Case Study: IRIS Software Group Improved Resource Management With Netcall

IRIS Software Group is a global provider of mission-critical, cloud-hosted software solutions and services to more than 100,000 customers across 135 countries.

For nearly 50 years, IRIS has been a trusted partner to businesses, finance, HR and payroll teams, educational organizations, and accountancy firms of all sizes, providing innovative operational solutions that streamline complex processes, maintain compliance and unlock growth.

Challenges

Most growing companies face some operational headaches, especially when they expand through acquisitions alongside organic growth. The more IRIS scaled, the more complex their internal processes became.

They had 20+ different CRM systems running across various business units, multiple billing systems that didn’t talk to each other and processes that varied wildly depending on which product line you were dealing with.

Internally, key business knowledge was often held in individual expertise or across different tools like PowerPoint, Excel spreadsheets and Visio diagrams. This made it challenging to manage change across the organization.

Solution

IRIS decided to tackle this head-on by adopting Liberty Spark, our process mapping and improvement solution.

They started by focusing on their order-to-cash process, which became the foundation for their new target operating model. They ran workshops with the Liberty Spark team, combining training with actual process mapping.

With Liberty Spark, the team could easily then map processes live in workshops with stakeholders and subject-matter experts.

One of the biggest wins came from their Professional Services Team. Because IRIS works across accountancy, education and human capital management, each product had different implementation timescales and approaches.

The team documented every single product implementation process, identified all the touchpoints and figured out what was standard across consultants, training staff and technical personnel.

They created self-service options for customers who wanted to self-serve alone, complete with training videos and academy resources. They’re now able to give customers a choice in how they want to be supported.

The process transformation has had a real impact on how people work at IRIS. New employees now get a complete view of the business architecture during onboarding.

Instead of hunting around SharePoint, HR systems and training platforms, everything they need is in one place – processes, standard operating procedures and the resources and tools to do their day-to-day job.

They’re tracking success through customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and their internal employee engagement tool called Peakon. It’s not just about making customers happy – they want their own people to understand their processes better and know who is responsible for different steps.

IRIS plans to integrate Liberty Spark with its learning management system, business design authority and AI council to enhance process visibility and automation.

This supports their broader “AI everywhere” strategy focused on driving intelligent transformation. They expect to implement some of the customer journey improvements they’ve identified within 6 months.

Longer term, Spark will enable them to instigate regular process health checks with defined ownership and a robust governance framework for continuous improvement and to expand their Centre of Excellence through their Business Analyst team.

Results

“Using Liberty Spark, we identified over 600 improvement opportunities. Having that in a report to instantly show to senior leadership has helped to inform their decision-making because cold hard facts gave the direction,” said, Jenna Taylor, Senior Business Analyst – Transformation Team, IRIS Software Group.

• Process documentation 550+ total processes identified for documentation across the organization and 283 processes already documented (approximately 50% complete)
• Opportunity for improvement 600+ improvement opportunities identified and catalogued
• Customer journey mapping 150 customer touchpoints mapped across the entire customer journey, with 130 touchpoints identified for improvement and 20 completely new processes to be introduced
• Business intelligence 203 business abbreviations and terms documented in the Spark comprehensive glossary
• Enhanced reporting delivering real-time impact analysis capabilities for proposed changes and resource allocation insights leading to staffing adjustments
• Operational improvements centralized process repository replacing scattered documentation and automation opportunities clearly highlighted
• Consistent customer experience across all product lines
• Improved resource management through process time and cost quantification
• Enhanced change management with clear impact assessment capabilities
• Collaborative process improvement increased buy-in from staff thanks to visual, simplified process mapping
• Data accuracy reduced spreadsheet dependence.

Reviewed by: Jo Robinson