Ten minutes to copy a customer record into the CRM. Another ten to update a spreadsheet. Nobody is likely to question either task on a busy day.
The problem is repetition. When the same small jobs are done by different people in the team, time is taken away from work that needs human attention.
Let’s say we have a team of five. If each person spends 30 minutes copying information between applications, we are looking at 2.5 staff hours for doing repetitive work. Before we have addressed an exception or assisted a customer.
Across 250 working days, the arithmetic comes to 625 hours. That is an illustrative calculation, not a measured result from a particular company.
And time is only part of the cost. One wrong number can mean a second call, a corrected invoice or a manager spending the afternoon sorting out a preventable problem.
If your employees waste hours every week moving data from one system to another, Decimal Technologies can locate opportunities for integration or automation to reduce your employees’ manual effort.
See how Decimal approaches Custom Software Development when existing systems cannot support the required workflow.
When Systems Don’t Do Enough of the Work
Picture an order arriving with operations. Someone updates the ERP; finance copies the details into accounting; customer service sends the customer a WhatsApp update. Three people may touch the same information.
No one has necessarily made a mistake. The handoffs themselves are the problem.
An integrated process might look like this: Website Enquiry > CRM > Sales Assignment > ERP/Business System > WhatsApp Follow-up.
The aim is for the software to manage routine and repetitive tasks, and for employees to manage tasks requiring interpersonal skills like communication, judgement and decision-making.
Small Errors Can Become Expensive Problems
The incorrect entry of a quantity or phone number, for example, is of little consequence until incorrect quantities of products are shipped to customers or customers do not receive any shipment update.
What happens if a salesperson enters an incorrect order quantity, changes the status of a lead to ‘wrong’ status or enters a customer phone number incorrectly?
From a business perspective, such inefficiencies in workflow can result in inability of the business to fulfill orders and ultimately lose customers.
Customers Feel the Effects of Inefficient Processes
The same friction becomes more visible when a customer is waiting.
An enquiry is submitted, and an employee manually enters the information into the CRM before assigning it to a salesperson. The salesperson then contacts the customer through WhatsApp. This process could take several hours.
Customers do not know the internal processes the salespeople must complete, and rightfully so, expect a quick response.
An integrated system could automate a majority of the processes listed above, helping the salesperson respond quicker and increasing the customer’s experience.
What to Do When a Process Becomes Less Efficient?
Buying another application can feel like the obvious fix. Sometimes it only gives staff another place to enter the same information.
Although the intention may be right, adding another system can sometimes make the process even more complicated.
Many companies already use several systems, including a CRM, ERP, website, ecommerce platform and WhatsApp Business solution.
For customer communication and workflow automation, see Decimal’s WhatsApp Business Solution.
Before replacing anything, check whether the existing applications can exchange the information they already hold. If they cannot support the workflow, integration or custom software may be worth considering.
Which Processes Deserve Automation?
Businesses have processes that involve several employees, manual work and several steps. However, not every process can be automated.
The better candidates for automation should be repetitive processes, employee time drains, frequent error generators and processes that negatively affect the customer experience.
Before automating a process, ask:
- Is the same information entered more than once?
- Do employees manually transfer data between systems?
- Do approvals depend on someone checking an email or document?
- Are customer enquiries or cases manually assigned?
- Does management reporting require information from multiple files or systems?
- Does an important process depend on one employee?
- Are customers waiting while employees complete internal administrative tasks?
If the answer to several of these questions is yes, the process may be worth reviewing.
How Decimal Technologies Approaches Business Process Automation
Decimal Technologies first finds where information is entered, passed along, and corrected. Sometimes the answer is simple, such as a CRM rule or integration. Other cases may require WhatsApp automation, AI-assisted workflow, or custom development.
Not every process needs to be automated. The idea is to find repetitive and unnecessary work and improve system integrations. If your employees spend a great deal of time entering and transferring information between various systems such as Excel, CRM, ERP, WhatsApp, talk to Decimal Technologies on where integration or automation would be use