What's Next?

How do you keep track of what you need to do at work today?  What jobs need to be completed?  What new work has been booked in since yesterday?  Is that high-value project ready to be invoiced yet?

Perhaps you use a diary, or a paper Things-To-Do list?  If you do, how easy is it to update the details of a task if problems arise, or the client changes a deadline on you?  How can you tell which piece of paper is correct?  Which task list is the most up-to-date?

These approaches rely on you to keep them current.  If you forget to enter a meeting, or don’t write down the thing you agreed to do for a client during that telephone conversation, it may get lost in the rush of getting the next task done.  It’s only when the reminder e-mail lands in your in-box, or the client calls back wondering why they haven’t received the goods you promised, that the omission comes to light.

That’s bad enough.  But what happens when you delegate a task to someone else, and they forget to do it? Or maybe they’re new to your organisation and they don’t yet know all of your procedures?  What if they don’t know what the next step in the process is?  A lot of valuable management time can be taken up helping employees do the things you’re paying them to do.

Transferring the control of your business processes to a computerised system will help with this:

• The steps in your process are always carried out in the correct order; no more confusion about what happens next 
• At each stage, the system automatically generates details of the necessary tasks and allocates them to the appropriate employees; nothing gets forgotten
• Tasks appear in the employee’s TTD list in priority order, ready to be actioned
• Team leaders can get an overview of all work in progress
• Overdue tasks will be highlighted for particular attention, allowing work to be re-allocated to other members of staff if one person is temporarily overloaded
• Finally, the system won’t let you move on to the next stage until all the tasks for the current stage have been completed; no chance that something vital will be missed out.

If this sounds like something which only larger organisations can benefit from, that needn’t be the case.  At Thorneycreek Consulting, we can provide computerised task management solutions tailored to your specific business processes at a cost which is still affordable, even if you’re a sole trader, or a micro-business operating with two employees.

Contact us today to find out how you can keep track of your Work-In-Progress and make sure that none of the tasks which keep your organisation running will be forgotten in the rush.