Workflow? No, Work Slow

When I was a new IT manager, I was being shown around the finance department, which had a reputation for being slow.

I saw that they would receive an email, print it out, then stamp it with a “Received on [date]” stamp, scan it back in, then upload it to the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

Me: “I say this with as much seriousness as I can muster, but this is a f****** ridiculous system.

Finance Manager: “Meh, we like it.”

They must have indeed liked it, as it kept them busy during the three weeks of the month that it wasn’t month-end.

Then COVID lockdowns happened, and I finally got some time and automated the email attaching into CRM with a timestamp from when it was received by our mail server. The head office also automated a bunch more things that used to be done manually while the department was on furlough.

After furlough, they realised they didn’t need six people, and four of them never came back.

I bumped into one of them about three months later in a grocery store. He got enough out of them to be able to take early retirement, as did his other colleagues, so they were all fairly happy.