Business Process Automation Reduces Pain and Tastes Great Too!
Posted by Todd Mueller
You kick ass at your job in spite of the shitty technology and ass backward processes and hoops you have to jump through to make things happen. That's you in a nutshell. A rainmaker, thriving in a soul-crushing desert. If I could make your life easier would you pay attention? You bet you would.
I'm in the process of fixing up a house my wife, and I bought and along the way, we have dealt with different businesses purchasing various goods and services. Some experiences have been good, some not so good and I want to share my thoughts on them.
Company A
We'll call the first business, 'Company A.' Company A has nice products, a clean well-lit showroom, and knowledgeable staff. Order placed, and we left feeling confident in at least one good decision without much doubt. Now we wait to find out when the order is going to ship. And wait. And wait some more. I call every day, and the manager we worked with explained some details on why it was taking so long while I was looking at his computer screen. On it, was an email with about a dozen order numbers, each on a separate line. Out of curiosity and a bit of frustration not knowing what's going on with the order, I asked if he used email to get order status updates. He said he did and relied on his boss to send him updates and a tracking number for each order.
I was shocked. This wasn't a small mom and pop type of store where this would be expected, but rather a national chain. I would have to imagine that other customers were in the dark with their orders as we were. I could bet money this manager wasn't happy fielding calls every day about order status inquiries and not being able to look up orders in a system to help service his customers.
This type of scenario screams for some sort of order management system were employees involved in the order process could have access to help serve their customers. How happy would the employees be, and more productive, if they had a system in place to get quick access to orders? I could feel the money being sucked out of the cracks in their broken processes.
I asked the manager if he would benefit from a system with quick and easy access to all of their orders? The look on his face said it all.
Company B
'Company B' came to our house and did a walk-through with me to give me an estimate based on input they slowly pecked into a small laptop. This wasn't a tablet, but a laptop running Windows 10. The application being used was Excel. I'm nosey, I know, I can't help myself.
At the end of his measurements and calculations in Excel, he ran through his pitch, and I agreed to the estimate. A credit card was required to secure the spot, and I handed it over on the spot. The estimator leaned over and started typing my card number into the Excel document he was using. I was gobsmacked, yet again. I started thinking about security, who's going to have access to this card and how long it’s going to stay on this laptop. I inquired about the card number staying in the laptop, and he reassured me it would be erased after the hold is put on the card. That didn't help relax much.
I asked him if a mobile app to handle all of calculations and payment related to a job would make his life easier and more productive. 'YES!!, that would make my life so much easier'. It sure would I said.
Don’t Be Like Them
There are just two examples of where using technology to streamline a process can greatly improve employee efficiency and morale while at the same time offer a better customer experience. That sounds like sweet music to my ears.
Don’t be like Company A or Company B. You're better than that. Let us solve painful processes for you so your customers can be happier and your employees more productive and efficient. What’s there not like?
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