firm

Fast forward to 2022, and the legal services firm has deployed Skan to streamline legal document processing

The legal services firm deployed Skan in legal document processing, one of its key functions. The firm estimates it processes 20 million to 30 million legal documents annually, such as case and patent documents. Gathering, enriching, and processing the documents requires a large operations team. This was a slow, labor-intensive process, and thanks to the nature of the legal documents, it required highly skilled individuals, making it extremely expensive. When we asked the legal services provider why they turned to process intelligence, they explained:

We had tried to monitor how this process happened, but there was so much back and forth, it was difficult to document properly.

– Chief Automation Officer, global legal services firm

The results were “strange” according to their Chief Automation Officer, as they identified process variations and automation opportunities

After deploying Skan, the legal services firm conducted a deep-dive analysis of these processes, producing what it described as “some strange results”:

• Process variations: Skan identified multiple cases of process variations. For example, some employees were using incorrect systems, while others didn’t know the next step in a process or were waiting for information from their colleagues. In response, the legal services firm re-engineered its processes and developed training for employees to ensure they function at maximum efficiency.
• Automation opportunities: Skan also identified approximately 25 opportunities to deploy automation throughout its legal document processes. For example, some employees spent most of their time manually completing data entry, which was time consuming and prone to inaccuracies. Automating processes like these drove improvements in efficiency and accuracy.

By leveraging Skan, this organization identified process inefficiencies it could never have imagined. It completely overhauled its legal document processing function, with significantly improved results. It shared that its overall turnaround time was previously about four weeks. By leveraging Skan to redefine its processes and identify automation opportunities, it reduced turnaround time by more than 50%, produced significant cost savings, and improved employee experience, enabling them to focus on higher-value tasks.

The legal services firm didn’t stop there—it is leveraging Skan in other areas of its business and might even return to legal document processing

This example wasn’t the only one we discussed; the legal services firm came armed and ready to discuss several areas of its business where it had already deployed Skan’s process intelligence technology and where it was hoping to in the future. In its own words, “We process millions of documents, so we have a huge opportunity across the different lines of our business.” But not only that, it shared that thanks to Skan’s approach to continuous improvement, its work wasn’t done just because it had already streamlined legal document processing. Skan allows the company to monitor the progress of these improvements on an ongoing basis—pre- and post-transformation—to further accelerate its digital transformation programs.

The Bottom Line: Process intelligence products can drive tangible business results throughout your business. For this legal services firm, Skan’s approach was fit for purpose, and it was the client’s robust selection criteria that helped them identify the correct partner for their needs.

The market is packed full of process intelligence products ready to help enterprises tackle their process inefficiencies. It can be difficult for executives to identify which product or vendor will work well. This legal services firm’s experience with Skan is a great example of how an enterprise can set a core requirement, such as rapid and non-intrusive deployment, and evaluate the market to find the perfect partner to help drive efficiency improvements.