“My staff are able to manage themselves more effectively through efficient task scheduling, workflow, calendar sharing, project management, delegation and feedback.”

Why Does my Business Need Streamline?
I Forgot..

Good question!  Let us rather tell you why WE needed something like Streamline (and if we strike a chord, please read on). To put it simply, we woke up one morning and realised that our business had grown to the point where we were beginning to drop the ball.

We chewed over this for a while and came to the insight that the number one reason why teams of people often don't achieve what they set out to do is simply because of the inefficient way in which we communicate.  Word of mouth may be a great way for spreading office rumours, but its hardly a way to co-ordinate and galvanise peoples' efforts. Email may well be a wonderful mechanism for getting irritating messages in front of peoples' faces, but it is definitely not an infallible way of ensuring that our customers needs' are met, so that they can pay us with a smile.

So what was wrong with verbal or emailed communication that it didn't do the job, you might ask. Well, for a start we were forever hearing (and saying!) things like

  • "Sorry... I FORGOT" or,
  • "Sorry... I MISUNDERSTOOD" or,
  • "Sorry... I didn't realise you wanted it TODAY" or,
  • "Sorry... I didn't realise that it was MY job." and the worst of them all :
  • "Sorry I didn't GET BACK to you."

What we wanted was a way to communicate that would ensure that we would never forget. And never misunderstand. And be accountable. And transparent. What we needed was a task management and communication system with the ability to always answer - and agree on - the following questions:

  • WHAT needs to be done?
  • WHO wants it done?
  • WHO is responsible?
  • WHEN must is be done?
  • WHERE are we now and what is next?

Of course, there were a lot of other things we needed. We also wanted:

  • A way to track 'stuff', whether it was enquiries, payment authorizations, support calls, leave applications, or even bookings of our boardroom. (Task Management)
  • An engine that would help us to co-ordinate and manage the more complex things and projects, and consistently do so, by prompting the user in the right direction. (Workflow)
  • A Central Database that tracks all our clients, suppliers, leads, what they want us to do, and what we've done for them (Knowledge Base)
  • A place to intelligently store all our documents, faxes, emails, quotes etc., and to be able to access them easily and from anywhere. (Document Management Solution)
  • A shared diary that would be accessible to the whole team, from anywhere, to make sure we meet deadlines (Time Management)
  • A seamless way to tie all these things together and stay on top of them.
  • The ability to customise this system and integrate it with all our other 'legacy' systems and applications.
  • Peace and Harmony.

Interestingly enough, we set out to resolve the first issue - sorting out our communication and task management, and the others simply fell into place... (well, the last one still remains a challenge at times!).

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