South African group Unibase Solutions has developed a business workflow platform aimed at allowing organisations in certain industry sectors to sidestep the skills dearth in the country, says Unibase director Lance Schaffer.
While skilled labour is often hard to come by in SA, Schaffer maintains that expensive and time-consuming training is not the only answer for companies, as the workflow solution can be used to create more productive employees in a shorter time.
It also allows for companies to employ lower-calibre staff, who are not necessarily specialised in a field, he adds.
"In specialist industries, experience is difficult to find. However, business systems can be created with rigid workflows so that micro-management becomes unnecessary. In this way, parameters and flags for exceptions can enforce better performance."
The workflow solution, which can be wrapped around an existing business model, allows employees to be trained around the business process and not the software, says Schaffer. With the rigid workflow solution, it becomes more important for people to understand their job function rather than be highly specialised in their field, he adds.
The key to better performance, even where skills may be lacking, is controlling exceptions, he says.
"Software engineering should be ongoing and dynamic. The solutions provider should follow up regularly and provide sufficient support to help management get better business results. In other words, the right software can get a business to perform better than the collective skills of its employees might suggest."
The solution is ideally suited to sectors like the optometric industry, which has recently seen a boom, but is faced with a shortage of front-line staff, Schaffer explains. The motor spares industry is another example of a sector where the solution has seen successful implementation, he says.
"Not many young people are currently getting into the motor spares industry and with a spares catalogue system, an employee can tell exactly what parts are required for a certain vehicle, without knowing anything about cars," Schaffer states.
In a networked system, he says, one highly skilled employee could control and be responsible for more than just their branch.
"A highly skilled debtor`s clerk could perform the same function for a number of sites in real-time, online, which would cut down radically on overheads."
Schaffer notes that networked systems are ideally poised as a catalyst for the imminent boom in franchising in SA.
"With an online system, skills can be utilised across the country in real-time. This is a tremendous benefit for franchisees who are looking to expand and wish to maintain their level of success. With networked systems in place, they can be guaranteed that everything that worked so well in their first branch will work just as efficiently anywhere else."
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