Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the increasingly ‘deadline’ driven business environment that we operate in, recently we are receiving a fair number of queries from customers and prospects enquiring about solutions that can help them with a best practice approach to task management. At the recent iManage ConnectLive 2018 event in London too, the majority of our conversations centered around this issue.
Task management is akin to applying the structured principles of project management to specific activities/tasks, which could be anything – production of a contract, approval of a report, execution of a matter or such. It entails overseeing the systematic completion of a particular activity/task across its lifecycle.
However, the business value of task management grows manifold when integrated with document management, with the support of technology. Here are some examples:
• Managing obligations – contractual, policy, regulatory, appraisal, HR processes and many others
Timely management of policy and contractual documents is a challenge for most organisations – there are potentially 100’s of varying types of documents that need to be reviewed and updated on a periodic basis, but often there is no single repository where these files are stored. So, with poor visibility, renewal timelines, deadlines and milestones, when missed, can lead to unforeseen penalties. Furthermore, due to a lack of structured information flow and proper process, it’s not unusual for information requests to be directed to the wrong individuals, or incomplete or inaccurate information included in critical documents. Managing tasks when people leave the organisation, fall ill, or are simply away on holiday, can cause important tasks to fall through the cracks and cause embarrassment and client dissatisfaction.
By integrating document and task management systems, foremost, contractual and policy documents reside in a central location that is accessible by the relevant individuals. They then have the ability to dynamically review, collaborate and manage these documents, fully supported by version control and audit trails. With workflow embedded in the process, to ensure timely reviews, timely calendar alerts can be set up right across the lifecycle of the document.
This kind of integration will deliver business value to almost any functional department in an organisation – legal, finance, HR, procurement and so on.
• Efficiency and productivity
There is great efficiency and productivity to be gained too. For instance, the systems can be configured so that there is a separate calendar pertaining to task assignments. Individuals can easily view the due dates for the upcoming task deadlines. The automated email notifications to individuals can contain a link to the progress page for the task in question, making it easy for the team to update the task with their activity status and even add comments for discussion. Dashboards can also be set up so that individuals and teams can have visibility of the status of all tasks at hand and the performance of the respective individuals and departments.
• Knowledge extraction
Team leaders can oversee team projects, re-allocate tasks and receive alerts that impending deadlines are about to be missed if not managed correctly. This helps with work allocation for new projects and tasks, as it easy to see who is busy and who perhaps has spare availability.
Review policies can be applied to key documents, to ensure they are maintained and updated as required. Being able to see who has accessed each document, what comments they have made and even apply ratings akin to services such as UBER or Amazon are also very useful. It provides the business with management information that helps them understand the value of the documents and the cost savings that are being made from use of the system.
This kind of integration will deliver business value to almost any functional department in an organisation – legal, finance, HR, procurement and so on.
If you are considering or even exploring a document and task management system integration, please get in touch via contactus@ascertus.com. We have helped many departments to take advantage of these technologies.