When you set up the OpsAnalitica Platform you can configure it, however, makes the most sense for your business.
Over the years, we have figured out that there are certain questions you should answer for yourselves and best practices that will enable you to get the most out of the platform. Here are some of those Best Practices.
Checklists
What is the goal of each checklist?
Having a business-related goal for each checklist will help you keep it short and focused.
You shouldn't have people doing checklists that you don't care about.
Dynamic Checklists are really good for use cases where the locations have a lot of variabilities.
Simplify reporting and administration.
Using Rules we customize the checklist for each location at load so it is always the perfect version for that location.
This works well for checklists where there are a lot of location-based variabilities, such as equipment or offerings.
Dynamic checklists have to be designed to be dynamic from day one, so it is imperative if you have a checklist that is dependent on location variation that you let your OpsAnalitica Project Manager know immediately so you can get that on their radar.
Steps to Building a Dynamic Checklist:
Design the checklist to accommodate most of any variability.
If you have one location that has 10 of something then the checklist has to be designed to accommodate 10.
Then we create logic around the variability
Then we create a Site Inspection where end users at locations tell us how many of the items they have.
Then the OpsAnalitica team monitors those site inspections and configures the locations accordingly so they always get asked about the items they have.
Delegation and Real-time Collaboration
This is built into the system but is supported by intelligent checklist design.
If you use real-time collaboration and delegate categories in the checklists to the team members that are responsible for them, then designing the checklists to make them cleaner and easier to complete is a no-brainer.
Scheduling
How do you want to manage scheduling compliance?
How are you going to follow up and hold the team accountable?
What is realistic based on staffing and patch size?
What Complete % are you going for?
Managing Real-time vs. Over-time
Real-time:
There is an expectation that management will follow up in real time when something isn't happening correctly.
This style of management requires notifications.
Works best for GMs and Above Store leaders with smaller patches.
Is impossible for Above Store Leaders with large patches.
Over-time:
This is report-based accountability where managers look at team performance over a time period using reports.
This requires a defined carrot-and-stick approach to ensuring that location teams are properly motivated to manage this themselves.
This is better when you have a large patch of stores or are not staffed for real-time interactions.
The Most Effective Way to Raise Checklist Compliance is setting recurring alarms on store tablets.
I wish that I could come up with an easier and more elegant solution than setting recurring alarms on your tablet but I haven't been able to.
You can use Siri or Google Assistant to create recurring alarms.
They make way more noise than we can make with a notification.
They can be snoozed easily if you are busy and they will sound again 9 minutes later.
If you want to increase checklist compliance, have your teams set recurring alarms when you want them to start their checklists.
User
User Accounts vs Location Accounts
User Accounts:
Each user gets their own account.
More to manage from an admin perspective.
Should be used at locations where there isn't high turnover.
Location Accounts:
Offer slightly less accountability because everyone is sharing an account.
In these use cases, the first question of every checklist is; Completed By, where we capture the name of the person completing the checklist.
Reduces platform admin time because you don't have to create an account for every user. You just have one account for the Location.
Set the account's password, and do not let end users change it.
Usually in an organization, we will give the above store leaders and corporate employees user accounts and then use location accounts for the locations.
Locations:
Tagging:
You should tag locations with their hierarchy which will be used to determine which team members can see the location and its completed checklists.
You should also tag locations with any data that you might want to report or use to filter locations:
Examples of filterable tags:
Distribution Centers
Building Attributes
Equipment
State
Time Zone
Offerings
If you have a recall on a product that only affects 2 distribution centers then you can create a Location filter based on those tags.
It is best to think about those things when your platform is getting set up originally so you can get the locations tagged from the beginning.
Location Attachments:
Location Attachments are available to be viewed by all users of the platform on the Location Information Page.
You can add up to five attachments: docs, photos, etc.. to each location.
You can also add up to five links to each location.
The best practice is to have at least attach 1 shared folder in each location that you can use to add documents to without having to give access to your online file structure to end users.
Some people have a shared folder for all locations and one for each location.
Notifications
Start, Complete, Late, Missed, and Critical
These are controlled at the checklist level.
You should only use these on checklists that you are scheduling and managing in real time.
If you aren't going to dedicate resources to follow-up on a checklist do not configure notifications on it.
You want your team to view an OpsAnalitica Notification as actionable so that when they see it they immediately start to follow up. Don't ruin that by putting too many notifications on checklists you don't care about as much.
Email and Push Notifications
Email Notifications:
You can configure email notifications on the user's account.
Because of CanSpam, end users can opt-out of email.
Push Notifications:
Push has to be set up by the end-user on the device.
Other System Integrations
If you have a system that provides an email address or monitors an inbox. You can create notification-only accounts that will send notifications to those emails and this can be used to update other systems.
Examples: ServiceNow, Slack, and Teams
Tasks
In our world, anything that is going to be recurring should be managed through a scheduled checklist. Tasks are for later follow-up or one-off activities.
Task Types:
Tasks:
These are one-off tasks that you can create for any person (user or non-user).
Automated Tasks:
These are configured on a question in a checklist with a Task Template.
These are created when the response to the question is tagged Unsatisfactory.
Action Plan Tasks:
These are created manually off of the Completed Checklist at the question level.
The question and response are attached and the task is directly associated to that specific response to the question at that location.
Train the Trainer:
We have seen the most success in implementations with a train-the-trainer model.
You have one person at a location get trained and then they can train the other team members.
OpsAnalitica is very easy for end users to learn and our end-user training can be completed in about 15 minutes.
End User Training can be seen in the help and is provided in English and Spanish.