Doing better business and saving loads of cash might not require hiring financial and accounting wizards to the C-suite. It may be possible simply through restructuring work in the oft-neglected Human Resources department, according to Deepak R. Bharadwaj (pictured), general manager of the HR Business Unit at ServiceNow Inc.

“I think the opportunity to transform the enterprise is huge with HR,” Bharadwaj said in an interview at this year’s ServiceNow Knowledge17 event in Orlando, Florida.

Removing inefficiencies even in small corners of a business can send ripples throughout departments, Bharadwaj told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

HR tends to be undeserved, so inefficiencies pile up there. Workflows that stagnate in HR often make their way back to the information technology department. “One of the reasons we see all of that interest from IT in HR-type use cases is because they are at the receiving end of all of that action, if you will,” Bharadwaj said.

Drilling down into the root of the inefficiencies that plague HR, one finds that unstructured work, such as email queries, are often the culprit, he added.

Austerity measures pay dividends?

On-boarding, off-boarding, transfers, recruiting and employee relations are some examples of unstructured work that drains employee time.

Using the example of ServiceNow customer Sally Beauty Supply LLC, Bharadwaj explained that increased efficiency led to a situation where fewer service-center employees were needed. This can save a great deal of capital to invest in higher value-add hires and activities.

“Would you rather be looking at how to reorganize your resources, or would you rather respond via email to all these unstructured queries? Clearly the former is much more high value-add work,” Bharadwaj concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge17. (* Disclosure: ServiceNow Inc. sponsored this Knowledge17 segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither ServiceNow nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE