4 tips for accelerating administrative processes

Fast office administration is a dream for many. But how can it really be achieved? We look at simple measures that will perfectly complement your daily routine.

Office administration is often an impenetrable jungle of processes. Many procedures have been in place for a long time and are deeply ingrained in the company. Innovations require a lot of lead time and effort before they are implemented. Office administration is often the core of a company, where many threads come together. As a result, little is usually changed here because it somehow works. However, administrative processes are predestined to benefit from digital transformation. Many daily tasks are inefficient and characterised by identical, repetitive patterns.
If there is one thing digitalisation enables very well, it is the rapid and automatic execution of inefficient, repetitive tasks. After all, paper-based processes are difficult to duplicate or automate easily. Digital tools are also often accessible everywhere, mobile-friendly and cloud-based, ensuring that information cannot be lost. This allows office management to be accelerated, chaos to be reduced and employees to focus on value-adding tasks.

What administrative potential is there?

According to Dr Stefan Klos, Head of Business Process Management at Braincourt GmbH, in an interview with Controllermagazin.de*, 7 different common optimisation potentials can generally be defined for office processes.

1. Unnecessary information flow, e.g. repeated email enquiries, price requests or approvals
2. Redundant data and document stocks: multiple archiving in paper and electronic form. Electronic storage is usually sufficient and compliant with GoBD.
3. Searching: unnecessary movement or time spent searching
By the way: documents in the CAYA Document Cloud can be searched for keywords in seconds via full-text search. This applies to both digitised mail and documents uploaded to the Document Cloud.
4. Waiting for information and approvals
5. Unnecessary services
6. Inefficient or complex process organisation: media discontinuities, manual processing, unjustified process variants, etc.
7. Incorrectly provided services

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Based on these findings, we have put together 4 office management tips to help you make your everyday life and office administration more efficient and less monotonous.

How to optimise administrative processes? Administrative processes vs. value-adding processes.

1 | Structure your working day

Office management is a constantly moving area. New information and tasks arrive from all directions. It is therefore important to structure your working day in such a way that no information is lost in process management. Do you still often use sticky notes to find information later? Of course, there is a high risk of misplacing these small slips of paper. There is also no location-independent access. The digital alternative from Evernote helps you to store even the smallest pieces of information in a structured way on digital sticky notes. It also automatically synchronises your notes created on mobile and desktop, so you always have everything in one place. You can also search for keywords in your notes in Evernote. In addition, Evernote can also be used as a practical to-do tool - this multi-functionality helps you avoid tool overload and maintain lean processes.

Top tip: Evernote has plenty more to offer beyond simple note-taking and to-do lists. Did you know, for instance, that you can also directly integrate digital post from the CAYA platform with Evernote?

2 | Simplify your processes

If you want to speed up processes, the first thing you notice is that many administrative procedures are cumbersome and pass through many hands. It doesn't have to be this way. Software can help here, for example, with intelligent, automatic suggestions for implementation regarding quality management. One of these complex and cumbersome processes in office administration is often accounting. Errors should not happen here, but this cannot always be ruled out with manual methods. If you are looking for digital solutions for your administrative processes in this area, you may have already heard of Billomat. This gives you the opportunity to automate and digitise your accounting.

Do you also know which of your administrative processes contribute to value creation? This can be mapped. In value stream mapping (VSM), value-adding processes are developed from the customer's perspective.

With value stream mapping, you evaluate your processes and process steps and check whether they contribute to value creation and whether they are geared towards the requirements of your customers. The value for the customer is always central here. Value creation should not revolve around the organisation itself, but around potential for financial opportunities. For value stream mapping, you visualise your processes using the flowchart method and value stream mapping symbols. You also add specific key figures and performance parameters. You then derive weaknesses and potential for improvement.

Based on the evaluation, you can identify which individual process steps need to be improved, eliminated, protected or analysed in more detail. Value stream mapping is part of the Lean Management methodology, which offers interesting opportunities, especially for SMEs.

3 | Organise your workflows

Organisation is the be-all and end-all of administration. However, a notebook, physical folders or files on your PC are usually not much help when organising workflows. Digital solutions like Notion can take the work off your hands by storing files, representing the tasks of different teams or allowing you to share important documents without detours.

There are few tools as flexible as Notion, capable of simplifying tasks in almost every department. It is a workspace tool where the only limit is your imagination. Notion allows you to organise your workflows simply, visually, and efficiently. It is particularly useful for administrative processes: whether you are drafting documents, managing tasks, or building a library of important files and templates, Notion helps streamline your daily work. Since your colleagues can also access this information, Notion further facilitates remote collaboration, whether within your team or beyond.

4 | Go paperless wherever possible

Are your administrative processes still heavily reliant on paper? Is your incoming post a slow, physical process that still requires you to scan everything at the end? Wouldn't it be practical and time-saving if the opening, scanning, and preparation of your post were handled for you?

With Caya, you can receive and process your post digitally. In an increasingly decentralised and remote working world, distributing information via digital processes is becoming a necessity. Caya acts as your document hub, helping you easily forward post to the right recipients and departments. You can also organise your post into a folder structure, making it easier to find important documents later—though you can, of course, also use the full-text search. While you might still be scanning post manually today, Caya allows you to integrate your incoming mail into the tools you already use by tomorrow. Your accounting has never been easier, your project management never faster, and your document management never more organised. Digital post forms the foundation for many further steps in digitisation and is a must for any company looking to position itself efficiently and future-proof its operations.

There is significant potential in digitising office management, and it should not be overlooked, as it allows for major strides in the overall digitisation of the company with very little effort.