Productivity, Exceeders Blog, ESP | 2 min read
We have been in the IT business long enough to know what’s trending and what’s become a thing of the past. And now that it’s the era of digital transformation, the majority – if not all – companies are striving to take that leap and proudly say “we have succeeded in transforming our business to being 100% digital”.
Companies at one point strived to have their own portals for collaboration and document management. But now it’s not just about having a system to handle a primary function within the organization, its more about relying and using systems for each and every function. While it might be daunting and somewhat of a big project to achieve, identifying what functions are primary and essential to digitize is a good starting point, and then the rest will follow, all with good planning and a clear strategy.
From our extensive experience and dealings with customers from different countries and across various sectors, we can easily say that process automation is always a priority. Customers have differing needs and can be categorized into one of the following types:
For customer types 1 and 3, searching for the right system is a process in of itself. Determining the right technology to use depends on many factors, such as:
ESP; the Enterprise Submission Platform would be a great option for these customers as it gives them the ability to automate application processing and approvals through:
ESP’s main differentiator- and what we’ve come to realize is what customers really want- is that it gives business users who are responsible for a function in a company the ability to control and manage their business processes with little to no reliance on a team of techies. This comes as good news to IT departments as it off-loads a lot of the responsibility and effort by them to handle requests for changes from the business, as well as not having to coordinate with an external IT Service Provider- like ourselves- to implement those changes (and not have to pay exuberant amounts of money!).
We put ESP to the test internally. As a company that has many systems, each of which serves a different purpose or function, we still had these odd processes here and there that don’t really work in one of our existing systems. And even if they do work in one of our existing systems, the effort and time it will take to enhance a system makes us reconsider the whole thing all together.
So what we did was give business users access, showed them how to create their own processes, and they were all set. As for employee adoption, that wasn’t hard at all either..
To wrap up, keep in mind that deciding on the right solution for you does not need to be a difficult decision to take. As long as you are aware of what purpose that system will serve, and how important it is for enhancing of your business operations as a whole, then you’re guaranteed to find the solution that suits you best.
Visit www.exceeders.com/store/esp to learn more.
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Originally published Nov 29, 2018 10:04:04 AM, updated July 24, 2019
Topics: Productivity Exceeders Blog ESP
1 min read
Business continuity has become every organization’s top priority with the recent escalation of the Covid-19 situation. Everyone is consumed with the possibility that they might not be able to sustain operations after orders to work from home have been officially circulated. Survival is on everyone’s agenda, and to survive, you need to diminish any contingencies that may affect operations.
Employees are every business’s most important asset. If your employees are not able to perform jobs or submit requests that require a chain of approvals, you might be heading down a dark road of less productivity, slow operations, no achievement, and incurring losses.
Among the many challenges we have seen organizations struggle with after implementing “remote working”, the biggest challenge yet has been the disruption of operations due to the absence of people to approve requests submitted by employees and to “keep processes flowing”. What happens when your approvers are physically inaccessible?
We believe we have what you need to not only survive, but to also maintain a normal pace of operations and eliminate factors that will disrupt them.
While we at Exceed did not necessarily anticipate Covid-19, we did however, anticipate a shift in operating models. We have been implementing a remote working model since 2014 when we detected patterns in where the business world was heading. To support our vision, we created numerous solutions that will sustain our remote working model, one of which is the Enterprise Submission Platform a.k.a ESP for Employee Service Catalogue & Digital Approvals.
ESP is a process automation system that empowers business users to create and manage their processes, without having to rely on IT staff to get the job done. As it is easy to use with little to no training, this reduces the time needed to go live and the cost required to maintain and manage the system. This model will make the process of approving employee requests while working remotely much easier to control, track, and manage.
How exactly will it solve remote working challenges?
Step 1:
We will help you map your old traditional approval processes on the system
Step 2:
We will train your business users on how to use the system and create processes, remotely
Step 3:
We will support you in creating new processes that meet the demands of remote working
Our focus with ESP is to provide you with a business process automation solution that can automate all your processes that are currently handled manually and that require approvals, to help alleviate any remote working costs that your business will take on.
While we maintain our promise listed above, we understand that customers may have some underlying questions regarding the solution and so we’ve compiled what we anticipate would be the most common ones:
For more information on ESP, feel free to contact us here.
3 min read
Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
Not doing so will put your business at a risk of increased support costs as employees become less productive while trying to figure out how to utilise the business’s technology.
On the operational side, there are 3 categories of platforms that we believe are essential:
Foundations of remote working
Systems of record
Systems of engagement
Laptops
Internet Access
VPN: A Virtual Private Network is imperative to remote working as it creates a secure, reliable, & safe connection between the employee & the organization’s resources.
Storage Platform: Every organization needs a cloud storage platform such as TechnAdopt to enable file sharing and easy access for all employees.
Productivity apps: Teamwork is the number 1 pillar of business in which it involves using shared assets like documents, reports, infographics, & structured & unstructured data. These assets can be created with the likes of the popular office suites like Microsoft Office365 in addition to document management systems, corporate intranet, HR Systems, CRM, & ERP to name a few.
Simple Strata: With this shift in work norms, companies might not have the instant visibility on the efforts taken by an employee to complete a certain job, & consequently might not know what to improve first. Our systems will detect causality and based on that, will analyze and provide reports to identify the employees who are facing difficulties in performing their jobs in comparison to others. With this visibility, the company will be able to adjust its new processes or provide support for employees who are facing challenges in the most suitable way.
ESP: The Enterprise Submission Platform is a linear workflow that enables function owners to automate their business processes without reliance on IT personnel. This platform will allow users to create requests and approvers to approve them from any location with the use of the web or the app. It is necessary especially in remote working situations as operations need to keep moving regardless of the whereabouts of users.
Engagement Pro: Engagement Pro is an application that helps you plan, organize, & track projects - all in one visual, collaborative space - to increase visibility & alignment within team members. This tool facilitates remote collaboration on projects.
Opportunity Pro: Every company with a sales department surely should use a CRM platform. Opportunity Pro enables the sales team to improve their winning rates by having accurate forecasts, details about customers & their needs, & keeping track of all actions taken & planned in order to close a deal. Rather than managing each sales team member individually, managers will be able to have top view visibility on all the pipeline remotely and will be able to review team members accordingly.
Mobile Apps:
As we live in the age of a “smart phone take-over”, it is essential that our work is accessible from the number one tool we use constantly. Whether at home or outside, employees should have the option to interact with team members via their phone.
Similarly, employers should expect their employees to have access to their work from anywhere, especially given the remote working situation. For that reason, all of our recommended products are available as mobile apps in addition to web as we have anticipated that a time will come where reliance will be solely on smart phones. We like to think we are pioneers in this field. 😉
Emails
Idenedi: A communication tool that provides an enjoyable user experience is one that sticks. Idenedi is a tool that has proven to be one of the most requested platforms as it combines ease of access with ability to deliver critical information. While emails remain the number one tool for exchanging work-related documents, they are lacking in the push notification department.
With Idenedi, managers will be able to pass important announcements regarding changes in the work environment with absolute assurance that employees will be notified. This is crucial especially in remote working as managers can track to check if important messages have reached everyone. They can even create a space for team members to interact in the comments section, and soon via chat.
As we have provided our recommendations for the infrastructure on the operational side, we also believe that there are steps to be taken to prepare teams mentally for this sudden shift in our work space.
Check out here our tips on how to adapt in the time of a global pandemic.
2 min read
If you are currently struggling with a process workflow that doesn’t necessarily ‘flow’, you are not alone. From our extensive experience with customers from different countries and across various sectors, we realised that there had been a serious hurdle that is holding back companies from achieving highest efficiency in their business operations.
All organisations, whether they are SMEs or huge conglomerates, have processes in place to achieve their business objectives. These processes require a significant amount of resources, system infrastructure, & personnel.
What’s happening is that as this world is almost fully transforming into a digital one, carrying out those processes manually becomes more of a setback than anything else.
Team members become burned out from repetitive tasks, requests get stuck with personnel who are unable to respond for different reasons, issues in processes go undetected and cannot be traced to a source, and as a result, the completion of processes is delayed and efficiency is hindered.
While the above factors pose powerful arguments for adopting an automation solution, there needs to be a certain level of discipline to overcome obstacles that may come in the way. These obstacles can mainly be related to cost or people.
Cost poses a major question mark when wanting to undergo such a transformation, whether it’s a financial or opportunity cost. While business owners may have oppositions due to the costs of implementing an automation software, they will eventually learn that costs savings are along the way in the long run.
However, companies that have taken the first step towards finding the right automation solution should understand that cost savings are not the primary reason to automate processes but rather to improve service to end users. With an improved quality of service, the operational costs associated will also improve and thus companies will achieve their ROI.
We created “The Enterprise Submission Platform” (ESP) keeping in mind the most common customer pain points including:
ESP is a linear workflow system that was created by the Exceeders team to enable function owners that want to automate their business processes more control over creating and managing these processes in a guaranteed short period of time.
The best part is that the task of managing and updating any feature in ESP can be done by the business users themselves, so this eliminated the need to involve the IT Department or even the IT Service Provider in maintaining and updating the system.
Problem |
Solution |
Automation is costly |
ESP has a simple & competitive pricing model |
Automation is time-consuming |
ESP enables creation of processes in minutes & can be up & running in just one day |
Automation requires tedious work with service provider |
After your team is trained on ESP, you will be fully proficient to use it on your own |
Automation systems are rigid/don’t offer much flexibility |
ESP is very highly customisable and can be built to fit your environment |
Automation systems cannot be integrated with other systems |
ESP can be integrated with other software programs & offers APIs |
Resistance from Employees |
We will provide awareness sessions & trainings to prove the value of ESP & how it will make your work easier |
Want to learn more about how you can cut costs and boost operational efficiency?
Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
Every sales manager knows that taking proper care of the sales team is an unwritten rule of a business to achieve greater heights.
As businesses continue to supercharge their application life-cycle and rapid app development becomes glued to modern IT frameworks, these shifts are disrupting the way that we think about IT contribution. In the past, development and operations have both been measured by the effort that they put forward on a specific project. The more hours and successful code or operations that you bake into a particular project, the more successful you seem. But, can progressive frameworks as agile development survive in this mentality?