Survival of the Fittest: How a Unified Time Tracking System Leads to Digital Transformation
In the current state of the world, with a pandemic that has lasted much longer than many expected, companies are finding that they need to restructure their entire operations in order to stay in business. Those unwilling to change have faced business continuity challenges, been forced to shut down, or are barely staying afloat as they navigate this new normal. So what can be done now to ensure businesses are keeping up with the current technology and adapting to a world that has largely moved to remote working situations?
Businesses are finding they don’t have much of a choice but to go the digital transformation route. Even those businesses that aren’t able to provide remote working opportunities have discovered they need to make a big push towards a more digital approach across their entire business in order to keep up and move forward.
Digital transformation is all about reimagining business processes in the new digital age. It’s the process of leveraging digital tools to automate mundane manual tasks to achieve greater efficiency. For a professional service organization, this can mean switching from manual payroll procedures to a web-based payroll system or even utilizing unified time tracking systems. Any transition to a more digitized process, culture, or system is a step towards digital transformation.
How Big Is the Need for Digital Transformation?
A key focus for a lot of companies is to remain competitive in their industry. Some companies focus on this from a value standpoint, a few others compete on pricing. But one thing that every business should focus on is staying up to date on technological advances. By making sure your company is keeping up with current technology relevant to your industry, you can be confident that you’re on par with your competitors. Falling behind when it comes to technology can negatively impact your business in terms of loss of productivity, inaccuracy of critical metrics, and lost revenue to name a few.
Now, the rapidly increasing remote working workforce has accelerated digital transformation initiatives. Companies that have embraced digital transformation have been able to more seamlessly continue their business than those who lost their footing at the start of the pandemic when most businesses had to take a huge step back. By adopting relevant technological advancements, you can future-proof your business to withstand changes much better than your competitors.
Digital Transformation in Time Tracking
While digital transformation can be applied to a wide range of different processes and operations within a business, it has become a buzzword when it comes specifically to project time tracking. Project time tracking and management have always been a big part of any project or service-based business. However, due to the complexities of many projects, it’s not always an easy task to completely automate and digitalize all the processes even when they are time-consuming.
The only way to ensure accurate project time tracking is by leveraging a platform that is enabled by flexible workflows and modern functionalities. Business leaders must consider automating time tracking the right place to get started as it ties into critical metrics like costing, billing, productivity, and profitability and has the power to produce fast, long-term returns. With a large part of project time tracking automated, teams and organizations can focus more on other important aspects of the business such as results and revenue.
What Do Businesses Gain by Leveraging a Unified Time Tracking System?
Businesses everywhere want to ensure that they have the capacity to capitalize on any revenue and profit opportunities that may come their way. This means they must be operationally efficient and rely on a real-time, single source of truth for time, as it affects all business metrics including project delivery, costs, resource utilization, billing, and more. Leveraging a configurable, scalable, and agile project time tracking platform helps businesses achieve true efficiency and uncover hidden opportunities for growth by providing business with:
A Single Source of Truth for Time
Previously, even when using digital methods, time tracking was only accessible in the office by those who were authorized to access it. When they were unique requirements, manual processes were still used in parallel to the point solutions used to automate. With a truly unified time tracking system, all of your organization’s time and project data is stored in one centralized location meaning there is less room for error or confusion. A centralized location allows remote employees, or employees who have to work on projects outside of the office, to access it as well.
Ability to Provide Inputs In-the-Now
According to data we gathered from 850 businesses, 49 percent of businesses planned to make remote work a permanent option for roles that would allow it. With a unified time tracking system, it won’t matter if an employee is working from home or from the office. All inputs around projects and time will be entered and stored by cloud infrastructure. In addition, mobile apps can simplify things further for personnel who may be away from their computers.
Real-Time Business Metrics
Because all time ties into business data from costs to billing to productivity and more, business leaders need to see all of this data in order to make decisions and be informed. All operational data and key metrics are able to be accessed in real-time so that those who need to be making informed decisions can do so before issues occur.
Enhanced Resource Productivity
When working on any project, it can be extremely beneficial to be able to see the time spent on the project, and all of its related tasks, in order to get a clear picture of resources the project is using. With this information, feedback can be provided regarding expectations and performance. It is easy to set and track productivity targets and communicate those with employees while making them accountable for their productivity and utilization.
Streamlined Processes
At least 48 percent of businesses covered in the data our company gathered were planning to accelerate automation and new ways of working. Additionally, 27 percent of businesses named timesheet, billing, and payroll errors caused by manual processes as one of their greatest challenges when managing a remote workforce. With a unified time tracking system these processes can now be fully, automated to save time and minimize human error. This means that processes like billing can be done with a few clicks of a button rather than requiring staff to spend hours doing it manually.
Seamless Integrations
With seamless integrations, there is no need to double your work by re-entering data that has already been input into one system. Entering time, costs, and billing data into ERP, HRMS, payroll, or any other related systems can be as easy as enabling sharing between the systems for processing.
Pursuing large-scale change like digital transformations takes time and a lot of effort on the part of everyone involved. But businesses are realizing that digital transformation can get a quick ROI and has a better chance of being successful when you start with a unified time tracking system.
Want to learn more about how you can take the path of digital transformation?
