Sofigate implements a central operational process using ServiceNow as a platform for The Swedish Public Employment Service

The challenge

Sweden’s largest employment broker is digitalising its operations and aiming to increase the use of automation. In 2020, the Swedish Public Employment Service started exploring automations for its jobseekers’ monitoring process. Automations were to act as digital case managers, handling cases in a correct and legally certain manner, complying with regulations and treating everyone equally.

The solution

The Swedish Public Employment Service, Sofigate and ServiceNow collaborated closely to design and implement a concept with two standard ServiceNow modules: Integrated Risk Management and Customer Service Management. Sofigate helped to verify the concept and execute on the technical implementation, offering expertise in enabling efficient workflows, compliance and risk management.

The outcome

Thanks to the team’s clear conceptual design, a deep understanding of operational processes, and access to ServiceNow product experts, the solution was implemented rapidly. The solution will contribute to reducing erroneous benefit payments from the Swedish social insurance system, and enable the Swedish Public Employment Service to continue to increase the degree of automation where possible and appropriate.

The Swedish Public Employment Service is Sweden’s largest employment broker

The Swedish Public Employment Service is Sweden’s largest employment broker, connecting those who are looking for staff with those who are seeking jobs. Fundamentally, their mission is to contribute to a well-functioning labour market.

Another important task carried out by the Swedish Public Employment Service is to prepare and upskill people who find it difficult to enter the labour market. In this way, the organisation contributes to preventing social exclusion and to increased employment.

The Swedish Public Employment Service is also charged with checking that employers receiving recruitment incentives comply with relevant regulations, as well as ensuring that people registered as unemployed comply with the regulations so that they may receive the right assistance and support from their unemployment insurance fund and Försäkringskassan, the Swedish social insurance agency.

Digitalisation of operational processes

Like many other authorities in Sweden, the Swedish Public Employment Service are in the process of digitalising their operations. One of their goals is to increase the use of automation. In 2020, the Swedish Public Employment Service launched a project to explore opportunities for improvement and reinforcement of its technological capabilities relating to the process Monitoring of jobseekers. This dialogue and subsequent efforts resulted in a number of conclusions.

“One of the most important conclusions was that as we digitalise and increase the degree of automation, it is important to ensure that our digital services can replace the capacities of our human case managers. In practice, this means that we must ensure that our automations act as ‘digital case managers’: they must handle cases in a correct and legally certain manner, comply with regulatory interpretations and treat everyone equally.”

Stephan Eggimann, Product Manager, Swedish Public Employment Service

Based on these conclusions, Stephan Eggimann and his colleagues developed a concept design which was later refined further in collaboration with ServiceNow Sweden.

“We saw considerable potential in the ServiceNow platform even at this early stage, in terms of being able to implement the concept using standard components and 100% configurability (OOTB). After a lot of work, we were also able to conclude that the concept and the technical solution were entirely generic and could be used by any type of organisation that is subject to regulatory or non-regulatory compliance requirements,” Eggimann says.

The focus of the concept was to strengthen technological capabilities in the following four areas:

Compliance
Ensuring compliance with various regulatory frameworks. Enabling the use of a single regulatory framework, whether a case is processed manually or automatically. Enabling the operational division to handle the life-cycle management (LCM) of their own regulations.

Traceability
Enabling a complete audit of the way a case is managed and documented, whether the case is processed manually or automatically. Enabling the tracing of the interpretation and use of legal and/or non-legal points of departure.
Equal treatment
Enabling the use of one process for case management, whether the case is processed manually or automatically.

Automation
Enabling systematic increases of the degree of automation. This is achieved partly by allowing the regulatory framework to govern the design of the case management process, and partly with a structured analysis of opportunities to convert manual case management steps into automated steps.

“According to our assessment, this reinforced technological capacity will contribute to the Swedish Public Employment Service’s continued efforts to reduce erroneous benefit payments from the Swedish social insurance system. It will also offer us the opportunity to increase the degree of automation where possible and appropriate.”

Stephan Eggimann, Product Manager, Swedish Public Employment Service

Choice of Sofigate as a ServiceNow partner

The Swedish Public Employment Service chose Sofigate to carry out the technical implementation of the concept in ServiceNow. Sofigate has extensive experience in implementing ServiceNow as a platform for standardised workflows, both in cases where the focus is technological and in cases where the focus is on operational processes. Sofigate introduced ServiceNow to the Nordic markets as early as 2009.

“Sofigate knew that the Swedish Public Employment Service used ServiceNow as a platform to handle internal IT processes (ITSM). When the Swedish Public Employment Service communicated its need for a partner to verify and execute on the technical implementation of the concept, we were very interested and felt that this was a perfect fit for our skills.” says Anders Westberg, Sales Executive at Sofigate

An initial step was to carry out a pilot study for the purpose of ascertaining how the concept could be implemented. The goal was to utilise standard components in ServiceNow out-of-the-box to the greatest extent possible and to minimise the use of custom code. After the pilot, efforts began to establish the technical environment and to implement the technical solution.

In the development of the solution, two standard modules in ServiceNow were implemented: Integrated Risk Management (IRM) and Customer Service Management (CSM). IRM provides support in compliance and risk management, for example, while CSM supports efficient management of workflows with a high degree of process orientation and automation where possible. The modern case manager support in CSM contributes to efficient case management when cases require manual intervention.

“Sofigate has expert competencies in a number of the ServiceNow modules and considerable experience with CSM and IRM. This means that we understand how to enable efficient workflows, compliance and risk management.” says Anders Westberg.

As a complement to the IRM and CSM modules, the platform functions of ServiceNow are also used to integrate plug-ins using only configuration. Using no-code and low-code solutions means that instead of writing code, the integration is accomplished using graphical configuration and process automation.

“The close collaboration between the Swedish Public Employment Service, Sofigate and ServiceNow has been crucial to the success of the technical implementation. Thanks to a combination of a clear conceptual design, a deep understanding of the activities and operational processes, and access to ServiceNow product experts, we were able to implement this solution rapidly.” says Johan Haglund, CTO of Platforms Sweden at Sofigate.

Sofigate identifies a growing trend toward workflow platforms

Sofigate has identified a growing trend on the market: ever more companies and organisations use modern workflow platforms like ServiceNow to enhance their own support or operational processes. Development of these integrations are based on turnkey modules and/or customised modules and vertical solutions. By using the low-code/no-code features of the ServiceNow platform, customisations can be implemented based on the needs of a particular industry or a particular vertical.

Crucial to the success of these efforts, in Sofigate’s view, is a deep understanding of how operational requirements can and should be implemented in this context.

Read more about the concept of regulated workflows at:

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