The Problem of Paperwork
Running a business can be stressful. It comes with responsibility and mountains of paperwork. The amount of paperwork in your office may have reduced in recent years, and you may be using some cloud-based storage systems. You may also be using Cloud-based systems to store all your data and files enabling access from any location. If you have got this far the next step could be to automate your systems to put your business among the most forward-thinking organisations. Automation will reduce the time you spend doing business processes and generating paperwork. The best news is that this is one of the simplest parts of digital transformation, and the increase in operational efficiency can save you thousands of hours of labour.
Why should you automate your systems?
Digitising your systems for the sake of it will just swap one inefficiency for another. For example, many companies found that they digitised their systems to reduced paperwork, only to have a barrage of emails in exchange. Maintaining efficiency is about the control of information, not just less paper. So, it’s important to set goals. For example,
- Generate less paperwork
- Make it easy to find what you need
- Automate processes to create increased efficiency
How can this be done:
Generating less paperwork
Firstly you must define your paperwork processes. For example, this could be anything from your customer journey or the process of buying your materials. Once you know what information you need and who needs to authorise the decisions, you can reduce the number of items of information to the minimum.
Make your documents easier to find
The decision-making steps are the key to any process. Often this is slowed down by decision-makers searching for the information they need. For example, trying to find and telephone the person who received the delivery or searching through hundreds of delivery notes, which is slow.
Having the information from goods in to say that the stock has arrived, been counted and is in good condition attached to the authorisation request for payment makes it fast. Furthermore, having all this information in one central place makes this information easier to find.
Automate your systems: How can Northstar help?
We can help you to implement systems such as SharePoint, bespoke automation scripts or software. These tools will undertake small tasks that can transfer information, or even make decisions based on data, making the processes instant. We can transfer data between systems to allow one system to benefit from the automation contained in another.
One benefit of automating your systems is that it can create a seamless experience for your customers as well as for your staff. We can add code to your website allowing customers to sign in to your customer area and purchase goods or services at their unmatched customer price, as well as tracking their progress. The simpler you make the buying process, the more likely customers will use your service over your competitors.
Automation in the customer journey in action
Northstar recently did a piece of work for a company that sells wood burners. We were asked to look at websites to see what the customer journey was for their competitors. We found that few offered the opportunity to purchase online and none had a process where customers could submit information and have a custom price for installation work. Our client is now working hard on a set of criteria to gather information from customers in an easy way to allow this automation. Northstar will be on hand to assist when required.
Contact us today and find out how automation can make your business processes more efficient and help you stay competitive.
