remember it’s not just your team on board, it’s also your clients.
by penny breslin
it’s not just the numbers
once you have your procedures, you can assign tasks to your team members. because we perform back office work for many accounting firms, we often adapt to other firms’ workflows. we are often on their workflows for our tasking but internally we also needed a simple means of tasking. another easily integrated app with slack provided this, teamline. with teamline we just type /teamline into any channel and:
- create a new task on the fly or use a premade template
- assign it to a team member
- set a due date
- attach a file
- add a checklist of items
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teamline notifies both the assignee and the creator as to the progress of the task automatically. integration to our google calendar puts the teamline task into the calendar. we never leave slack while doing this as the integration between slack, teamline and google calendar is seamless.
when you go to the expense of using workflow apps, it is a pretty good idea to implement them across the board.
revisit your procedures regularly
to help your team and clients, and so your team and clients can help you, revisit all the processes and procedures you are using. technology has changed in the last three months, and will continue to change every three to six months. these changes mean you need to change your process and procedures. some apps may stay but even those apps will have changes, added features, new integrations, merging with compatible apps. this is not a one-time endeavor.
one of the major items we discuss when a firm outsources to us is process and procedures. it’s wonderful when a firm has a full complement of detailed processes and procedures, even if they’re historical. we can change those to fit the new methodology, technology or new employee. but having written that, i can tell you they are as rare as hen’s teeth.
as such, it lands on our lap to redo and create processes and procedures that affect our work with the firm. however, often when we are successful with that, we begin to get the firm that outsourced to us to bring us in to look at the parts we do not typically get to see. and now we have even more fun.
getting everyone on board
there are many new applications that will help you develop processes and procedures. remember they need to be adopted by the whole team and also the client. one of the team members is the implementor, basically, the onboarding agent. i have noticed that when we recommend technology and adapt a process for a client firm, we see how the ball gets dropped when the firms’ client fails to use the tools that allow the process to flow. remember the interaction of the client with the new ai/tech stack/little black dress you have provided is important. it is not just your internal team using these apps. it requires the client to participate.
i review and test a lot of apps. one of the questions i have is how to assist in the adoption of the end user client actually utilizing the features that allow for ai to work. i am going to put my anecdotal self-response to that. i am sure when you were in middle school science classes you all learned the physics law of what occurs when two objects interact: when two objects interact, each one exerts a force on the other, and these forces can transfer energy between them.
everyone wins when everyone adopts the apps
in the capacity of my job, i see the results when the end user client adopts the apps that assist in ai. adopting these apps cuts time, provides bottom-up information and really sets the ground game for a firm to perform bos services at a functional flat rate, and allows for movement to the value-added advisory function.
the amount of interaction you put into your client does affect the degree to which they adopt the apps you present to them. also, in a firm with hierarchy, the amount of interaction up the firm team chain increases the adoption of the whole team to using apps.