Amplify Your Automation Impact with Self-Service

Today, self-service is simply expected in our everyday lives.

In our modern, digitally enabled world, virtually every daily activity contains a component of DIY, whether you’re shopping online, conducting mobile banking, calling a rideshare, paying for groceries, ordering the latest movie on your favorite streaming service, or even visiting the gym at any time of day or night. By pushing some aspect of the process to the consumer, organizations save valuable time and resources, while enabling the end user to feel more engaged and in control of their lives.

These expectations are why, according to research from Gartner, 38% of Gen Z and millennial customers say they are likely to give up on a customer service issue if they can’t resolve it through self-service.

In the financial services workplace, employees have grown to expect the same type of hands-on experience. They want the ability to solve business problems and provide outstanding service to their customers and members, without always having to engage IT to provide data, deliver solutions, or solve their problems.

IT Is Stretched to the Breaking Point

The talent shortage is real, and many organizations are struggling with a lack of skilled technical resources. Their IT departments are feeling overworked and overwhelmed, burdened with an onslaught of ongoing requests from across the business.

These requests range from ad-hoc, one-off issues that require immediate resolution, to off-hours demands for password resets and report downloads that interrupt on-call IT staff during their personal time.

System maintenance requests pop up any time of day or night, and IT receives in-the-moment requests for urgent user security changes to mitigate potential risks from separated employees maintaining access to sensitive systems and data.

The result of all these unpredictable and inefficient demands on IT’s time? An increased likelihood of manual errors, stressed out staff on both sides of the equation, and—ultimately—poor customer and employee experiences.

Industry Trending Toward Self-Service in Automation

These pain points are a big reason why the financial services industry has been trending toward employing innovative self-service tools as a way to allow citizen developers and frontline staff to benefit from the power of automation in a safe, secure way and without having to rely on IT.

In fact, self-service aligns with many of organizations’ top automation goals.

According to SMA Technologies’ 2024 State of Automation in Financial Services Report, organizations with more than 80% of their operations automated cited revenue growth, digital transformation, and better customer service/outcomes among their top automation goals, demonstrating strong alignment with broader business objectives.

Streamlining automation and decentralizing IT efficiently and securely through self-service tools helps support these business goals by allowing non-technical staff, including customer-facing representatives, to have direct, safe access to automated workflows and processes.

The research also uncovered a 20% gap between current and desired levels of automation. Self-service can help bridge that gap by providing more staff in the business with secure access to automation without having to rely on IT.

Self-service comes in many forms. Cognitive technologies, such as generative AI and robotic process automation (RPA), are powerful ways for organizations to push the benefits of automation out into an organization. Additionally, leading automation solutions now offer low-code and no-code self-service capabilities, which enable frontline and non-IT users to initiate fully automated workload routines with zero risk of error or downtime to critical systems.

These methods improve efficiency, reduce risk, and help to counteract troublesome trends such as “shadow IT,” which is the pernicious and unauthorized use of technology by non-IT users without the knowledge of the IT department or security personnel.

The key lies in ensuring that self-service technologies are employed with the appropriate digital guardrails to ensure that only authorized employees have the access they need to perform the right tasks, at the right time, and in the right order.

“Easy” Buttons for Everyone

OpCon customers have access to the Self-Service feature, which delivers the power of workload automation to any authorized user—at the click of a button.

Here’s how Self-Service works:

Through OpCon’s web-based interface, Solution Manager, business users have access to a convenient dashboard of “easy” buttons—or automated shortcuts. These shortcuts are customized for each authorized user, based on their role and specific events. Users only see those buttons they are authorized to use. Users are also required to validate each task before proceeding, helping to prevent inadvertent human error.

The OpCon administrator can create buttons according to each user’s responsibilities thanks to role-based access control within the workflow orchestration software. Classifying buttons by role makes everything easier for the user and much safer for the company. For multi-stage workflows, certain buttons can be grayed out and made unclickable to certain users, so each person can see his or her role in the overall workflow and how the sequence is progressing.

Administrators also have the option to allow mobile access to certain buttons while keeping other workflows behind the organization’s firewall. Authorized users can perform tasks without lugging laptops around everywhere they go. Users can also remotely transfer privileges to the responsible party on duty.

Self-service automation also makes life better for the IT team, by empowering business users to kick off jobs without having to reach out to IT—making those departments more efficient.

"Self-Service helps us give control back to other departments, which they love,” says Damien Burgess, IT Systems Analyst at Andrews Federal Credit Union. “It allows them to become more comfortable with OpCon, too. They can see when a job starts and receive a notification when it’s complete. It’s a great tool.”

IT can focus on managing OpCon and keeping it secure instead of constantly responding to end user requests, onboarding password resets, reporting file management, and countless other routine tasks.

The Sky’s the Limit with Self-Service

Self-service buttons can be deployed in virtually any department or business unit around the enterprise. Use it to activate a presentation, automate password resets, or send event-triggered emails to clients or employees.

The application is beneficial for complex workflows, such as onboarding or offboarding employees, ensuring that only authorized staff have access to sensitive internal data or permissions to use specific software applications and systems.

In addition, Self-Service can be used to immediately suspend user credentials for audit, compliance, or HR purposes. And IT staff can rapidly initiate failover and disaster recovery routines to ensure the business keeps running smoothly.

Oregon State Credit Union uses Self-Service to automate virtually all processes that touch its KeyStone core system.

“We don’t run batch jobs in Keystone—we use OpCon,” says Erik Lubbock, Director of Core Applications Services at Oregon State Credit Union. “If we do want someone to be able to run a batch job, we’ll give them a Self-Service button because it’s the safest way to do it. It’s simple to use and definitely a great evolution in efficiency over our prior automation system.”

Reviewers on PeerSpot also cite the amazing power of OpCon Self-Service to create efficiency and reinforce security in automated workflows.

"The Self-Service feature is an incredibly powerful tool, and its significance cannot be overstated,” says Robert Carter, Systems Engineering Manager at HAPO Community Credit Union. “This functionality allows us to empower various departments within the Credit Union by giving them control over their own tasks, schedules, and internal processes.”

Putting Power in the Users’ Hands

Self-service is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s become an expectation in every aspect of our lives. It also represents the next wave in automation, allowing IT to decentralize and deploy automated processes throughout the enterprise, without giving up critical control, stability, or security.

To learn more about OpCon Self-Service and how it can support your organization’s automation goals, request a free demo.