Since he joined his new company’s IT department, Arka has been shocked by the number of inefficiencies and delays.
During his onboarding, it took three days before he was given access to his company email account, and had to piggyback off other employees when checking in because his access ID card wasn’t ready yet.
When he submitted his first purchase requisition for some new hardware, he had to follow up several times, trying to figure out whose inbox the request was stuck in.
Arka can see the frustration isn’t just with him. His colleagues and managers have been finding these tasks hassling as well.
Since he’s in IT, Arka knows these are largely solvable problems with technology and he can introduce the tools to make them run smoothly. But which ones should he focus on?
Vendor Payments
One workflow that causes serious chaos is paying vendors. Arka has seen first hand the kind of tension that many of his IT suppliers have faced. Several of the pending bills have late penalty charges on them and it’s hard for Arka to negotiate a good deal.
The vendor payment workflow is fairly easy to set up on an automated platform. The biggest challenges in Arka’s company were that the Accounts Payable team always sent invoices back to a department via email because some data was missing. Sometimes these emails could get missed or skipped over and would result in no payment.
Arka can sit with procurement to figure out exactly what details they need for every type of request. He can build a form that captures all the data, and create the workflow that ensures that the invoice approval is given quickly.
By speeding up the vendor payment workflow, Arka can immediately show how much money has been lost to inefficient workflows.
Leave Management
Another important, yet often broken workflow is leave management. Previously, it was set up where an employee emails a manager who would either reject or approve the request, and then forward it onto HR to update balances.
But, employees were often unaware of how many days they had left and would get upset when leave was initially approved, but then later rejected. Trying to communicate this all in emails was further complicating the mess.
Arka can use IT to set up a streamlined system to both display the updated number of leave days and also a quick approval system that doesn’t officially grant the leave until everyone sees it. Because this is a company-wide process, it can showcase to everyone the power of automated workflows.
Travel Reimbursements
Travel claims is another workflow that is commonly broken in organizations. Previously, Arka’s company had used a classic system of stapling a bunch of receipts to a paper form. They recently tried a few different specialty apps, but none of them worked perfectly and they were all a significant cost to the company. Many employees tried to use the old system when requests would hang up.
Arka can sit with finance to figure out the limitations in the current tool and why adoption rates were poor. Then, he can build a tool on the same low-code platform as the other workflows, making a better app, and not spending any additional money.
Visitor Pass
Arka had invited a new vendor to come and present some new products for the IT team. However, when the vendor arrived, it took nearly an hour to get her clearance to come up to the office.
By building an automated workflow for visitors, Arka can streamline the request system so that new visitors can smoothly go through security and get the best treatment.
This process helps everyone in the organization because it creates a great impression on guests, vendors, and clients visiting the office.
Is There One Solution IT Can Use?
While Arka knows how to create custom applications for all these workflows, he also knows it’s not a scalable solution. He would be spending all of his time creating small apps like these across the company.
Fortunately for IT, workflow management as a discipline has greatly matured in the last decade and offers several great platforms where these solutions are simple enough for anyone to create. With workflow automation software, Arka knows he can take IT’s strengths and use them to the advantage of the whole company.
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