Save time on manual processes

Welcome to my third blog promoting our new service.  Vos Voco’s purpose is to help businesses of all sizes and experience to improve their business processes.  Our service and customer specific flexible solutions require only modest investment of time and funds, and are complementary to existing systems.

Following on from discussing how we can help reduce “exceptions”, this blog will discuss how manual processes in your business can be made more efficient using Vos Voco.

Example:

A few weeks ago, I was working with some guys running a construction operation, confirming quality criteria and how results were reported in order to get paid.  Often site based work involves making progress without the client being present to inspect.  Digital images are widely taken, therefore, to demonstrate works have been completed to the standard alongside completed checklists.  These are then packaged up and delivered to the client when applying for payment.

In this example, the process involved completing a checklist, taking photographs to demonstrate compliance, downloading them, creating the document, adding the images, converting to pdf, and eventually sending them to the customer.  These records were stored in a non-standard way on the shared drive for future recovery.  It was a lengthy process.

Although the operation was fairly small, a significant amount of management time was spent (wasted?) each day making sure the records were safely uploaded to the shared drive.  However due to the manual nature of the process, each month there was a concerted effort to locate and produce the records to attach to the application for payment.

Vos Voco can bring significant productivity gains to this type of manual process.  We can make the process a lot simpler.

Working in partnership with you, our client, Vos Voco can create a client specific workflow that field based staff are able to access and make use of, just by using a smart phone or tablet.  Our semi-complex workflow solutions mean that different types of records can be treated in different ways – simply filed, or referred to managers for follow up if necessary. The point is, all the records are collected easily. Internal and external parties can be seamlessly integrated.  Operatives can either be online or offline, avoiding the need to have a good internet connection at all times.

Quality of data is improved as the workflow can mandate fields if they are needed.  Video and images can be captured.  Simply, once the guys in the field have collected the data… that is it.  The data is ready to access from our cloud service, or can be delivered to customer systems.

All businesses have a number of manual processes.  Due to our novel approach and overall service, even minor processes will show a good return on investment.  Improved processes, and therefore productivity, will lead to increased profitability.

If you’d like to find out more, please contact us for further information.  No fees are due until you implement one of our solutions – you will see your workflow solution working before you decide.  All you need is a problem for us to help you solve, and modest funds – we will do the rest, getting you up and running in a few days. 

Derek Silby. Founder/CEO.

Welcome to my second blog promoting our new service, Vos Voco. Thanks for continuing to read, or welcome if this is your first.  Vos Voco is designed to allow businesses of all sizes to make quality and productivity gains from areas their current systems do not support very well.  Better quality and productivity leads to higher profitability and improved customer satisfaction.

This blog covers process “exceptions”.  These are the incidents that stop you reporting 100% quality.  Examples within a supply chain could be:

• Inbound – receiving the wrong item, or a damaged item
• Outbound – sending replacement items to correct an error
• Production Lines – nearly, or actually, running out of components.

Most operations have a quality KPI measuring the ratio of “successful” output units to the “total” units.  In troubled operations the measure can be as low as 70%, while operations that are highly automated can be very close to 100%.  Whatever the measure, exceptions lead to corrective work.  The first corrective work is to resolve and process the customer issue arising – e.g. send them a new one and credit the original.  Secondly, managers will try and take actions that lead to stopping exceptions happening at all.

A method of improving quality is to identify “root causes” and address these.  For example, if you can identify there is a packaging issue leading to damage, then the packaging can be redesigned to eliminate the risk.   However it is very difficult to pin-point root causes.  A manager sitting down to review their weekly exceptions finds themselves with headline data only and little of the detail that would help them establish corrective actions.

Business systems help run the daily operation.  They are aligned to getting the main job done, and do not cover exceptions very well.  Data that would help identify root causes within a supply chain is not collected routinely, as usually someone outside their company or team would need to provide it.  If data is collected, it is incomplete, fragmented and not readily reportable.  This leads to managers having little idea of why their quality is going up or down, and whether any improvements have been sustained.

Vos Voco is squarely aimed at solving this problem using workflows.  The service sits alongside existing business systems, allowing relevant data to be collected every time at source, within or beyond the operation – such as by customers or suppliers.  When exceptions occur, the combined data collection and communication feature help the issue to be resolved faster, reducing the impact on the customer.  The reporting feature allows trends to be identified so that actions emerge, with ongoing reporting of quality data making it easy to see if improvements have been sustained.  Workflows can also include options to drive sales.

Try probing a little more at  your next management meeting.  Are the operators on top of their exceptions?  What actions have been taken to improve?  Have those actions made a difference?  Have improvements been sustained?

Put simply, Vos Voco is designed to help managers make step changes in quality, customer care and profitability.  This will apply to most organisations within a supply chain, as existing systems are poor at connecting external parties in a consistent structured way – that is what we do.  We can offer a tailored customer/supplier facing App solution ready to deploy within days of contacting us – which means that our solution is very economical.

There is more information (including two short videos) on this website. If it is on your agenda to improve customer care and profitability in 2019, contact me for a chat about your specific needs and challenges.  Thanks for reading!.

Derek Silby

Founder/CEO

Improving operational quality is a challenge we all face, year on year, whatever our business. But making those improvements is not straight forward.

Welcome to my blog promoting our new service. It is good to be back in contact with you as someone I have worked with in the past or met through events such as those hosted by The IFT. Over the next few weeks I will explain how our business, Vos Voco, can provide a practical, technical solution for improving quality and productivity leading to increased profitability.

Vos Voco is a new tech service designed to improve the profitability, quality and customer service of your business. It will complement your existing systems and processes, is low cost, low risk and easy to implement. Sounds interesting?

There are two main areas we target:

1. Exceptions

Imagine: You’re in a monthly review meeting. Operational quality is on the agenda again. You’re running at a 96% success rate. You were at 98% last month. A discussion then follows as to why the figures are so variable. No one can explain the reasons with any conviction. Commitments are then made to investigate accordingly, to be reported back at the next meeting. However, the investigation gets bumped onto the next month’s action points. And so on and so on.

However, having any level of failure is expensive. These failures are all those costly incidents that take up time and money to put right. Resolving these exceptions may involve customer service agents, operatives, extra space, extra stock, profit given away in the form of credits.

Existing systems do not offer a great deal of help to managers trying to drive down their exceptions. Data that might help them identify root causes is simply not collected, or if it is, it is fragmented so reporting is difficult.

2. More efficient Workflows and Delivering New Services

Imagine: Your staff are spending a lot of time keeping track of processes that don’t quite fit your existing systems. To support their day-to-day manual processes, they are using Excel, phone, email, and WhatsApp, perhaps taking photos, downloading them and attaching them to other documents. The system is deficient – the people in your business are adapting their key tasks to compensate. This is inefficient and slow.

Also, bidding for new work may be impossible if relevant business systems are not in place to support. Think a transport operator who needs to interact with their customer, or their customer’s customer.

Vos Voco is the solution. It is a service that will enable your business to access reduced costs and increased quality by providing accessible solutions not covered by your existing systems, while also being compatible. Quite uniquely, it allows you to collaborate both internally and with your external parties. It enables you to practically dial in people upstream and downstream. No one else is doing this. We can.

So, as you plan to improve profit and service for this year, take a look at how addressing some of your thorny, recurring issues and manual tasks can contribute. Even if you are already planning system reviews and upgrades, the ease of implementing and low costs of Vos Voco can provide you with some tactical improvements in the interim.

Please contact me directly for more information. It would be good to renew our connection and to have a chat about your business and how we can help.

Derek Silby
Founder/CEO