Organisations that help people are often strapped for cash. As a result, they are often using outdated management systems years after other sectors have moved on. Recently I heard of a national healthcare system, in a Western European country, that still uses paper files!
If you think about it for a minute, you’ll see that using outdated management systems is a false economy. It not only seriously slows down performance; it also increases the risk of errors, which in ‘helping’ sectors can be literally fatal.
The antidote to those problems in helping organisations and social services is case management software. These programs allow you to track your time and tasks, which can help with smooth client handovers, avoiding errors, effective communications and managing your workload. Case management software also integrates with accounting, HR, customer relations and data management. Even more importantly, it brings with it the ability to connect people together with its social capabilities. These tools will help your employees communicate better, collaborate on projects even when they are thousands of miles apart, and enable the organisation to focus more resources on client support.
This article expands on how software can help your caring organisation to do even more, better.
1) Data Management
The ability for an organisation to take a good look at its data is crucial. There is software designed for social services that can help you do it better, faster, and with more clarity than ever before. The software can help you create and suggest insights while utilizing workflows, assessments, referrals, reports, client plans, and other actionable steps. For example, rather than doing an in-depth analysis of every data point for each client, you could automate the process with a workflow and have it done in half the time. You can also work collaboratively on such projects through real-time updates and progress, allowing your coworkers to give their opinions if needed.
2) Time Management
With the ever-increasing number of tasks that must be completed by today’s busy organisations, time management is crucial. Time wasted on repetitive tasks impacts every aspect of an organisation – from top to bottom. Of course, it wastes your precious time too! But did you know there are actions you can take to stop wasting time with tedious chores? You could automate certain tasks, share information with colleagues in a central location, and even manage your email while improving responsiveness. You could even delegate tasks to fellow coworkers and track their progress as well.
3) Easier Collaboration & Communication
Organisations that collaborate better will also serve their employees better too. By allowing for easier communication between both workers and management, everyone can help each other more efficiently. This helps to maintain morale since everyone can get their job done faster and with fewer errors. Tools like messaging, video conferencing, social feeds, alerts, document sharing, tasks management – are all tools designed to help you communicate better. A software package that includes all of these tools will help you to improve your organisation’s communication.
4) Reporting & Analytics
Analytics is key in keeping up with the latest trends that impact your business or just giving you a better idea of how things are going. A good example is when it comes to finances – if you have software that can give you up-to-date reports like revenue projections, performance metrics, and customer trends/behavior – you’ll always be ahead of the game. Also, you can create custom dashboards and charts to give you a quick read of your most important data. Find software that gives you access to all of your important data and reports – no matter where they are found.
Non-profits also need a reporting and analytical framework that supports the way they need to present reports to funders and grant providers. With modern case management software those options should be built-in, saving the huge headache of piecing reports on client expenditure, inputs and impacts together.
5) Employee Management
We’ve shown how software can increase productivity, enable faster collaboration, and keep everyone informed of what’s going on in real-time. It can also help employees to self-manage themselves with clear feedback on performance and alerts for any anomalies.
Where necessary, management can use the software to review performance as well. This can include reviews of time spent on tasks, helping both the employee and manager to reflect on priorities and ways to potentially streamline and improve the service. Referring to performance software as part of staff supervision sessions can illuminate pressure points within the organisation and help to deal with emerging problems before they become a disaster.
For new staff who are still finding their feet or are on probation or starting out in a new department, you can set alerts for late or over-time task completion and keep track of how well tasks are being implemented and where more support might be needed.
6) Socializing Your Organisation
By socializing platforms with tools like chats, forums, lists/resources/calendars, news feeds, group messaging, shared documents, polls, etc., organisations have the ability to save time by working more efficiently together. These tools encourage sharing valuable content with the rest of your organisation, which encourages better collaboration on projects. With all of these great features, socialising software ensures that everyone within your organisation is on the same page.
7) Forms
What about forms? The software can also help you automate and track the entire process for applying to jobs, requesting holiday or parental leave and so on. If your organisation doesn’t currently use software for such tasks, you should look into them and the benefits they offer. Simple forms can also be used for signing up to events and mailing lists, although if you deliver frequent events you may want to use software like eventbrite that streamlines the whole process.
If you want to save time, be more productive and collaborative with your co-workers, or make better use of the data available within your organisation – there are plenty of reasons for implementing software. From improved communication to simplified payroll tasks, a good package will have an impact on every facet of how your company operates. Besides that, it will make you more efficient at doing your job and help to increase the morale of your employees. If you’re not using software effectively in your organisation, what are you waiting for? We hope this article has given you some good ideas about the benefits of using software more effectively in your ‘helping’ organisation.