Tag Archive for: Leave and Time Management

Companies seeking an efficient solution for business process automation often look up to Microsoft SharePoint for an effective platform. While SharePoint workflows have some limitations, having a third party engine on top of it can really make a difference. Business process automation using SharePoint in conjunction with something like Nintex workflows can help to streamline operations, reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve customer service, and provide consistency for document-heavy business processes.

In this blog, we look at the different business processes that can be automated with SharePoint.

1. Document Feedback and Approval

Today’s leading organizations face document overload: an overabundance of documents that must pass through numerous hands before being approved. Proposals, contracts, service agreements, sales presentations, employee training materials, and other documents often go through a multi-step feedback and approval process before they are ready for use. SharePoint offers a convenient resource for efficient document management, allowing stakeholders to provide feedback and approval as new documents make their way through the workflow. Documents can be reviewed and edited online in SharePoint, allowing multiple users to contribute to a project without any confusion over where the latest version can be found.

The SharePoint approval workflow routes documents from one party to the next, assigning review tasks and following up with reminders to ensure that work is completed quickly and efficiently.

The document approval process can cause big backlogs for organizations that don’t have a system in place to manage documents and alert owners when they need to weigh in. Using SharePoint’s built-in features to upload, edit, and manage documents allows organizations to expedite the approval process for all manner of important documents.

2. Holiday and Paid-Time-Off Requests

Employee scheduling is crucial to keeping any organization running smoothly, and inaccurate paid-time-off tracking is costly. However, tracking holiday time and other PTO for a large company can be a drain on management and HR employees’ resources. Using Work 365 Leave and Time Management Apps that syncs with SharePoint, employees can submit requests for time off, managers can approve those requests, and available time off can be updated automatically so that employees, managers, and human resource specialists always have an accurate accounting of an employee’s used and available PTO.

3. Customer Support and Customer Service Requests

SharePoint is a powerful tool for organizing and managing lists of activities, which is especially useful when managing customer support requests. Customer service workflows can be configured to support the activities below, reducing the number of time employees must spend responding to customers and increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction:

• Service request or incident tracking
• Providing status updates on technical support resolution
• Alerting managers and assigned representatives to new tickets or status changes on existing tickets
• Tracking shipment and order statuses
• Customer service scheduling and appointments
• Progress toward complaint resolution

As customers demand increasingly fast and personalized service, SharePoint automation helps organizations keep up while alleviating some of the strain on their busy customer service and support departments.

4. Employee Onboarding and Off-Boarding

Fragmented onboarding and off-boarding processes can cause big problems for organizations of all sizes. New employees need an efficient, accurate way to receive the information they need to perform their duties, and existing employees need to be handled with care to avoid legal consequences and loss of employee knowledge. SharePoint can help organizations address both concerns with workflow processes to streamline the way employees join and exit the company.

Some onboarding and off-boarding automation that can be set up via SharePoint include:

• Online form submissions and a central data repository that can be accessed by involved employees and departments
• Workflow automation and alerting to avoid missed deadlines and expedite approvals for onboarding
• Secure online portals to limit unauthorized access to sensitive, proprietary assets for existing employees

Document-heavy processes are easy to automate with SharePoint. Talk to IOTAP’s specialists today to learn more about business process automation solutions designed to fit your organization.

The above examples are just a few of the ways in which business process automation can be implemented in your business. If your organization is struggling with process management and coordination, we invite you to talk to IOTAP’s BPA experts today.