Action Card believes in the power of a checklist. We’ve created a number of articles discussing why we think a well-thought out, simple checklist can be a powerful tool for your business. Keeping track of daily operations with a checklist improves the effectiveness of your team and the efficiency of business.

The numbers don’t lie and studies show that checklists work. Read more about our respect for a good checklist in our previous post, “The Power of Checklists”. In this post, we are discussing the next step: follow-up tasks.

Task Management is Not a One-Time Thing

It’s essential, and continuous. Task management helps prioritize tasks so they’re completed at the right time, assign them to employees, and allows senior management to know critical tasks have been taken care of.

A good task management strategy creates an efficient operation, but there’s a common gap leaders fall into. Follow-up.

Sure, follow-up does happen but it usually happens at the wrong time. Too much time has passed between inspections or initial completion wasn’t communicated properly. A gap between a completed tasks and follow-up tasks creates other problems: Loss or inefficient use of the manager’s time; critical issues going unnoticed; and longer completion times of that task in the future.

Forget the (Stained & Crumpled) Paper Trail. There is a Better Way

Daily meetings, email chains, clipboards of unused lists are outdated and inefficient methods of tracking daily operations.

Some managers may lay the responsibility at the employee’s feet. An employee should notice when there’s a problem. There’s a leak from a drink machine, a product table has a wobbly leg, the restroom light bulb has burned out. Where do they report these issues? Does a note on your paper list stuck behind the register or bottom of a drawer really tell you what needs to be resolved? No. The problem remains and the time it takes to find the problem again, and fix it, increases.

But there is a better way. Mobile solutions create opportunities for owners, managers and leadership to be informed in real-time with automated follow-up tasks. This means that the time for an issue to be resolved has gone from hours or days, to just minutes.

Through the Action Card app leadership conducting site audits and floor visits can look back and see checklist and task completions over time by region, individual stores and even team members.

For example, during a monthly floor audit the district manager notices that the latch on a register is broken, a clear security issue. She then reviews the last week maintenance checklist and sees that the question “Are all POS machines in working order?” is unmarked. With a mobile solution, she can immediately create an alert for that issue, and assign a follow-up task directly to the store manager. With just a few clicks, she has made sure the problem has been noted and eliminated the chance of the issue going unnoticed. Better yet, she now understands a little bit more about what items the store’s team needs to focus on.

The Action Card App is more than just a note taking system. Core features include completely customizable online form builders, online and offline data collection, data visualization, photos and attachments, geolocation and timestamps, permission based access and much more.

Moving to a mobile solution and automating follow-up tasks, helps your leadership follow trends and issues effectively, and your store operations move quickly, saving money and time. We’d love to show you the power your follow-ups have with the Action Card app. Schedule a demo with us today and learn how easy it is to hold your team accountable and make your business as efficient as possible.