How to Escape the Approval Nightmare




Modern business practices are often bound by routine. With tiers of management allocated their own responsibilities, it is essential that a business – no matter the size – has an efficient computer and communications network for both external and internal use.
The average enterprise business may involve several different departments. Each one will have a team of staff, plus a manager. This is the normal set up for enterprise outfits, and to a point it works. With departmental managers reporting to a manager further up the ladder, and so on until we reach the Managing Director, commercial decisions need attention from several different people.
What these decisions also need is approval. Approval can be necessary for completing or starting projects, or for ordering goods and issuing invoices. There will be a designated manager of member of staff who approves all such decisions, and there can be many. Have a look at some of the departments that may be found in any enterprise business:
  • Purchasing
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • HR
  • IT
  • Accounts
  • Quality Control
  • Logistics
That’s the bare bones of the outfit, and there will be some businesses that incorporate one or more into one department, or that may have additional ones. Now let’s think about how those departments are affected by approval processes.
In Purchasing, for example, the procurement team may be involved in sourcing raw materials. Once they have their set of data together, they need to get their purchase approved by the relevant person. They will also need to raise a purchase order, which may also require internal approval.
A Sales department will be involved in raising orders, which will require some form of approval before the final order is placed, and may also be responsible for invoicing. Again, this is an area where approval will be required and, in a fast-moving environment, the absence of the right person can lead to unnecessary delays.

Marketing teams creating ads and copy will also have to have their work approved before placement or publication, and the data they gather will also be ripe for approval for use. New projects in this department may also need to be approved, and approval.rocks is of great use in this area of the business.
IT departments will need an approval system for implementing new processes, raising tickets and more, while logistics will involve picking goods, approvals for drivers to set out on deliveries, and many more processes. Accounts need signing off and quality inspections need to go through careful routines.
The likelihood is that, as with most enterprise businesses, various software systems are used to run each department efficiently. Accounting will use a different package to sales, for example. They will integrate for reporting and may be either off the shelf or custom made.

Each software package will have its own workflow routine. Within these there will be stages at which approval much be sought. This can mean one person having several different systems on which to exercise approval before work can continue or a process can be completed. Let’s look at an example concerning the HR department.

Consider the payroll: this will be put together and processed by an operative working, perhaps, in the HR department. Once completed, the payroll will need to be approved by the manager before it is cleared for final delivery. Let’s say that the HR manager is the designated person for the final say. What if they are not present, and payroll needs processing?
The business may have a secondary signatory who will be able to process the payroll in this instance, but there are more problems. An average HR manager, to use the same example, will also deal with holiday requests, appointments and onboarding, assessments and expenses and so on. Each of these processes will require he or she to log in to a particular part of the system and process approval. How many of these will one HR manager have to handle in a week, or a month? Depending on the size of the company, it could run into the hundreds.
The same applies to the Sales Manager, who may need to sign off many stages of a project, or the head of Purchasing who will have to deal with invoices, estimates and more. The time taken for merely approving stages adds up.

What if a project cannot move to another stage without manager approval, and the manager is absent or in a meeting? That’s lost time throughout the company whilst those working on the project have to wait for approval. So, how do you escape the approval nightmare as our title asks? Let’s consider what that main problems are.

What is the Solution

Looking at the above, it’s easy to see that a smoother and more efficient method of approving various stages or transactions was needed. Such a solution is approval.rocks, which may even change the way enterprise businesses operate, and ensure time and money are saved in an essential part of the daily running of the business. How does such a system work?
The main aim of such a tool is that of increasing efficiency and reducing workload. In turn this will reduce costs. However, it also needs to consider the demands on managers in approving stages and tackle the tricky problem of how to implement an approval system for those on the move.
Many managers and directors do business on the road, and the outbound sales team may also need to seek approval of transactions while remote from the office. The mobile smartphone is the essential tool for anyone on the road and needs to be able to access any such system that aims for an increase in efficiency.
The main problems to deal with in overcoming the approval nightmare are as follows:
  • Reduce the need for multiple logins for approval
  • Enable approval remotely
  • Have all approvals dealt with in one place
  • Ease of transferring approval to others when necessary
What if all of these can be incorporated in one simple management software package, thus over-riding the need for the user to log in multiple times. A system such as approval.rocks is  a cloud-based system for many reasons, and the software is mobile friendly as a priority. As all sizes of enterprise business and need to overcome the sometimes-cumbersome quality control and government compliance rules that businesses face this is one system that is intended for broad use. How can such a simple and yet versatile tool improve your productivity and reduce costs?

Moving to a Centralized Approval Solution

Tools such as approval.rocks are specifically designed to free enterprise businesses from the shackles of multiple approval requirements. In other words, to make life easier. Some of the ways this is achieved include the following:
  • Cloud based software has a number of advantages. One is that it does not require any space on your already overrun servers. Another is that data held on it can be accessed from anywhere. Thus, a manager on the way to a meeting or a journey can remotely assign approval duties to another person, eliminating any delays that may have come about by them not being present. Cloud based systems are also secure, adding peace of mind for the user.
  • The software is specifically designed for use with a mobile smartphone. This expands the versatility of the software and enables it to be used on the move – as in the example above or by reps and sales teams – cutting down the time spent waiting for transaction approvals. A sales rep can sign a deal on the spot and gain approval remotely, for example, resulting in useful time saving and reduced workload.
  • There is one central place where all approvals can be dealt with together. Rather than having to log into to each separate area, a central approval software package allows the user to act on a variety of approvals in one place at one time. Designating others for acting on approval is also done in one place, so there’s no need to allocate the same person to different systems.
As you can see, the main elements of the central approval system are designed to make life a lot easier for all involved, and to streamline the approval process. With time saved in this area, the workforce can get finished projects signed off quickly and move on to new ones, increasing production efficiency.
Such a system is useful for any size of type of enterprise business that finds it is bound to approval stages, which can be a hindrance if not dealt with quickly and efficiently.
 
Do You Need an Approval Solution?

If you have a business that uses off the shelf software packages for sales, marketing, accounts and all other departments there is always going to be a delay between projects moving through the stages while approval is sought from the proper channels. There is every chance that your systems are not fully integrated, and you are considering a bespoke system. However, that costs money, and not every business has the budget for this.
A system such as approval.rocks is an affordable and efficient method of bringing all your approval points into one easy to use portal and offers the useful and effective ability to approve or designate approval from afar via a mobile phone. This could be the system you need to reduce the time spent in a necessary yet time-consuming area of business while reducing costs and increasing productivity.

We invite you to get in touch via the contact details on the website, and one of our friendly and knowledgeable team will be able to answer any questions you have about approval.rocks and your business, so call us now and we’ll be happy to help.

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