At a time when feeling overworked and undervalued is almost the norm, businesses need to work on achieving a better balance between profitability, productivity, and spreading the workload. Rhonda Ridge of Ab Initio’s installer management system, AdminBase, explains how the right software can help.
Not that long ago the idea of ‘big brother’ watching us at any time but especially at work, was not appealing. There is indeed nothing quite as demotivating as feeling like your employer doesn’t trust you. But from a management perspective it is useful to keep track of certain tasks and performance across an organisation to enable change where necessary and ensure productivity and profitability. Which of course is good for the business and employees alike. In more recent years, we’ve all become far more used to the fact that our e-mails and calls are monitored, and our movements are tracked on CCTV, but it is all about balance, and the right software can help you achieve perfect harmony.
All too often we hear of overworked members of staff and I’m sure most of us can see how it happens. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been doing your job for one or two years, or twenty years, we probably all find ourselves wishing for just another hour in the day to complete everything we need to do. Implementing a good management system in the business can give employees that extra time in their day by improving efficiencies at every stage of the process and ensuring the workload is more evenly shared across a team
Under the microscope
AdminBase was designed specifically with installation businesses in mind and works seamlessly to integrate all data to give an accurate overview of a company. It’s often smaller things that we might not have noticed with the naked eye, but that when put under the microscope of a software package that monitors the entire business, can highlight tasks and people that are performing well, and areas that need improvement.
One of the more recent additions to the ever-evolving AdminBase system, is the TaskBoard feature.
Taskboard automatically tracks jobs from start to finish, which is helpful in a sector where the nature of the job is sometimes unpredictable, and work needs to be moved around and reallocated at short notice. From the moment a lead comes in, specific tasks are allocated to individuals or teams and a deadline applied. Each task is then tracked through the entire job to ensure visibility and accountability. Taskboard highlights any bottlenecks or imbalance of workload earlier in the process, so they have time to be corrected before work begins. It offers installation businesses a fantastic balance between seeing what is going on across the outfit, but also giving employees more of an insight into how their role is impacting the business as a whole.
Sharing information benefits everyone
Similarly, the My AdminBase Diary app offers a simplified way of passing relevant appointment details from AdminBase to on-site personnel, and vice versa, to keep everyone in the picture. Members of the team can attach PDFs, pictures, videos, voice recordings, spreadsheets and any other useful information to each lead or record so that everyone with access to the system can see the very latest information on any job at any time. A recent upgrade to this app makes it easy for managers to see the appointments assigned to their team members as well as their own with the ability to view the appointments assigned to fitters and add their own photos to the job to feed back into the contract in AdminBase.
With features like Taskboard and the My AdminBase Diary app, alongside the ability to easily run reports on any aspect of the company, AdminBase helps installation businesses to achieve the perfect balance. Managers have a constant and clear overview of the operation, while employees feel like they are in the loop with better communication, and ultimately can do their jobs more easily because they have access to more and better information. Installers using the system don’t know how they managed without it.
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