The Top Business Process Automation Tools for Supply Chains in 2023

Posted on February 7, 2023 by smartboost

As we enter 2023, it’s a great time to look ahead at important automation trends for warehouses, shippers, and logistics teams. The world is changing rapidly and it’s up to these segments to keep up with cutting-edge tools and techniques. Before we dive into the best business process automation tools, let’s look at some predictions that we may see going into the New Year. These predictions will influence what types of operations automation tools business owners should focus on. 2023 Supply Chain Trends There’s no denying that we have seen major changes in the supply chain and logistics industries over the past few years. Sparked by COVID-19, we have seen labor shortages, demand surges, and changes in how we consume goods and services. With all of this change, it’s no wonder that we continue to see new trends emerge every year. Wondering what 2023 will hold for supply chain and logistics teams? Here are just a few predictions: Smart Logistics In an age where AI can write and create art, it’s no surprise that smart logistics solutions will become more popular this year, especially if we continue to see such a labor shortage. Using next-generation robotics and the internet of things (IoT), we may see a disruption in the supply chain. Smart tools and technology are only getting more advanced. A Constricting Freight Market According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices were up 9.1% in June 2022, which is the largest increase in inflation in 40 years. Because of rising inflation and interest rates, we’ve seen the freight market constrict and supply chain executives contemplate their SKU reductions. Economists predict that at least in the first part of 2023, we will continue to see this soft freight market with consumer purchasing still down. In addition, we may see companies consider if their products can be redesigned with cheaper raw materials as these costs continue to rise, as well. More Visibility Into Supply Chain Tiers Over the past year, we saw the impact of supply chain disruptions across countless industries, from new and used cars to lumbar. There are many reasons for these disruptions. One notable reason is that very few companies (2%) have visibility into their suppliers in the third tier of their supply chain and beyond, according to a survey from McKinsey. This means that when something happens, such as the nuclear disaster we saw at Fukushima, companies are left floundering because they have no control over these supply chain shortages. This lack of visibility has prompted many companies to revisit their data and identify these upstream tiers of suppliers. Using things like artificial intelligence, this previously manual process can now be automated and we will see that in 2023 and beyond. ESG Compliance Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices have continued to rise in the past few years and with the Germany Supply Chain Due DIligence Act coming into effect in January 2023, we will see that ESG becomes an even higher priority. This act will require businesses to monitor their entire supply chains for human rights violations and environmental degradation. This isn’t the first ESG compliance we’ve seen, but because this new act is so encompassing, it will impact many businesses and it holds significant penalties if violated. Now that we understand some of the biggest trends coming to the supply chain industry in 2023, let’s look at how operation automation tools can help businesses stay on top of these, and many other, trends. The Best Business Process Automation Tools for 2023 Automation is the key to growth in 2023 and beyond. With the proper business process automation tools, you can do more with less and focus on scaling your business in an ever-changing world. Here are some of the best business process automation tools for businesses in 2023: Digital Signatures Digital signatures can help you streamline your business operations because you can capture a digital signature and use it on all your forms and outputs. With TrinitySignature, you can use your digital signature directly in the Quickbase app, making signing forms and documents a breeze. With the amount of data coming through your business, streamlining things like signatures saves you time. API Integrations API integrations make it possible to sync all your important tools together in one place to save you time, money, and efficiency. In today’s world of interconnected data, these syncs are not just important, they’re required. With TrinitySync, you can sync Quickbase to all your other software platforms and create a system that works for you. With the tool, you can sync things like your: Mobile Apps You may not initially think of mobile apps as business process automation tools, but they can dramatically improve a team’s productivity through custom and focused workflow processes. Our app, TrinityMobile, is completely integrated with Quickbase and in it, you can design custom workflows, do tasks in Quickbase like scan barcodes and upload photos on the go, and boost your overall productivity right from your smartphone. Plus, the app is optimized with true mobile workflows and is easy to use. Advanced Mapping Capabilities Unlock a myriad of mapping functionality with a Quickbase geocode app like TrinityMaps. With our advanced mapping capabilities, you can calculate distances, route your Quickbase orders, create optimized routes and schedules, get data overlays, and much more. As mentioned earlier, data is everything in 2023 and advanced mapping is an operations automation tool businesses need. Barcode Scanning What if there was a way that you could optimize your asset and inventory management with one simple operations automation tool? With TrinityScan, there is! We offer a Quickbase barcode scanning system with extensive capabilities, including being able to work with barcodes and RFID in multiple processes and applications. Managing your assets and inventory has never been so simple. Digital Scheduling Tools Lastly, digital scheduling is a business process automation tool that nearly every company can benefit from. Gone are the days of endless email chains trying to schedule a meeting. With a digital […]

The Era of Operational Agility in 2024

Posted on January 30, 2023 by smartboost

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive marketplace, operational agility has become the linchpin of success for thriving companies. Those who find themselves lagging often suffer from a static business model and an inflexible internal structure, rendering them unable to navigate the ever-changing economic landscapes and uncertain market conditions. In the last few years, many challenges have appeared. A global pandemic engulfed the world, leading to unprecedented inflation rates. International relations worsened, and supply chain disruptions significantly impeded the ability of retail outlets to procure products from distant locations. This has changed the way businesses work a lot. These upheavals have made it clear: the future belongs to organizations that can swiftly adapt and transform. Hence, understanding the mechanisms of achieving operational agility is critical for businesses aiming to stay ahead in the race. This article delves into operational agility, its benefits, and how it differs from business agility. We explore Dr. John Kotter’s Dual Operating Systems, agile leadership methods, and the role of emerging software in enabling agile processes and technology, ensuring businesses are well-equipped to make informed decisions and adapt to the dynamic business environments of 2024. What is Operational Agility? Operational agility is the capability of an organization to rapidly adapt and evolve in response to changing circumstances, customer demands, and market pressures. This agility encompasses quick reactions to technological advancements, shifts in customer expectations, and external market factors, promoting resilience against disruptions. Achieving operational agility allows companies to remain financially robust, especially in challenging economic conditions, by outsmarting competitors and efficiently handling operational disruptions across industries. Operational Agility in 2024: Trends and Insights The conversation around operational agility, which gained momentum during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, has only intensified. With the emergence of new challenges such as higher inflation rates, supply chain complexities, and the need for digital transformation, operational agility has never been more crucial. Companies need to act fast when things change, showing it’s important to be ready and quick to keep growing and doing well. This agility enables companies to allocate resources efficiently, enhance decision-making processes, and deliver superior customer experiences. Benefits of Operational Agility Operational agility offers myriad benefits, key among them: Operational Agility vs. Business Agility While often used as if they mean the same thing, operational agility, and business agility are distinct concepts. Business agility is broader, encompassing adopting values, behaviors, and capabilities that make businesses and individuals more adaptive, creative, and resilient. Operational agility, on the other hand, is about strategically deploying technology and processes to seize new opportunities and enable operational flexibility. Achieving Both Business and Operational Agility Achieving high levels of business and operational agility is possible and requires a unified strategy and concerted effort across all teams. Leaders play a crucial role in guiding these changes, ensuring the organization is ready for agile operations, and implementing strategies that encompass processes, technology, and people. Emerging Software and Operational Agility in 2024 Emerging software, especially no-code platforms, and AI solutions are pivotal in enabling organizations to achieve operational agility. These technologies allow businesses to automate workflows, facilitate collaboration, and make informed decisions swiftly, ensuring they can adapt to changes effectively. Quickbase, for instance, offers a blend of efficiency, flexibility, and value, empowering companies to manage their data and operations with agility. As a solution provider, Trinity tailors Quickbase applications to meet the unique needs of businesses, streamlining operations and enhancing security. Preparing for 2024: The Agile Future As we venture into 2024, businesses aiming for growth must prioritize operational agility. Developing a cohesive agile strategy and investing in the right technology suite are essential steps in this journey. Trinity stands ready to assist organizations in leveraging Quickbase for their software solutions. This will make it easier to transition to agile operations that respond quickly to market changes, allocate resources wisely, and enhance customer experiences. In the rapidly evolving business landscape of 2024, operational agility is not just a competitive advantage but a necessity. By embracing this agile culture, companies can navigate the complexities of modern business environments, meet customer demands with precision, and drive forward with confidence and innovation. Operational agility requires more than just a willingness to adapt; it demands a strategic commitment to transforming processes and technology, fostering an environment where informed decisions are the main goal. […]

Why Your Company Needs an Appointment Scheduling Tool

Posted on August 23, 2021 by smartboost

It can be hard to keep up with endless emails and a hectic meeting schedule in our busy business world. We’ve all been there: struggling to fit a client or coworker in for a meeting when you both have full calendars. It’s funny how sometimes trying to schedule one quick meeting can turn into ten emails sent back and forth over two days. Slightly frustrating, no? This is why we recommend making it easy with an appointment scheduling tool. These make it easy for customers to schedule time on your calendar and vice-versa. Appointment schedulers are organization tools that allow clients to book, reschedule, and cancel appointments on your calendar. It’s much better to focus on making meetings happen as opposed to scheduling them. During our time in business, we’ve developed Quickbase solutions such as TrinityAppointment, our appointment scheduling tool that makes self-scheduling automatic and easy. We designed it with a custom interface that integrates with your Quickbase application to allow for open appointments and input from your customers. Our app prevents any double booking and gives you the freedom to block off times that you’re not available. For instance, if a team member needs to take a vacation, they can block days or specific periods. This is so people can’t book times that you or employees are unavailable. TrinityAppointment syncs up with your team calendars to ensure that your business appointments will correspond across all departments within your organization. Making Appointment Scheduling Easy Take a look at the screengrabs below: it shows how simple TrinityAppointment’s appointment scheduling interface is to use. And that’s how it should be! You can specify the importance and type of project while selecting a timeslot. Any appointment scheduling tool should not be more complicated than this. Select an image to review the process steps: TrinityAppointment allows you to schedule meetings in an efficient manner: which means no more back-and-forth! Customers can select times with you based on your availability. Straightforward and no-nonsense so that you can focus on business. While the above is appointment-centric, clients have already enabled the same customer self-scheduling of home visits such as estimates or installation work. One customer enabled the ability for clients to self-schedule income tax support and was able to increase the efficiency of the process by ten times. What’s most interesting about the TrinityAppointment Quickbase application? It’s customizable features. Let’s check them out: Custom Scheduling: Set up your workflows and customized pre-qualifying questions. For example, you can specify the importance, subject, and location while scheduling the message. Simple Interface: Your stakeholders can easily select from available appointments on a calendar. They will see when you already have meetings and when you are open. Data Capture: You have the option to collect customer information during the scheduling process. It’s solid when you need specific information for potential clients and leads. Straightforward Appointment Setting: View and manage appointments in your Quickbase app. You can access this on computer and mobile while connecting to your other Quickbase applications. Flexibility: You can enable multi-location scheduling for your appointment scheduling tool so other members of your team, clients, or external stakeholders can collaborate. Appointment scheduling is a vital asset for any type of business. We’ve noted that industries across the map are benefiting from the TrinityAppointment app. Quickbase tools work well for SaaS companies, contractors, medical organizations, non-profits, call centers, shipping, retail, office spaces, education, and beyond. Any industry can benefit from opening their schedule only to the days and times that work for them. When their connection selects a meeting slot: the meeting is confirmed for both parties. Any meeting scheduled will never experience calendar conflicts. Also, meeting reminders are sent automatically with the option for easy rescheduling if needed. All of this means that scheduling hassles are instantly eliminated. Meeting cancellations also decrease because people can quickly reschedule with the appointment scheduling tool. Custom Designed Applications to Make Business Easy Trinity uses Quickbase to design software solutions to provide practical solutions to everyday business process problems. Our Quickbase application development process is perfect for businesses who want the precise specifications of a custom app with the compatibility of an off-the-shelf solution. As you may know, Quickbase is a low-code platform that offers real-time insights and automation across applications. This means customizable and responsive in-house business applications that meet your specific workplace needs. You can include a range of features from workflow automation, to digital transformation, to data tracking and beyond. The Quickbase customizable application platform is ideal for business use cases such as personalized charts and reports, workflow and process automation, appointment scheduling tools, and forms. We have a streamlined Quickbase app development process. We define requirements while understanding your business processes to create a perfect bespoke product. Is there a better way to use cloud applications? At Trinity, we take the time to understand your existing workflows and business processes for ongoing support around app development and potential improvements moving forward. Quickbase is perfect for this without requiring traditional professional application development resources. We help our customers to accelerate business transformation via building, deploying, and customizing cutting-edge cloud applications. We do this without requiring traditional professional application development resources. Contact Trinity for Appointment Scheduling Solutions Do you want to try out the perfect appointment scheduling tool or create the ideal customized business applications? We’re here to help you make your company more efficient than ever. Learn more about TrinityAppointment, and feel free to inquire about how we can make the perfect appointment scheduling tool for your organization. It’s a pleasure to help clients and companies across the world boost their business with newfound efficiency! […]

How to Use BPI in Customer Service Strategies

Posted on May 7, 2021 by smartboost

Your organization’s customer experience strategy is inextricably linked to business process improvement (BPI). Customers mean success, after all, and creating opportunities for retention is essential for an organization’s long-term growth. A focus on creating ways for BPI and customer service to link more organically is just smart business sense. We’ll explain why BPI is vital to the customer experience and how to use it with CRM in mind. What is Business Process Improvement (BPI)? So what is BPI? BPI is meant to encourage continuous improvement. For example, improving functions at a company to make products, customer service, and business operations better. That can often mean identifying inefficiencies, creating ways for operations to run more smoothly, and improving company workflow. Customer-focused BPI can mean identifying barriers that may hamper company growth down the line—also, strategizing for meaningful customer interactions. How to Embrace Customer-Focused BPI There’s a lot a business has to consider when making operational changes. Before making a change, consider the impact on: Compliance with local regulations. The company’s overall goals. Whether changes even make sense in an organization. To enhance customer experience strategies using BPI, start with creating a customer-focused culture. A Customized Approach Create a customer relationship management strategy that anticipates their needs, meets customer expectations and recognizes the value in the customer experience. Companies can use BPI in customer service to create data-based strategies and follow any changes on the customer experience side. Your strategy will require some flexibility and a willingness to act when improvements need to be made. Stay Flexible Over the last year, businesses that focused on innovative solutions were able to thrive. Their success emphasizes why companies need to adapt to challenges within the market landscape quickly. Companies should undoubtedly have stated goals in mind when pursuing any business process improvements. Management should evaluate actions that move an organization away from those goals. Lastly, a company’s customer experience strategy should always be focused on data-based decisions and improvements. Monitor Incoming Data So you’ve made changes based on information available at the time, but where is the company now? Where are customer preferences today? It’s important to monitor and adjust for additional BPI as needed. After all, customer needs change, and a company’s strategies should change alongside those needs to remain competitive. Companies should also measure their return on investment no matter how small the change. Did widespread changes make sense, creating a more profitable environment at an organization? Ideally, improvements on the customer service end would mean additional profits for a company. It’s essential to monitor any investments, however, even the small ones, to ensure they remain a boost to an organization. Innovation Within Optimization Companies that innovate are future-thinking, with long-term goals behind any decisions made on the BPI side. A focus on innovation, however, requires a high degree of operational agility. Technologies are ever-changing, and choosing the paths forward that is right for a company can be challenging. With a focus on the customer service side, innovation and the adoption of available tools and technologies can become more manageable. Innovative tools that make your business more efficient can also create pathways for more meaningful interaction with the customer base. That can be as simple as enhancing a customer’s interactions with a company by improving the mobile customer experience. Choose Tools That Make Sense Companies should use existing technologies to define workflows better and make remote work easier. Keep teams in sync to avoid miscommunication down the line that could negatively affect the customer experience. The Quickbase platform is a solution that streamlines business processes that are unique to your organization. Communication is improved along the way, a key component of strong customer engagement. Explore BPI with Trinity At Trinity, our focus always begins with BPI. Only with an exceptional understanding of our client’s unique needs and long-term business process goals can robust, customized solutions be developed. With this approach, Trinity can provide your business with a solution that enables growth within your organization and increased customer satisfaction. […]

Trinity Is Honored as a Quickbase Elite Partner for the 4th Year in a Row

Posted on March 26, 2021 by smartboost

For the fourth year in a row, Trinity Integrated Solutions is honored by the opportunity to be a Quickbase Elite Partner! This prestigious award is only offered to the top-performing Quickbase Partners. Once again, Trinity continues to be committed to providing only the highest quality solutions for its customers. FRISCO, Texas (PRWEB) March 10, 2021 – For the fourth year in a row, Trinity Integrated Solutions has been granted the honor of being named a Quickbase Elite Partner. Quickbase is an application development platform designed to address the challenges companies encounter in their business process. Development with Quickbase requires no code, making it more accessible to businesses with various backgrounds. Qualifying as a Quickbase Solution Provider is not easy. A business must excel in app development while maintaining an outstanding customer service rating. For four years, Quickbase has chosen only five of its providers to be named an Elite Partner. They recognize providers with the highest quality reviews, ratings, and expertise while maintaining a Certified Expert Quickbase Builder qualification. An app development business must also have a proven strategic solution delivery methodology. Over the past four years, Trinity has been thoroughly committed to producing the highest quality solutions for its customers. In fact, over 95% of its customers return to work with Trinity. There are many stories of customers finding success after implementing Trinity’s custom solutions. Their dedication to every client has led to a stellar rating and, once again, the honor of this prestigious award. Trinity’s Managing Partners, Scott Burday and Charles Guilbert had this to say about becoming an Elite Partner with Quickbase for the fourth year in a row: “Becoming an Elite Partner with Quickbase is an achievement that we attribute to the amazing work that the Trinity team does for our clients every day. We aim to achieve excellence in all phases of a client’s engagement. That shows in the solutions that Trinity delivers, the great response from our clients, and, ultimately, becoming a Quickbase Elite Partner every year since it has been awarded.” Trinity creates exceptional solutions focused on business process improvement, tailored to each client’s individual needs. Trinity knows flexibility and scalability are vital when developing solutions for ever-evolving businesses. For over 23 years, Trinity has worked with clients to improve their efficiency, increase service levels, and upgrade their output quality. […]