Time to Automate?
April 2008 (More monthly articles)
Lately, a number of my clients have been asking me to help them automate some of their manual processes. They are beginning to understand the power of technology by identifying specific tasks for information technology to take over. To me, this indicates a shift in management’s view toward IT, from one of a necessary cost to one of partnership. In this article, I’d like to lay out two client examples that show how automation saves time and money while increasing productivity.
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One client was spending an enormous amount of man-hours publishing its annual directory. Historically, they started on the process in January and published in April. In the meantime, they sent out paper surveys to their members and asked them to fax or mail their responses by a certain deadline. As responses came in, staff manually entered this data. After the deadline passed, staff then began to manually compile the information into a Word document. We sat down together and developed a two-phased approach to greatly reduce the number of staff hours on this project.
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In Phase One, we created a complex query that runs behind the scenes to summarize, calculate, and assemble the data for the directory. A Word document was then created which performs a mail-merge with the query and instantly populates the report, ready for outsourcing to the printer. This process, which formerly took days and weeks, now takes minutes.
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Even though Phase Two is on hold, awaiting board approval, a description of it is worth mentioning. We agreed that we needed a way for members to fill out an online survey rather than a paper document to be returned by mail or fax. Members have to complete the data either way, so why not make the process more productive, so that it only had to be done once. A nearly identical system is already up and running at another client, so we knew the value such a system would bring. Assuming approval is obtained, staff involvement on this annual project is expected to be reduced 90% or more.
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Another client has about 13,000 individual members, most of whom pay their annual dues in December. The effort to identify which members are renewing, then to renew those members, post payments, and lapse the rest of the people is enormous. While this client has an online system that allows members to renew and pay their dues online, most of their members actually join through the companies for which they work. The company collects the dues from its employees, then sends one check along with a list of everyone who is joining or renewing.
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In this case, we developed a semi-standard format for the companies to use when sending a list of new and renewing members. As each file is received, it is run through an application which automatically reviews the file and identifies potential problems. Once staff is confident that the file is ready, it is then imported through another automated process. After importing, a script is run which creates complimentary dues invoices showing that each person listed in the import file is now a member in good standing for another year. The dues are marked “complimentary” since the payment is actually posted on the company record, the entity making one master payment for all of its employees who join or renew. For those who don’t renew, another script was written, which staff can run at anytime. The script finds all members meeting certain criteria, and marks them as lapsed.
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This series of automated processes has saved the client countless hours. Our efforts have been so successful that this particular client has now identified other tasks it wants to automate, some of which we are already in the process of implementing.
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To get started in automating your own manual tasks, a good idea is to put support staff together with IT so that they can begin to explore the possibilities. Support staff often are involved in lots of manual tasks, so starting with them seems to make the most sense. Another approach is to ask your staff what information members and donors request the most, either by phone or email. Can this data be placed on your website? If so, consider putting it there. Once you identify the tasks you want to automate, go for the low-hanging fruit first. You want to achieve early success to create excitement and experience on which to build. Afterwards, continue towards the fruit that’s a little higher on the tree and harder to reach. You’ll be glad you did, and so will your constituents.
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