When I joined Tasktop about three months ago, I quickly realized that Tasktop targets the exact same problems that I faced during my previous job as a Product Analyst.
In that role I was using various tools to ensure inbound open source and third party licensing compliance. To complete my daily tasks, I used a combination of internal and external software tools to coordinate license and agreement reviews.
In order to update the status of reviews and align data, I was required to manually copy and paste information across these tools. Because this was an error prone process, I would double check every time I entered data to make sure it was correct. This made my job a lot more difficult because of two clear reasons:
1. Lack of Automation and Integration
I often wished that these recurring processes could be automated. I eventually realized that it was difficult and time consuming to plan, validate, and execute on automating an entire process, even if it was a smaller process within the company. Furthermore, aligning the understanding of the proposed process and obtaining approval from stakeholders would also be needed. This meant setting up meetings with colleagues from different teams and the involvement of various levels of management. Because it was often challenging to find a meeting time that worked with everybody, there were delays and long periods of time between each meeting. Things moved slowly and time was spent on recalling previously discussed topics. All of this essentially meant that it was easier to “suck it up” and continue with the manual and inefficient processes instead.
2. Lack of Visibility into Statistics and Status
For management meetings, I was asked to present the volume of reviews that we were receiving and processing. Because of a lack of integration between data sources, this required digging and consolidating data into a spreadsheet. A big chunk of time was also spent on cleaning up data to take care of duplicates and inaccuracies. Although the tools I used stored information relating to the same reviews and components, they weren’t integrated. This meant that we had siloed processes where the status of a review could not be easily determined when it had moved to another team or tool. This required a lot of back and forth communication via email, which created delays in order to follow up and proceed with reviews.
Conclusion
Although I may not have directly benefited from the use of Tasktop at my previous company, the problems I faced with a lack of automation and visibility are problems that I believe many people deal with on a daily basis.
Tasktop identifies these as prevalent problems at leading organizations around the world and provides a solution that increases efficiency, reduces overhead and accelerates value delivery. As I continue to learn more about Tasktop, I get more excited about my role at the company as a Product Analyst. I am looking forward to my work here and seeing how far Tasktop goes in helping organizations become more effective at delivering software at scale and extracting more business value from IT.
Are you a Product Analyst or someone else whose job is made unnecessarily harder through time-intensive manual work? Chat us today to find out how we can improve the productivity, quality and and value of your day-to-day work and your company’s digital products and services.
