3 challenges to nail for business resilience

In the Winter 2022 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey, I read that “more than two-thirds of CEOs appear determined to see sunshine on the horizon.” Asked to describe 2022 in one word, they mentioned ‘hopeful’, ‘opportunity,’ ‘optimistic,’ and ‘recovery’, as well as ‘uncertain’ and ‘challenging’.

I can totally relate to this two-sided outlook, and believe we’re getting better at anticipating and adjusting to disruptions as they happen. This new found flexibility and agility is leading to greater confidence in tackling challenges as they arise. It’s a positive mindset that can help you be hopeful and ready for what’s next, rather than panicked. 

As GM of WorkflowMax, I know a confident mindset is essential to moving business forward, yet there are practical challenges that need to be addressed every day, especially as teams continue to be in and out of the office. I’d like to discuss three of these challenges that could be affecting your business, and how you can overcome them with WorkflowMax. 

1. Preventing burnout and scope creep

In addition to the importance of team communication, connection and empathetic leadership for creating a healthy workplace, there’s also the need to address the potential for burnout. 

Many people have extended both their role and hours over the past two years to help their companies get the job done. Add in working from home with family around and the never ending video calls, and it’s easy to see how having the time to truly concentrate on tasks is a luxury most of us don’t have.

These interruptions, combined with project and role scope creep, can leave people feeling fatigued, unmotivated, frustrated and like they're not doing their best work because they’re stretched too thin.

Get a better overview of everyone’s time

Scope creep isn’t just related to the pandemic and everyone pitching in. It can be caused by missing details on a project, misunderstandings about employee availability, and the lack of a good feedback process.

By implementing job and project management software like WorkflowMax, your clients can:

• Plan ahead with job scheduling to better forecast capacity 
• Allocate tasks to each staff member and give them a checklist of to-dos, estimated times and due dates
• Schedule tasks so employees have the time to do them well
• Accurately track the time staff spend on each task
• Share information easily using collaboration tools
• Use in-depth reporting to have evidenced-based conversations about the balancing act between performance and wellbeing

These features are invaluable for monitoring who’s doing what and how projects are progressing. They also help managers know who’s working over their capacity and who has the time to take on more projects. 

2. Improving the quality of data and analytics

An article on CDOTrends.com has stayed in my head for the last little while. It said that “Every year, poor data quality costs organizations an average US$12.9 million. Apart from the immediate impact on revenue, over the long term, poor quality data increases the complexity of data ecosystems and leads to poor decision-making.”

I believe companies end up with poor data quality because they don’t consider its importance highly enough, especially when setting up new software. They want the software to help them improve their processes quickly but don’t always put in the time to make sure that everything is mapped correctly and that reporting is set up properly. 

Customised reporting provides a better picture

With WorkflowMax, you can understand your business productivity, performance, workflow and profitability with powerful reports. 

The WorkflowMax report builder is a highly flexible and powerful tool for extracting specific data out of a client’s WorkflowMax account. It can be used to create monthly summary reports, bar charts and pie graphs.

You’ll be able to analyse these reports and learn from previous projects, identify new opportunities and make better business decisions.

The key to having the best reporting capability is in implementing WorkflowMax the best way possible from the start. When you work with a WorkflowMax implementation partner, you can both focus on your top skills. The setup partner is the WorkflowMax expert who can configure WorkflowMax, import data, provide training and set up workflows and reporting. And you can use real-time WorkflowMax data to get accurate, real-world insights.

3. Having the right tech stack to make life easier

If we pull the focus back from individual software set up, we can see another common tech challenge – having apps that integrate well to reduce workload and further improve data quality.

Nobody likes re-keying information or having to download information from one system only to upload it to another. By recommending apps that talk to each other well, you’ll help your clients save time and frustration while gaining better visibility over their businesses.

WorkflowMax integrates with 30 add ons

From customer management and support to payroll, document management and more, WorkflowMax integrates with some of the best like Zendesk, HubSpot, Dropbox and of course Xero.

When you use these apps together, you can spend more of  your time on the deep work I discussed earlier and their teams can focus on what’s important, rather than tedious tasks like moving data from one system to another.

How to power up your WorkflowMax expertise 

To build your own confidence about using WorkflowMax and connected apps fast, I strongly recommend you work with an advisor or implementation partner. Getting WorkflowMax set up correctly in your business could give you the oversight and efficiency that helps protect your business from crisis when unexpected events occur.