23 Nov 5 Benefits of Automating Your Contractor Management System
No matter what industry you’re in, time is one of your most precious resources. There never seems to be enough of it, so it’s essential that you adopt efficient practices to make the most of your time. Enter automation. No, not robot-style automation, but online systems that improve the management of your contractor data. Here, we’ll discuss some of the key benefits of automating your contractor management system and how it can help you spend your time more effectively.
Understanding Automated Contractor Management Systems
With manual contractor management systems, someone is responsible for collecting data, recording and tracking it. and searching through spreadsheets and countless emails to find information. Though this method has worked for many companies in the past, it’s not suited for the lean operating models that tend to succeed today.
Automated contractor management systems help streamline operations by doing much of that manual work for you. They hold all the information in one place and have search functions that make it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for at the click of a button.
In essence, an automated contractor management system brings your spreadsheets and emails onlined. Therefore, eliminating time-wasting processes so you can dedicate more of your attention and efforts to important matters.
5 Benefits of Automating Your System
Automation can feel unfamiliar to some people, but it brings a lot of great benefits. Let’s look at five key advantages.
1. Save Time and Money
This is perhaps the most obvious benefit of automation – and it’s an important one. Automating your contractor management system frees up time. Employees who were doing the manual tasks can be put to work on projects that can’t be automated or done by machines. In many instances, automating your system can even save the company money by minimizing human labour costs, as employees spend their time more effectively.
2. Easily Remain in Compliance
With a manual system, it’s up to an employee to ensure all insurance and certificates are up to date. Automate your system, though, and your program will do the work for you.
Many automated contractor management systems have an integrated certificate tracking and verification component, which lets you know when certificates are out of date or need to be renewed.
Missing a contractor’s expired certificate can leave your business at risk of serious penalties. Automating this process ensures no missing or expired certificates escape your notice.
3. Scale Your Operations (Without All the Extra Work)
An automated management system allows you to scale your work without burdening an employee with more manual paperwork. Whether you’re dealing with 50 contractors or 500, the online contractor management system works the same way. And you have centralized control of all the information and documentation in a secure space.
4. Assess and Compare Contractors at the Touch of a Button
Rather than scrolling through endless lines of your contractor spreadsheet to find suitable candidates, an online system can do it for you. An automated contractor management system allows you to quickly assess contractor compliance and uses weighted scorecards for easy analysis of their capabilities.
5. Manage the Entire Contractor Life Cycle in one Place
Rather than having multiple documents and folders, an automated system allows you to keep everything in the same place – from the first point of contact to prequalification, bidder selection to post-contract performance review. It enables you to access it 24 hours a day, from anywhere that you have internet access.
Making the Transition
Making the move to an automated system isn’t always easy. It can take a significant amount of time to transfer documents and information over. There’s nearly always a learning curve that comes with it.
So if you’re planning to make the transition, you’ll definitely want to have a plan to make it as smooth as possible. Discuss the changes with your staff, create a timeline, and ensure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. That is, tackle the transition in smaller segments to ensure it doesn’t become overwhelming and frustrating.
Then, you’ll want to allow employees and contractors to get a handle on things. A great way to do this is to offer training sessions to anyone who will use the system. It gives you an opportunity to show the new features, discuss the advantages, and demonstrate how it works before employees have to use it themselves.
Conclusion
If you’re still hesitant, keep in mind that automation is the new normal across industries. With more and more companies cutting costs and improving efficiency, why stick to spreadsheets and manual processes? There’s no better time than now to upgrade your contractor management system.
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