94 INTERVIEW Embracing a dynamic duo Pragya Malhotra shares how isolved’s Microsoft Azure-based HR solutions help enterprises to improve employee and customer experiences Customer-facing organisations need to prioritise the customer experience alongside their employee experiences to maintain a reliable and productive workforce and successful business growth. Pragya Malhotra, chief product officer at isolved, explains how isolved’s human resources software and services are deployed via Microsoft Azure to improve the employee experience and, in turn, alleviate workload and enhance the customer experience. What does isolved do and who does it serve? isolved offers the perfect combination of HR software and services to intelligently connect and manage the employee journey across talent acquisition, HR, payroll and benefits, workforce management and talent management functions. We serve over 145,000 employers and nearly 5.5 million employees directly and through our channel network. Why are employee and customer experiences often seen as separate entities? The experience of the employee is separated from that of the customer as they often fall under different ownership categories. HR departments are likely to be invested in the former whilst other departments such as sales and marketing tend to focus on the latter, using technologies and tools to exceed customer expectations. In reality, employee and customer experiences intersect all day, every day, and neither is an isolated endeavour. When employees don’t have the resources they need, customers suffer, and when customers don’t get the experience they deserve, employees suffer. It’s a continuous loop that requires all hands on deck to ensure that these equally critical stakeholder groups have what they need. How is isolved using Microsoft technologies to help organisations to enhance the employee experience? Microsoft is a critical partner for us as isolved People Cloud is hosted on Azure. Our partnership allows over 145,000 companies to manage their entire employee journeys in a secure and scalable fashion. Through the collaboration, the isolved Conversational Virtual Assistant is available in Microsoft Teams to improve employee experiences and reduce the HR workload. For example, someone wanting to review their next shift can ask the virtual assistant in Teams instead of emailing or calling HR. As a result, businesses are properly staffed to support their customers and employees can return to their workday more quickly and provide more timely responses to customers. What should leaders look for when trying to enhance their employee experience? Improving the employee experience doesn’t have to be about total transformation in a short period of time. Instead, it can include incremental improvements that make a big impact. For example, a business may see that their time-to-hire rate is increasing. A role that used to take two weeks to fill is now taking two months. By reducing this time, other employees won’t feel the impact of being understaffed and customers won’t experience longer wait times. BY ALICE CHAMBERS
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