About a year ago, one division of my company came to me with the problem of disseminating weekly sales reports. The problem was that they had about 60 sales people across 2 different sales forces (product lines) that had to submit sales reports to the corporate office on a weekly basis. These reports needed to be distributed to an audience of 40 or more people from regional sales managers to upper management. The process in place was to have everyone e-mail their weekly report (in a Microsoft Word Format that had a common template) to an Administrative Assistant who would photocopy and assemble packets that got sent through the regular inter-office mail. Needless to say, this occupied a good piece of this assistant's time the beginning of each week and wasn't the most timely distribution of information.
Like a good little Intranet guru who had seen another division painfully photocopying each week (but that didn't want to take me up on my offer to have them be the first to use the Intranet for this task), I immediately suggested using the Intranet for this task. A few months earlier, I had installed a collaboration package on the Intranet that would be perfect for this task. After all, every employee already had access to the Intranet and they could post and/or read these reports at any time even if they were not in the office as long as they had a PC with dial-up access.
Using Sitescape Forums (http://www.sitescape.com), I created secured document and discussion forums for each of the groups' products. In conjunction with the sales organization's support staff, we registered all the users (both sales personnel who needed to post and other people who needed to read the reports), granted proper security, and created user documentation. We also determined there was a need to have a "combined" sales report for the week that included all the regions and territories in one document. A consultant created a quick and dirty macro that would take all the reports for a given week and create a "Combined Report" with hyperlinks within the Microsoft Word document to easily jump to a specific sales region or person's report.
Every week, each sales person must access the Intranet and upload their weekly report prior to Monday at noon. Once this is complete, an administrative assistant in the sales organization downloads all the reports to create the "Combined Report" and uploads this to a "Combined Reports" folder. Therefore, almost as soon as the week starts, the reports are available to anyone with security to read them. For those in the audience who need a reminder to go and access them, a nightly e-mail is sent to every member on the distribution list whenever a new report is added (that is, 1 e-mail per day if and only if there are new postings).
The new weekly sales report process was communicated and launched in October 1999, and has functioned very smoothly. All user and forum administration is done by the sales organization and I am 99% "hands-off" for this process, getting involved only if there is a glitch, problem, or a new feature is needed. According to the managers involved, this change in process has saved them approximately $15,000 annually. In addition to more timely distribution of the reports and less paper shuffling, the online reports enhanced the old process by creating a fully searchable historical archive of sales reports and issues.
As with all processes that get redesigned, there are issues. One of the issues we encountered was trying to change people's behaviors both for the employees posting and the management reading the reports. The sales group did a fine job of forcing that issue by refusing to distribute any print versions of the report. Since these reports are business critical, making the Intranet the only way to access them facilitated (that is the nice way of saying forced) the behavior change. The sales group also did a fine job managing user education issues with their documentation and phone support. All in all, the launch and subsequent adoption of this new process has gone quietly and smoothly (so much so, in fact, that occasionally when I see them in the company cafeteria I ask if everything is working ok!).
After word circulated about how well it worked for this division, two other divisions followed suit and adopted this process. I believe it is only a matter of time (and some upper management nudging) before the rest of the divisions migrate as well.
Although this may not be the most exciting story in my book, it is a prime example of how a company can leverage the Intranet in a short period of time with minimal cost to improve a process and reduce the cost and effort required for a critical business function.
As always, comments and feedback are appreciated. You can e-mail me at paulag@enter.net.
Printer Friendly Version
The Author
P.G. Daly is Webmaster for the intranet of a large durable goods manufacturing company. In addition, P.G. writes for several online publications and does freelance web design and consulting. P.G. welcomes your feedback at paulag@enter.net
.
Events
[
Home | Discussion Forum | How Do I... |
Lotus Notes Intranets |
Microsoft SharePoint |
Products |
Shopping
]
