February 2014
2
Volume 2, Issue 2
 Mastering Efficiency: 4 Steps to Automate Common Processes
Dux Raymond Sy

 

We live in a world where doing more with less is the new norm - especially in the public sector. Our resources have been drastically reduced yet we are expected to deliver more than ever before. Even worse, we don't have the luxury of acquiring more time to fulfill our obligations.

 

How can we best maximize our time? How can we be more efficient in this agile, ever-changing, and fast-paced work environment?

 

An effective way to improve efficiency is to automate common business processes. Think about what you do day in, day out in your organization. From initiating a simple expense reimbursement process to fulfilling a more complex procurement process, often times these business activities are cumbersome and manually executed. What if you can automate these? Not only will it save you time and be more efficient, it can provide consistency and set predictable expectations. Here are four steps to help you best automate common business processes:

 

1. Identify low hanging fruitsDon't go off and look for complex business processes to automate. Start with something relatively simple but cumbersome that you do on a regular basis, such as creating a monthly expense report for your team where your team members send you tons of spreadsheets via email and you have to manually collect and summarize the information. 

 
2. Visualize business process: Once you identify a business process that you want to automate, map out what the process flow looks like and identify tools that you need to fulfill this process. If necessary, engage a colleague to help you in this exercise. A great way to do this is to draw a swim lane diagram. The beauty of visually illustrating a business process is that it clearly shows how the process works and, more importantly, define roles and responsibilities of the individuals involved.

  

3. Maximize your technology investment: Let me be clear, I am not talking about email - there are better tools that you can utilize to automate your business processes. Most organizations today have invested in SharePoint and, unfortunately, it has turned out to be nothing more than a glorified network share. Did you know that you can automate the process defined in your swim lane diagram with SharePoint workflows? In fact, if you have a well-established SharePoint environment and want to get a better handle on lifecycle management which may include site creation, user management and policy automation, check out how  Governance Automation can help.

 

4. Measure success: How will you know if automating your business process was effective? A good way to do this is to demonstrate what you've gained in terms of time, cost savings, and even business opportunities now that the process is automated compared to the manual and cumbersome method before. 

 

Realize that automating business processes is an iterative process. You don't stop at one - carry on and look for the next business process you can automate so you'll be on your way to mastering efficiency.

 

           

 

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 Getting the Most out of AvePoint Solutions: Governance Automation

  

The notion of Governance, ultimately, becomes a function of defining what your organizational needs are while simultaneously realizing that you need to give your users the most amount of freedom to do their jobs as safely as possible. This leads to the next probable question: How do you address the word "safe" in the context of users, and even sometimes administrators with limited SharePoint expertise? By creating procedures for administrative SharePoint operations - from permissions delegation, to site and library creation - you can create a safe path to do things, but you still run the risk of human error.

 

It's vital to recognize that no matter how many IT processes you have incorporated into your SharePoint infrastructure, the general point of failure will almost always be human - from an administrator incorrectly installing and configuring software, to users accidentally deleting items or even entire libraries they use on a daily basis because they mistakenly possess "full control" permission levels.

 

So if we can agree that human error will generally be the root cause of most problems experienced during the growth cycle of SharePoint, then the need for automated policy enforcement solutions becomes apparent. In many environments, users and lower level administrators will have a "service catalog" from which they can choose services offered by the higher levels of their IT organization. Behind this there could be manually created workflows, and approval processes for individual tasks which would then be performed by an administrator at the appropriate level. But even with this model, you run the risk of administrative human error. You also run the risk of encountering problems with staffing levels amidst the complexity and breadth of your service catalog offerings. Both of these potential issues can be addressed by implementing an automated system behind the management of your IT policies.

 

DocAve Governance Automation offers the ability to do just that. By putting your service catalog into a readily accessible web part within SharePoint, then automating the behind-the-scenes process with human approved workflows, automated content management / creation ensures that the right people have the right access and permissions they need, and that procedures will be done exactly the same way every time - thus eliminating human error.

 

 


 Compliance Spotlight:

 Better Support Digital Strategy through Comprehensive Site Quality Compliance

 
US citizens rely on government websites as a source to conduct important transactions as well as gain access to essential services and accurate, timely information. The expansion of this type of online collaboration has created new challenges as these government agencies are expected to meet exceptionally high quality performance standards and are subject to a unique set of regulations and compliance requirements. However, many agencies do not have the appropriate tools in place to monitor site quality and performance.

 

The challenge lies in the fact that government sites operate across a wide range of Content Management Systems (CMS) and technical platforms, publish to myriad channels, and are managed by scores of agencies and departments. Information about the quality and compliance status of these digital channels, where it exists, is currently siloed within individual agencies and departments - making it hard to gather. Furthermore, there is a lack of common metrics to facilitate comparative evaluation to determine priorities or to rank the levels of risk and infractions.

 

As there is a clear need for accurate, technology-driven metrics to provide a consistent, consolidated view of quality and compliance across the public sector, AvePoint Public Sector offers Site Quality Solutions to help you measure performance and constituent satisfaction in order to improve service delivery.

 

The AvePoint Compliance Solution for Site Quality tracks and monitors Web systems' and applications' structural integrity and quality of content managed through these systems to help ensure that they are providing an optimal experience. Utilizing a single management console, organizations will be able to comply with branding, usability, and accessibility to maintain optimal site quality for their public websites, intranets, social collaborations sites, file shares, email, content management systems, and any web-based background systems. Managers will be able to proactively troubleshoot sources of performance problems, respond to, and resolve site quality issues by prioritizing what to fix first and implement a programmatic and automated approach to enforce policies. The result is better, safer services to constituents at a lower cost.

 

Citizens are relying on government to continue to lead the way in website quality - AvePoint Compliance Solutions provide a safe, secure environment to interact with their government. If you would like a solution demonstration or  receive pricing information, please contact: ComplianceSolution@AvePoint.com or your AvePoint Public Sector sales representative.