What is digital transformation? Is it an injection of technology to simplify and automate day-to-day activities? Or is it leveraging advanced technologies such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence to derive insights? We see that it is all of these and more.

Digital transformation, for us, is about enabling transformation across People, Process, Data, and Technology to deliver a greater experience to end users and drive desired business outcomes. Figure 1 shows the 4 pillars of digital transformation and the technology involved in building these.

Figure 1: The 4 pillars of digital transformation

How can we engage the 4 pillars to simplify the life of end users and provide them an ideal experience driven by insights? Persona-based Services is the solution.

What is persona-based service and why do you need it?

Persona-based service provides hyper-personalized services to end users. This is essential as the end users today expect a seamless and personalized experience with minimal manual interventions. They want customized solutions to meet their specific requirements.

Hyper-personalization creates highly contextual communication relevant to the user leveraging behavioral and real-time data. Personalization of services improves engagement levels and productivity. An increase in overall satisfaction promotes loyalty and retention. It also allows organizations to gain more data about their employees to tailor their experiences proactively, rather than reactively. Figure 2 shows the relevance and impact of persona-based service management in an organization.

Figure 2: The relevance of persona-based service

With COVID-19, the uncertainty and disruption in the day-to-day workspace and well-being of employees has exponentially increased. While the focus is currently on reviving operations, we believe the time is right to orient and map unavoidable upgrades with the employees at the center.

What are the personas in a manufacturing organization?

The personas are built on various parameters, ranging from the roles they perform to their interactions with the client and the support they need from other teams, including IT.

As an example, here are some of the personas we have created for a manufacturing organization:

CIO – This persona provides thought leadership to the manufacturing organization and leads the digital transformation for IT.

Connected Field Engineer – A critical persona who acts as the face of the organization for its various clients. They should ideally receive priority support as any delay caused in their services impacts client experience.

Connected Corporate User – These personas are part of the corporate roles such as Finance, Marketing, and HR and generally expect a seamless, omni-channel and self-service enabled experience.

Connected Plant Engineer – They are the critical personas who support the day-to-day manufacturing activities in the plant and ensure that plants function with minimal unplanned downtime.

Interns – These work in a range of roles and act as evangelizers of the organization. They have high expectations and expect a hyper-personalized, digital experience.

Figure 3 depicts illustrative personas in a manufacturing organization.

Figure 3: Personas in a manufacturing plant

How does persona-based service help end users?

Persona development allows services to be mapped to the various personas. This enables organizations to hyper-personalize various services and improve end-user experience.

Figure 4 shows how services are categorized and aligned to personas for personalizing IT end user support. The services range from hardware and software distribution to Tech Bar and vending machine support. Even hardware types such as a standard laptop to rugged devices and iPads are assigned to each persona, allowing faster onboarding and increased productivity.

Figure 4:  Mapping services to personas

How to create persona-based services?

Building persona-based services is a 5-step process that ranges from 8 to 12 weeks for a mid-sized organization.

• Discovery – Understand the organization and deep dive into the day-in-a-life of the various key actors
• Describe – Convert the understanding into persona and employee Journeys
• Determine – Identify the set of relevant services for the personas
• Develop – Map common and unique services to the personas
• Deliver – Deliver the newly designed persona-based services

Figure 5 demonstrates the process to create an effective persona-based end user support services in an organization.

Figure 5: The 5-step approach to persona-based services

The impact of persona-based IT Support

Let us take the example of Clayton, who works as a Plant Engineer at Track-Type Tractor Assembly in Charlestown, Boston. He is responsible for ensuring that various plant equipment runs seamlessly, with minimal downtime.

A day in Clayton’s work life 

• Clayton gets a high priority work order to inspect the CNC machine and reviews the details on his mounted laptop (laptop mounted on the tools trolley) along with past maintenance history and scheduled maintenance on that asset.
• He walks over to the CNC machine and checks in with the operator who mentions the noise and replicates the issue.
• Clayton needs remote help. He walks to the “Digital Locker” and scans his ID Card. He takes out an iPad and scans the bar code so that the iPad can be allocated to him. He switches on the iPad and logs on with his credentials. He pulls the relevant Work Order.
• He then connects to a CNC SME at the Everett, WA Technical Center and the SME walks him through troubleshooting, sharing a PDF file and showing the root cause.
• Clayton fixes the machine and clicks pictures of the fix via iPad and closes the work order. He then walks back to the “Digital Locker” and puts back the iPad.

Persona-based service interventions

• Connected laptop & iPad enables Clayton to do his job seamlessly
• Digital Locker enables him to continue working with no downtime
• Download of all necessary data into the replacement device, based on persona

Increase in CSAT

• Gets immediate access to all data on the new device
• Digitally enabled workforce with minimal human intervention from IT
• Performance Improvement
• Asset optimization 

Clayton leveraged an iPad from Digital Locker, enabling collaboration and image capture. This resulted in faster resolution of the issue and reduced equipment downtime. All this was done with no intervention from any other team, again optimizing the actual time spend on resolution.

If you’re interested in learning more about Persona-based Services and how you can leverage the same to transform your employee experience, contact us today to begin. We can perform a Design Thinking workshop to develop a roadmap for your organization.

Namit Bhargava

GM & Head of Digital Sales, Digital Transformation, Wipro

Namit brings innovative strategic perspective on Digital Transformation and Industry X.O themes for superior customer experience. He is a thought leader for CXO conversations, including digital strategy, transformation, new business models, and innovation.

Connect with Namit at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nbhargava/

Savish Sadanandan

Senior Consultant, Manufacturing Digital Practice, Wipro

Savish focuses on bringing digital solutions across the Manufacturing value chain. He likes to analyze and understand the client's pain points to identify linchpins which can drive digital transformation.

Connect with Savish at https://in.linkedin.com/in/savishsadanandan

Sweta Nair

Consultant, Manufacturing Digital Practice, Wipro

Sweta is passionate about delivering best-fit solutions to clients with focus on powering digital transformation and customer experience. She helps clients equip themselves with the right technology solutions to drive business outcomes and be future-ready.

Connect with Sweta at https://in.linkedin.com/in/sweta-nair