This piece was written and provided by Richard Moulton, GM Software Products of FTMA Gold Sponsor, MiTek.
Most successful businesses pride themselves on creating procedures, routines and clear lines of responsibility to establish a system that can be executed and repeated on a regular basis. This is then continuously improved as the business grows and morphs into the direction it’s heading with a view to improve efficiencies, reduce mistakes and in turn reduce overall costs.
The above statement is easy to make but the reality is often more difficult to attain. Whilst these systems and processes may reside and are operational in your business now, many will actually rely on the expertise of key staff and in most cases these processes are not documented in any way nor live within a digital system.
Over the last few years MiTek has witnessed an enormous growth in interest in the adoption of the MiTek Management system that comes with the Sapphire® Suite of software. Management can be run in conjunction with or alongside Sapphire® or even alongside MiTek 20/20 or other systems you may run. It can be used as a tool outside of your core Frame and Truss business. This flexibility can all be achieved within the highly customisable set-up functionality that is integral to the Management System.
Once installed MiTek Management provides options for the user to introduce or replace systems that are responsible for
- Logging of quotes and orders
- Tracking of customer details
- Tracking who is working on what job (workflow management)
- Comparing orders to quotes
- Scheduling manufacture
- Scheduling deliveries or partial deliveries
- Ordering non stocked items like steel beams
- Tracking invoicing
- Providing performance reports
- Etc.
For MiTek staff it is very satisfying when invited to work with a customer to help streamline these processes with a view to reducing all these tasks into a single solution. It’s not uncommon that this is the first time that a single solution has been considered and that overall processes are reviewed and captured which starts with a simple workflow diagram. Once this has been completed the path is clear and we often reduce up to 5 or 6 individual systems into a single business solution.
The workflow captured helps develop a fully customised Management system to suit each business. Once the setup is completed, and jobs are input and processed, MiTek Management is able to manage the business with the following core components
- Dashboard – See only what is important to you and your job function – simple, concise and uncluttered.
- Managed Workflow – See exactly what stage a job is up to with flexible and informative tracking points
- Scheduling – Rich data and colour formatting provide crystal clear insights into any schedule in either grid or calendar views, a simple way to replace the old style whiteboards
- Mobile platform – Data may be viewed on all sorts of devices and even from browser platforms such as Explorer or Chrome
- Reporting – With a sophisticated database now readily available the company has access to a wide variety of information from end of month summaries to help understand and capture KPI’s, efficiencies and other key data to help make informative decisions
- Automation – Kick off events like monthly reports or delivery schedules to key customers without any interaction from your staff
We find that once the system is used, more individual customised reports are generated as users fully comprehend the value of the data being saved. When asked “can we…” it’s pleasing to say the answer is generally “yes we can”. Imagine automating all the steps involved with sending a quote to a customer, saving a copy on file within the job, or notifying transport companies as soon as something is booked in, possibly with a schedule for the upcoming commitments. These are all great examples where manual processes have been replaced with fully automated reports, emails or notifications to staff and or customers each of which saves time, money and makes any business run more professionally.
If you prefer to rely on automated systems and lessen the burden on your staff then MiTek Management can help.
If “anywhere anytime” comes to mind when wanting to know about your business (a phrase that our first user of MiTek Management challenged us with) then MiTek Management has your bases covered. Imagine being 38000 feet in the air with Wi-Fi access and still being able to view in real time production related data, or sales for the month.
If you want to grow your business and not your overheads, then MiTek Management can help.
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