You spend more time on administrative tasks than you ever imagined. If only all those not-so-glamorous tasks were efficient. The impacts of inefficiency with “back office” work might be all over your entire business. You might have frustrations in areas like slow decision making or wasting both time and resources on administrative matters if you are not focused on them.
It’s not about being weighed down with paperwork. Remember that it’s about changing the inefficiencies. Most administrative processes influence other aspects of your business, including your employees’ and customers’ experiences. When you have time on your hands because your low-value tasks are handled well, you have time to focus on high-value tasks.
Identifying Common Administrative Bottlenecks
Most firms have a historical look at their administrative processes. They may have developed over many years and added steps but never removed any. Over time, this leads to layers upon layers of inefficiencies. Handling documents is one of the common processes that cause bottlenecks. Documents can get lost, delays occur as approvals are sought, and normal operations are interrupted as employees search for missing documents.
You’ve also got manual data handling that wastes time when employees type data into various environments. Different teams may need the data, but it requires the same amount of work to get it to them once. They might also have a similar work-around if the data is incorrect.
Inefficient communication between departments is also common. Accessing information can become tricky and cause delays for anyone needing something simple from a colleague on another team. This problem becomes compounded if you have employees in various locations.
Upgrading Document and Information Handling
Traditional mailrooms and document handling systems create significant delays in today’s business environment. Companies that still rely on physical mail sorting and manual document routing find themselves at a disadvantage compared to competitors with streamlined processes. Implementing digital mailroom services can transform how organizations handle incoming correspondence, automatically routing documents to the right people and eliminating the delays associated with physical mail processing.
You can eliminate the repetitive tasks of document handling, such as purchase orders, expense claims, and vendor invoices by adopting automated workflows to process them.
Automation of Mundane Tasks and Data Handling
Many of the mundane administrative tasks you face have no deviations. Thus, they are great candidates for automations. You may be able to automate invoice processing. While it may be at different levels, it is always the same process for all vendors.
Another task you can easily automate is customer service requests. Get automation tools to listen to customers with requests, engage with them, process their requests, gather previous interactions, and relevant information, and send them on to agents before they answer their questions.
These data handling tasks usually require the same information for payroll, benefits administration, and compliance.
Creating a Better Approval System
A common cause of delays in many firms’ approval systems is that too many people are involved in the transaction that isn’t monumental by mistake. The best starting point is figuring out who needs to approve what and ensuring they all have a list of who needs to be included in these processes.
Digital approval systems can make clients feel much more efficient without draping the team in a long list of people who need to approve all their requests. Workflow systems can ensure that all requests that need to be approved by certain amounts or compliance rules can be automatically sent to people who need to sign off without getting caught in a long email thread.
Measuring Administrative Efficiency
Every great cleanup of administrative tasks requires measuring the effects. Many workflows may improve with your attention, but it’s easy for the goodwill of adding a tool to mitigate an inefficient task.
Choosing what to measure is important. You may want to know how long it takes your employees to process documents, errors they might encounter when they enter data, or even how happy they are about handling documents. Keep track of how efficient they are at processing documents. You can measure efficiency errors and the average time it takes to process some common transactions.
You should also periodically review how workflow processes are going. This process will ensure they aren’t swamped with too many requests that cause work slowdowns if their workload increases with new requests. More efficient processes usually require serious thought and fact-finding than throwing a new toy at your team.
Improve your teams’ administrative workflows by ensuring it’s always an efficient one-system process. They won’t thank you if they have to use three systems instead of one!
Cost-saving adjustments should still yield many benefits to your employees after implementing some of these tasks. Just watch out for new issues when you become a larger organization. Generally, those who focus on becoming more efficient regarding administrating these growing items in their firms will feel a distinct increase in team morale, customer service, and expenses overall. Don’t treat it like a stop, but rather an ongoing journey.
