What do Sticky notes, pink message pads, instant messaging, email, and voice mail have in common? They are inadequate to capture, track, manage and report the essential “back-office” communications that go hand in hand with business processes.

How It Ought To Be
Jan@yourcompany.com works in HR and starts her day by signing in to eMail and the 'pct' (Process Communications Tracking) system. There are two stray resumes in her eMail box. She forwards them to resumes@yourcompany.com, confirms a meeting request in Outlook, and then pops open the 'pct' home screen.

On the right hand side of the screen, she clicks “messages”. There are two “while you were out” messages – one entered by her assistant, and one entered by the accounting department (they took a call while her assistant was out.) She clicks “add a reminder” to the first message, “Call Bob back on the 12^th – after vacation.” With a click, she assigns the second call to her assistant, and turns her attention to resumes.

On the right hand side of the screen, she clicks “Resumes”. There are seven new job applicants; five from the company web site, and the two she forwards from email that morning. Automated acknowledgements have been sent and the next step is simple. Three are accounting candidates, and these are quickly assigned to Bill, the hiring manager for accounting. Four are applying for a sales position, so they are assigned to the hiring manager for sales. (Their “Resumes” list shows only those resumes assigned to them by Jan.)

Jan notices that the office is a little warm, and the thermostat doesn't seem to be working. She clicks at the top of the screen and selects “Maintenance” from a pick list of back office processes. In just a few moments, her maintenance request is logged into the system, where it is automatically added to a prioritized list for the maintenance engineer.

What Makes it Work
Each category on the right hand side of Jan's computer screen (Maintenance, Messages, etc.) corresponds to a business process. Each entry under a category represents one unit of work, (a “work order in Maintenance”, a single applicant in “Resumes”. The system allows everyone impacted by that unit of work to contribute and stay informed about the status of that unit of work as it progresses through the business process.

Don't we have a system like that?
If your company or department is trying to manage this kind of communications through emails, faxes, shared folders, post-it notes, instant messaging, and voice mail – then probably not. But, you don't have to be a fortune 500 company to implement a system like this one. If you can afford an initial training session and recurring costs starting at $125/month – you can be using a system like this in a matter of days.

Do I really need it?
If you have more than four or five associates, then you probably do. Communications complexity increases exponentially with the number of parties that must stay informed and in touch. Shift differences, multiple locations, mobile and “work at home” workers increases the likelihood that, without proper tools, your organization will lose track of tasks in process, resulting in lost opportunities and higher costs.

Other Benefits
The tasks needed to keep back office operations running are often “invisible”, “unaudited”, and “under-appreciated”. By making the work visible we make it manageable, and we make its connection to the success of the business clear and more direct. It lets the back office (as my high school math teacher always said) “show their work.”

How Do I Get Started?

1. Schedule a training day with us for up to ten key employees. Make sure everyone understands how the system is different and complementary to eMail, and how participation will make them more effective in their job.
2. Subscribe to one of our “ready to use” web based systems with a “starter set of business processes”.
3. Set up initial user accounts and train on your system the day of class.
4. Let us help you build and document additional business processes on a time and materials basis.
5. Grow your system capacity in minutes. (System capacity is not based on number of users, tickets, or business processes but on usage. When your volume of usage increases – just step up to a larger server with more processing capacity.)

What is in the “Starter Set”

1. While You Were Out – Messaging
2. NR – Accounts Payable (Submission/tracking for Non-Recurring Accounts Payable)
3. Job Applicants (Resumes)
4. Facilities Maintenance Requests
5. Tier I Computer Help & Action Items
6. Incident Tracking (optional)

What If I outgrow this system?
This is a training and support offering for smaller businesses. There is no hardware or software to buy, but our expertise extends to and includes the Action Request systems used by the largest companies in the world. When your business needs change, or if you want to bring this kind of system up on your own hardware – we are prepared to help.

Contact Us
If you think this could help your business, give us a call or contact us at: mail@operationimprovement.com