Everyone in the business world is talking about Digital Transformation Tools, Digital Workplaces and Business Continuity. But what is the connection between them? Is the hype worth it? Let’s explore.
Also read: Digital Transformation Demystified !!
The world is witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon in the form of a pandemic that is wreaking havoc in every part of the globe. These are very uncertain times for society and industry. The most developed nations are crumbling under the onslaught of the virus. Infrastructure is falling apart, and business, needless to say, is facing disruption like never before.
Workplaces have become the new front line in the battle with the COVID-19 virus. Global companies are grappling with enormous challenges at every level and are trying to deal with the high levels of fear gripping the workers. Organizations across the board are finding themselves unprepared in terms of managing the productivity and business continuity that will eventually impact revenue.
Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” How insightful these words have proven to be. Organizations across the world are being forced to take a hard look at their business practices and processes to determine whether there are better, more efficient ways to do things.
However, at Quixy Co. we are having a different experience.
We are proud to announce that we closed our offices on 16th March 2020 and since then 100% of our employees have been working remotely with 0% impact on day to day business operations. This has been made possible through the implementation of a truly Digital Workplace setup powered by our own Quixy platform at its core.
In this blog, we discuss the key digital transformation tools and various aspects of our Digital Workplace setup that may help other organizations adopt a similar system and respond to such unprecedented situations in a far more effective way.
Quixy is a No-Code web-based digital transformation platform that business users can use to automate their processes and workflows without writing any code 10X faster using 60% fewer resources. Quixy is helping businesses across industries e.g. Insurance, Infrastructure, IT, Engineering, Education, Logistics, Energy and GIS automate their business processes across functions including HR, Finance, General Administration, Purchase, IT, Quality, PMO, etc. on a centralized platform. Quixy has also been recognized with the Premium Usability and Rising Star award by the industry.
Also read: Everything you should know about no-code development
Microsoft Teams is a web-enabled unified communication and collaboration platform that combines on-going workplace chat, video meetings, file storage (including collaboration on files), and application integration. The service integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suites.
Zoom provides a web-based conferencing service that combines video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration.
Over the past few months, business users in different departments at Quixy Co. i.e. HR, Finance, General Administration, Purchase, IT, Quality, PMO, Sales & Marketing, etc. have automated all their processes on the centralized web-based Quixy platform. Quixy has helped automate these repetitive processes using customizable forms, workflows and business rules.
Most of these automated processes are now coming handy since no paperwork or physical engagement is required for any day to day business operations.
The platform is being used to initiate any process and track work between people thereby streamlining all business operations. Users can view the status of all processes initiated by them while process owners can review the status of all their processes in real-time.
List of some of the processes that have been automated on the platform are listed below:
Applications | Purpose |
---|---|
Company Wide | |
Project Management | Create projects, assign team members, track progress, attach related files, and access time spent info from the Time sheets app |
Task Management | Manage Task related to the project and track their progress |
Meeting Minutes | Track minutes and action items from meetings |
Document Library | Manage documents related to various functions and make them available to relevant stakeholders in one single place |
Time sheet | Track time spent on various activities |
Company Directory | Maintain company directory in single place for quick access for everyone |
Personal To-Do | Create and track personal To-Do tasks to completion. |
Indent Management | Raise and process indent requests |
HR | |
Employee Onboarding | Manage all tasks and checklist to ensure smooth on-boarding of new associates |
Training | Manage organization-wide training including attendance and feedback from these sessions |
HRMS and Payroll | Manage processes related to HR and Payroll including Leave Application, Payroll processing, etc. |
Performance Management | Manage Quarterly and annual reviews for all associates |
Candidate Application Tracking | End to end application tracking system for applications against open job positions |
Employee Separation | Manage tasks related to employee separation including all clearance formalities and issuing relieving certificate |
General Administration | |
Travel Request | Manage the overall process from start to finish of the business trip including travel request by the employee and all the arrangements by the admin department |
Trip Report | Submit business trip reports including decisions and open actions to follow up |
Expense | Management Manage itemized expense reports along with attachments |
Visitor Log | Record all visitor movement ensuring only approved visitors are allowed |
Quality | |
Policy and Procedure Library | Maintain the full list along with attachments for easy reference for all employees |
Internal Company Survey | Conduct and report results for an internal company survey |
Audit Management | Plan, execute and report on various quality audits |
IT | |
IT Help desk | Processing tickets and inquiries from users of in-house IT equipment and networks. |
Inventory Management | Manage inventory related to IT |
Incident Management | Report and manage IT-related incidents |
Marketing and Sales | |
Product and Services Database | Manage Product and Services Database |
Prospects and Customer Database | Manage Prospects and Customer Database |
Sales and Leads Database | Manage Sales and Leads Database |
Social Media Content Calendar | Create and maintain Social Media Content Calendar |
Event Report | Maintain event reports including learning and action items from the events |
Quotations | Create and track quotations |
Customer Service | |
Support FAQ | Create and manage FAQ to respond to customer inquiries more efficiently |
Customer Satisfaction Survey | Manage Customer Satisfaction Survey |
Support Desk | Manage trouble tickets from customers |
Product Survey | Manage product survey |
Also read: Business process management – The what, why, and how
Teams are using the Project Management and Task Management related apps that have been created on the Quixy platform to plan, control, execute and align project activities and tasks to meet project objectives. Projects are being managed with neatly organized dashboards for real-time actionable insights.
Team members can view and update tasks assigned to them and also enter timesheets against each task. Project Managers can view the status of all tasks. Further, real-time reports help Managers foresee and address bottlenecks on a single screen without having to ask IT teams to create it for them. Teams that were hitherto using other products like Jira, Asana, Monday, etc. have either transitioned their processes to the Quixy platform or are in the process of doing so.
When working remotely, collaboration and communication between the team members is the most important factor to ensure smooth operations. Quixy enables various users to collaborate effectively in their business processes through the power of automated workflows on a system designed for less noise and more work.
Daily stand up meetings and brainstorming sessions are being enabled through video calls on Microsoft teams. Teams are also being used for one-on-one or team level discussions though various channels that have been created on the Teams platform by each department.
All customer and vendor calls are being done through Zoom, which also offers the advantage of saving recordings of the calls for later reference.
Policies have also been put in place to have everyone join at least 1-2 calls during the day that are video-enabled so that all participants see each other. Team level chit-chat channels have been created to enable casual out of office discussions between team members during the day.
User-defined workflows in Quixy are bringing together people, processes, and data to track, manage, and solve all types of cases from helpdesk tickets to employee onboarding, leave application and bug tracking.
The lightweight web-enabled interface along with the Android and iOS apps of all the tools is allowing users to work from anywhere, across any device and continue to be productive.
The Digital Workplace setup powered by the web-enabled digital transformation tools discussed in this blog has helped us respond to the unprecedented situation created by the COVID-19 without any impact on our day to day operations. All our associates are being able to collaborate from wherever they are and work efficiently towards meeting their project objectives without the need for any physical interactions or feeling disconnected while working remotely.
Team members who were earlier getting fatigued by hours of commute every day are now able to split that same time between work and their families creating a win-win situation for both the organization and the employees.
Before COVID-19 only a few of our associates used to work remotely a few days a week but the COVID-19 lockdown forced our model to be tested with the entire office population working remotely. We are glad that it is proving to be very efficient and effective to the extent that we are planning to extend it to a majority of our associates even post the COVID-19 lockdown.
If you have any queries regarding the digital transformation tools or processes discussed in this blog or if you need help setting up a Digital Workplace in your organization, feel free to write to us and we will be glad to share our experiences with you. This is the least we can do to help our community in these testing times.
Stay Home and Stay Safe and maintain Social Distancing.
We are in this together !!