WorkOptima does exceptions processing and email is not workflow - huh?

Everyday hundreds of transactions are processed through systems like Oracle, TMW, TruckMate, Manhattan, Peoplesoft, JDE, Microsoft GP and many many others. Everything works well.......almost!!

Frequently within a transaction, there are situations that need intervention. Perhaps the system doesn’t know what to do, someone needs to provide guidance, something requires people to intervene. This is perfectly normal. Like thousands of other businesses, what happens? You configure your system to send out emails or create alerts, asking people to deal with these situations.  

Dutifully these requests are sent to some email address, to which we have assigned a whole bunch of people, to get taken care of. Therein lies the issue;

• Who is assigned to deal with the issue?

• Who is accountable?

• Are you sure that they are paying attention?

• Will all the people deal with the issue in the same way?

• Do you have to send the email to a whole group to make sure that at least someone dealt with the issue?

• Does everyone then have to chase everyone else around to make sure it is done?

• Is it ever actually done? Would you know?

• What are they doing? Is there a way to check?

• Was it dealt with in a consistent way? Did they follow the procedures? Does everyone know the procedures?

• Was it dealt with in a timely manner?

• Was it dealt with at all? Can we track these tasks?

• Did we drop the ball?

• What is the cost to rework? 

• What are the consequences, a lost customer, a contractual breach, exposure to liability?

  
  

Clearly using email to manage these activities is not an ideal solution for the reasons above and more. Email is not workflow.

With WorkOptima, that same email goes out, so no changes to any existing systems is needed. But rather than ending up hidden in an email box somewhere, WorkOptima receives the message, assigns it to the correct process and initiates the appropriate workflow that you have assigned to the exception type. This way;

• The issue becomes instantly visible to everyone, nothing is hidden. We can track it to conclusion.

• Appropriate and vetted workflow steps are applied to ensure accurate outcomes,

• The assigned people are notified and the service levels ensure that it gets dealt with,

• The workflow enforces accountability, allows reporting and ensures that the process is consistently applied. Avoid liability and post-event drama,

• At the end of the process, the steps and decisions taken are known and archived as an audit trail for both follow up and future process improvement.

  
  

And WorkOptima is easy and simple to use, and it requires no changes to your existing systems!

Handling exceptions, better, faster, at lower cost, more reliably with visibility and oversight. What's not to like?