Public agencies often must manage large volumes of work governed by strict deadlines. Fortunately, GL Suite can be configured to allow both managers and staff to monitor the volume and status of work efficiently and ensure that it gets done on time. In Alaska, the Division of Business Corporations and Professional Licensing uses Workflow Dashboards to manage work efficiently.
The corporations and licensing division, which resides within the Department of Commerce Community and Economic Development, monitors 45 different professions overseen by 23 boards. The agency’s 20 investigators handle about 1,400 cases every year, says division Chief Investigator Greg Francois. Almost half of those cases – about 750 – are active at any one time.
Those numbers alone present a daunting work-management challenge. But there’s more. The division operates according to strict timeliness policies driven by legislative action. As a result, each investigation must be touched at least once every 30 days, says Francois.
Agencies that manage large volumes of complex work under strict deadlines require tools such as Workflow Dashboards that allow them to operate efficiently. Alaska maintains separate dashboards for individual investigators and for supervisors. Investigator dashboards display the work assigned to each staff member, including important dates and links to investigative material. Supervisor dashboards provide a higher-level view that includes, among other things, the number of investigations that have not been touched within 30 days.
“It’s something that helps the supervisors manage their teams,” says Francois. “That is our biggest thing: managing and making sure no cases fall through the cracks.”
Workflow Dashboards can be configured to meet an agency’s unique workflow needs. Tasks can be color-coded to indicate their proximity to important dates. Dashboards can be assigned to users, position types and security groups. Users also can configure Workflow Dashboard business rules to assign a task automatically to the next person in line when a status is updated.
Workflow Dashboards can be particularly useful to organizations that struggle to keep up with work, those that operate under tight deadlines and those in which busy staffers need to know at a glance exactly what they are supposed to do in a given day.
Editor’s note: Article updated March 20, 2023. The story originally appeared in the November 2019 edition of our monthly client newsletter.
