When was the last time you put a large puzzle together? You know, those mega, 1000-piece puzzles that can occupy you for hours and days? While you probably don’t do puzzles in the office, I’ll wager that your team probably works on challenging puzzles similar to these every day. The puzzles I am referring to involve the common business operations your company faces on a daily basis.
What’s more, these puzzles are repeatedly assembled every day, week after week. Here are some examples of common, recurring problems facing organizations and some of the challenges that these puzzles present:
- Customer Service Requests from Initiation to Resolution: Service requests come in from email, phone calls or customer portals. Those who manage the requests need access to product information, specific customer situation details, past service history, customer communications and more. Where are all these documents stored and do users have proper access to these documents so they can resolve the customer issue? How do they share all this relevant information with teammates who assist in resolving the issue?
- Accounts Payable Invoice Processing: Invoice processing involves many touch points, is labor intensive and fraught with data-keying errors, exceptions and inadequate internal controls. Supplier invoices may come into the AP department through various incoming channels such as regular mail, email, fax, EDI or supplier portals. What are the repercussions when invoices are not paid on time, misfiled or even missed completely?
- Purchase Orders or Complex Supplier Queries: Purchase orders or supplier queries often require working with hard copy documents, emails, faxes or orders via EDI. They often involve related documents like the latest contract templates, product specifications, terms and conditions and shipping and delivery instructions. What happens when these documents live in multiple silos? How do you find and manage all the documents when there is no connection between the most relevant and current versions? How do you ensure your employees are not making copies and storing them in multiple silos (and increasing your storage costs) just to get their work done?
- HR requests: The majority of employee documents are generated by the processes involved with HR functions such as on- and off-boarding, employment contracts, employee development plans, benefits, payroll, expense reports, and more. How do you ensure access to accurate and up-to-date information for your employees and managers? How do you keep HR service levels at 100% to help retain happy, satisfied employees? Are you confident that your company is completely compliant with all regional laws and regulations regarding the management of employee information?
- Mission Critical Documentation: If you are a manufacturer, you know the challenges of assembling and publishing manufacturing record books (MRBs). These lengthy documents derive from information in scattered data sources (ERP, file shares, SharePoint, etc.). Creating, updating and managing MRBs is fraught with challenges due to these siloed data sources. This can result in delayed or missed sales and ligation risk, among other potential problems. How do you produce MRBs with 100% confidence in their accuracy? How do you ensure proper information governance of these critical MRBs?
Stop doing puzzles, start transforming your processes
When you streamline your key business processes, you fuel your business agility and shape your organization to be more responsive to market conditions and customer needs. Modernizing your business processes is hard work, but the payoff can be significant. Here are just some of the benefits of modernizing your business processes:
- Minimize errors by reducing manual touch points and the complexity of time-wasting searches for the right information
- Improved customer service and satisfaction that translates into loyalty and long-term relationships
- Better cash flow management
- Reduced sales cycles
- Increased engineering efficiency
- Happier employees and better employee retention
- Reduced operating costs and a fatter bottom line
The best part of modernizing your business processes is that when you stop solving the same puzzles every day, you can refocus your energy and company resources on more strategic initiatives to move the company forward.
Case study: Alliander powers ahead to transform procurement processes
In this case study, OpenText services partner Delaware worked with Dutch energy distributor Alliander to transform their business processes with OpenText™ Extended ECM. The result was tighter document control and reduced business risk. Read the full story here.
Learn more
Ready to start modernizing your business processes? Start by reading these two quick-info tip sheets on the importance of making your CRM and HR processes both intelligent and connected.
Then discover how to maximize your current software investments in Microsoft® Office 365™, Microsoft® Dynamics 365™ or any leading ERP, HCM or CRM application. If you’d like to learn more about our Extended ECM solutions, please contact us.
