Transformation initiatives often seek to provide greater efficiency through process optimization and cost reduction or to elevate the customer experience and drive growth. Sometimes they accomplish both. In either case it’s important to consider the need for transparency in newly deployed systems and processes. Optimization efforts that lack transparency can fall short of delivering on their promise.

Transparency can support several important goals and objectives. It can provide visibility into the status of work, answering common questions for multiple participants in a process. To start, the team that is performing the work benefits greatly from transparency. Providing clear and timely information about tasks and their status keeps them informed of critical blockers and dependencies they can work to resolve. Visibility into pending and incoming work items can help ensure that tasks are being actioned, and that SLA’s are being met.

For management this transparency provides important insights into how well a team performs and allows them to act with impact when they see key performance indicators begin to dip. Line managers need insight into the work their team is doing in order to keep driving better results. Providing visibility into operational processes and how they are performing allows a manager to step in and assist where needed and can give them the confidence that the work within their remit is being conducted quickly and efficiently.

Finally, customers who are kept informed can experience greater satisfaction and confidence that their needs are being met, and this transparency can prevent the noisy follow-up questions that simply ask for a status update. It is not uncommon for a customer (whether internal or external to your organization) to wonder if their needs are being actively pursued. Providing real-time visibility into the status of their requests can provide them with a measure of satisfaction that enhances their relationship.

Building transparency into your transformation projects can support both efficiency and customer experience goals. Teams will work more efficiently, and customers will be more satisfied. Delivering transparency can be made easy by choosing a platform like Appian that makes it easy to present timely data to the right audiences in a format that is simple to understand. The Appian platform combines powerful data fabric capabilities with the power of low-code and is a great way to transform your operations while realizing the value of transparency.