One of the things we often find when implementing MARKUS for a new client is that there are some tasks which are part of a company’s process that no longer need to be done.
As our founder, Steve Earl, tells us: ‘In an ideal world, we should all be thinking about our processes all the time – constantly checking to see if there are things that we do that are simply no longer necessary. It’s so easy to just keep doing what you do, without questioning the process, or realising when things have changed.’
When did you last check through the tasks that you automatically do and question whether they were all still needed?
Steve remembers, in the days of paper systems, making out petty cash slips and stapling receipts to them and then realising that this was unnecessary: ‘All the transactions were listed on the credit card statement and, for the odd occasion when I needed to find an invoice, I could do so by simply keeping monthly receipts in an envelope.’
‘I remember visiting a company who purchased their materials on a job by job basis,’ continues Steve. ‘The site manager was required to sign each invoice before the supplier could be paid. Meanwhile, in the accounts department, there was a member of staff whose job was to chase delivery notes and enter them onto their accounts system. I simply asked the question, “Why? Do you ever dispute anything based on the delivery notes? No? So why do it?”’
When we visit to implement MARKUS we look at all the ways you can remove redundant tasks. Some tasks MARKUS takes care of automatically because all the information about every job is there on the system – so there’s no more chasing for updates or searching for emails, it’s all there, in real-time, at the touch of a button.
Here’s a taste of some of the questions Steve has asked over the years:
- Do people ring you to ask when your engineer will be attending their breakdown? If so you can send them the information by text in advance and eliminate most of those phone calls.
- Do your engineers come into the office each morning to collect their materials? If they do, why not have your supplier drop their parts off in a locker at a nearby petrol station?
- Do you spend hours disputing penny differences on invoices? Why not work out how much it costs you to dispute an invoice and set a tolerance of (say) £2.00 – how much time would that save you? How much time would a £5.00 tolerance save you?
‘This sort of questioning is especially likely to yield benefit in the high volume/low transaction value world that many of our customers inhabit,’ explains Steve. ‘You don’t even need to do the questioning yourself – why not hire a student for a couple of weeks? Or one of your staff member’s relatives? Or bring back a retired employee for a few days? Just ask yourself, how much would a £1 saving per job yield me in a year?’
Hopefully this prod will make you find time to have a regular look at your processes. Who knows what you might find… And, if you’d like to find out more about the time and money you could save with a job management system like MARKUS, please give us a call. 0161 477 2343.
