Take total control of your business with data and document management

Data, documents, processes, compliance, security… all of these things and more are interconnected and require clear oversight and careful management in order for your business to optimize its operations.

From project management to handling contracts, there’s always scope to refine your processes and take better control of your data in order to leverage insights, inform board-level decision-making, and enhance your customer’s experience. 

But if your data is stored in a variety of spreadsheets, in a myriad of folders, on sticky notes, in paper files, and in various other locations – getting better control of your data is the first step towards taking total control of your business.

The human touch

With data and documents structured and accessible in one place, it’s much easier to generate meaningful insights, drill down into key data, and define the most relevant KPIs for your business.

And whilst automation can aid human workflows and accelerate productivity, it’s the combination of computer-based document and data management and human oversight which ultimately create a winning formula for your business.

Implementing software can help organize data, provide alerts, and minimize filing and typographical errors – but it’s what humans do with that data that enables your business to strategize more effectively. 

In data, we trust

Particularly in larger organizations, where reporting is used to inform C-suite decision-making, it’s essential that data is robust and ideally reflective of a wider context. If  data is drawn from a limited pool, it can be manipulated to tell a certain story – which may not always be the best story for your business.

By breaking down the traditional model of data stored in silos, and creating a single source of truth, those people compiling reports have a much richer and broader range of information at their fingertips, and a bigger picture is revealed. And with hard data from across the organization, it adds weight to findings, and becomes harder to refute.

In essence, quality data gives validation to a point or idea, which can in turn speed up time to market or equally help organizations mitigate potentially costly errors.

Reducing delays

With the relevant data readily available, it becomes much easier to create a report at speed and avoid postponing decision-making. Say, for example, you’re a service company. A customer contacts you to say the service is not working as it should be. It’s not the first time they’ve been in contact, so the case is escalated.

The person reviewing their case has complete oversight of the customer’s communication. They can see a number of tickets related to technical issues. All the tickets are closed except for one. The call handler can find out how quickly the previous issues were resolved, how timely their company responded, and so on. Oversight is also available on one open ticket, who’s handling it, and the next steps needed to resolve it. 

Rather than having to investigate across the whole organization, using a WorkPoint solution for data and document management, the call handler has everything they need right in front of them. They can relay to the customer that their issue is being investigated, and then follow that up by contacting the relevant team for an update and a reminder to prioritize the case.

Total control of data means that decision-making can happen right there and then on the phone call, without a lengthy investigation.  

Optimizing safety and servicing

When companies have total control over their data, they can also use it to optimize safety checks and the servicing of equipment. Imagine you have a production machine or a piece of equipment which needs regular maintenance in order to work safely at its optimum best.

With the Internet of Things (IoT) and clear data oversight, you can ascertain the most optimum time to service the machine so that it is safe to use, does the job correctly, and time servicing to avoid lengthy interruption to production or use.

Data and your desired outcomes

When you look closely at all the moving parts of an organization, the potential to make smaller, incremental, and more impactful optimizations becomes clear. And each of those optimizations has the potential to add value to your business and your customers.

But optimization depends on centralized, actionable data, which your business can achieve with a WorkPoint solution. It’s also vital to know exactly what your organization wants to do with that data, and how you can use it to achieve your desired outcomes.

This is the fourth blog in our series on data-driven insights. You might also like:

• The importance of data-driven insights to inform decision-making
• Moving towards a data-driven C-Suite
• How document and data centralization can lead to process optimization