5 IT Self-Service Portal Use Cases That Are Not-So-IT
An IT self-service portal is much more than an IT storefront. With the consumer-world self-service technology becoming more obvious and available to end-users, it is critical to provide a similar experience with corporate self-service portals.
But when it comes to self-service portals, ‘less is more’ doesn’t really work. Who wouldn’t pick a multi-functional portal over the one that is only limited to IT operations?
Showcase your offerings on your self-service portal ranging from HR to legal to marketing operations, and allow your end-users to pick and choose the required services. This blog has the following use-cases that are not-so-IT, supercharging your employee experience with services brought at single-click reach.
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HR
Content employees are the key to any organization’s success. With a dedicated internal gateway to access HR-related information, watch your employees’ trust and motivation levels go up. The goal is to streamline and centralize HR functions so that it is easy for employees to find what they need. Onboarding and Induction Packets, Policies and Procedures, Job Descriptions and Recruitment Processes, Benefits and Entitlements, Staff Directory, and Bios could be part of the self-service portal to provide everything your employees are looking for.
Here’s an example of a unique HR solutions portal customized for McCormick by Freshservice. McCormick has its portal customized to enable its employees to complete forms, request standard HR actions, and find answers to frequently asked questions.
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Facilities
How does an organization reduce distractions and increase employee productivity? Providing better state-of-art technology, conference equipment, on-site services, ergonomic furniture, commutation, etc., can help your employees stay engaged. But most facilities management processes are outdated- often a combination of emails, spreadsheets, documents to manage the maintenance and operations. The employee interaction is also equally far behind, usually limited to voice and email, or walk-ups to the desk, supported by manual & people-intensive workflows.
IT self-service portal can offer excellent facilities “storefront” experience where your end-users can request help, search, and review frequently asked facilities-related questions, browse solutions, and Order services they want easily and quickly, with their requests automatically routed to the appropriate groups for the workarounds.
Customize your IT self-service portal to improve accuracy, efficiency, and service quality across facilities management while delivering consumer-like experience, consistency, and speed to your employees. Check out how Freshservice helped Harrods build an extremely clean and easy-to-use IT self-service portal here. The portal has no technical & IT-heavy words that often mislead or confuse the end-users, preserving the whole purpose of self-service.
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Finance, payroll, and billing
Provide a seamless and efficient IT self-service portal to make expense management even easier for your employees. Allow your end-users to connect, store, and share business transactions with a single click of a button. Enable your employees to have visibility into documents, balances, due dates, payments received, and amount due. Automate financial operations such as bill payments, subscription renewals, and support requests. Develop a repository of solutions and knowledge base for frequently asked payroll and billing queries.
Here’s an example of how Freshservice customized its IT self-service portal for finance and billing management with services that include invoice requests using different templates, COVID cancellations/downgrades, vendor payment requests, and tools/subscription procurement.
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Announcements, solutions, and Knowledge vault
Employees are happier when they can answer their own questions themselves. And they can, quickly and efficiently, with a well-curated IT self-service portal in place.
Supercharge your portal with insights into what your end-users are looking for. Securely share resourceful content, and put together great solutions and internal documentation at your end-users’ fingertips. Empower your employees to search for knowledge-base articles and help your employees help themselves.
An effective knowledge base allows you to stay two steps ahead of your employees’ problems. Waiting for your employees to come to you is a dangerous strategy.
Here’s how Education First has customized its IT self-service portal to make organizational announcements, provide FAQs and most-searched solution articles.
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GTM operations
Last but not least, include GTM operations to your customized portal.
Go-to-Market Operations is responsible for the policy, tools, processes, and programs for the Sales, Marketing, and Services organizations. It often involves working back and forth with customers, requests, collaborations, deals, and approvals. Customize your self-service portal to improve collaborations between teams, cater to all your end-users’ needs during the customer lifecycle.
Here’s an example of how GTM operations can be automated in a single click for CRM teams, marketing teams, and support teams. This self-service portal has an exhaustive list of services on the portal like account transfer requests, collaboration deals, case study requests, campaign services, outreach support, and data requests.
Self-service features and requirements vary from organization to organization. That said, the main goal is to simplify your end-users’ lives and empower them to help themselves. Whether your organization is implementing a portal to help employees with HR-related tasks or IT-related queries, the overall benefits are primarily the same: faster service at a lower cost, business productivity, and employee satisfaction too.
Check out Freshservice’s IT Self-service portal 101 to know everything from the implementation to the self-service portal’s business benefits.
Blog cover design Harshini Tanneeru
