Boost Productivity and Cut Costs with ESSA and myTrack

Investing in technology comes with high expectations. Companies often anticipate improved efficiency, a competitive edge, reduced costs, and ultimately, a stronger bottom line.  

However, these benefits aren’t guaranteed. According to a McKinsey survey, most organizations realize less than one-third of the impact they expect from their digital investments. 

To fully capitalize on technology, a company needs more than just the right tools. As a Forbes article suggests, the success of technology hinges on having a team of committed and capable employees, as well as robust systems and quality leadership.  

Company culture—an organization’s DNA—plays a critical role in shaping employee behavior, interactions, decision-making, and overall performance.

Boosting Efficiency with the ESSA Approach 

Implementing the ESSA (Eliminate, Simplify, Standardize, Automate) philosophy in the workplace enhances productivity and maximizes resource utilization, including technology. ESSA empowers companies to make more informed decisions, deliver greater business impact, and reduce costs by eliminating redundancies and waste. 

What is ESSA, and what does it stand for? 

• Eliminate focuses on removing waste—any non-value-adding activity—from processes. For example, if a team member needs to send vendor information, it’s more efficient to do it directly rather than involving another colleague unnecessarily. While additional handoffs may be needed when one person is overwhelmed and another has free time, often, these extra steps simply bog down processes. Eliminating such unnecessary actions can significantly improve efficiency. 

• Simplify means streamlining tasks. Identify the steps in a process that take too long and find ways to simplify them. This principle applies across all areas of a business. Multiple people don’t need to perform the same activity as part of their role. Consider a core process that takes 140 steps to complete—a scenario not uncommon in large organizations. Can it be reduced to 20 steps? Processes often become overly complicated, taking on a life of their own and wasting time and resources. Keeping things simple is always best. 

• Standardize focuses on ensuring that duties are performed consistently across departments, locations, customers, and vendors. In a large enterprise with 50 locations across North America, for example, each site may have its own processes—but is this beneficial? Standardization enhances productivity by eliminating inefficiencies. A systematic, consistent approach works effectively in areas ranging from equipment maintenance to vendor contracts to quality control. 

• Automate focuses on leveraging automation tools to optimize the first three principles—eliminate, simplify, and standardize workflows. For instance, implementing automated invoicing solutions reduces the burden of repetitive, manual tasks like tracking payments or correcting billing errors. This not only speeds up processes but also enhances accuracy, allowing employees to shift their focus to more strategic, value-added activities. By automating routine tasks, businesses can effectively streamline operations and minimize inefficiencies. 

By embedding the ESSA approach into company culture, organizations can reduce unwarranted, time-consuming processes, increase efficiency, and better control costs. When combined with digital technologies, ESSA helps manufacturers succeed by empowering employees to find more effective ways of completing tasks on time and within budget. The benefits extend to contractors, vendors, and customers, who gain clarity and consistency when working with the organization.  

Technology Plus ESSA Adds Value 

Although ESSA is primarily a strategic and operational approach, technology plays a significant role in enabling and supporting its implementation. It can help companies implement the ESSA approach to add value. 

Consider how process automation tools help streamline and automate tedious, manual tasks like filling out forms. Workflow automation software creates, visualizes, and monitors workflows, ensuring standardized processes are consistently followed. 

Effective communication and collaboration are vital to ESSA’s success. Project management software, team communication platforms, and document-sharing systems help coordinate these efforts and facilitate knowledge sharing across teams. 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems contribute by standardizing and automating various business processes, such as inventory management, order processing, and financial management. These systems also provide valuable insights and data for informed decision-making in the manufacturing process. 

Additionally, data analytics and business intelligence tools help identify areas that can be simplified or eliminated and measure the effectiveness of standardization and automation efforts. API connectivity and data integration platforms ensure that data flows seamlessly between different tools and systems, making them essential components of the ESSA approach.

Simplify and Standardize with myTrack  

ESSA and smart technology solutions like myTrack can help businesses drive process improvements, greater efficiency, and growth by automating payments to suppliers. myTrack eliminates time-wasting steps, simplifies tasks, and standardizes processes and automates payment workflows. This automation reduces the risk of errors and delays, ensuring timely, accurate payments while freeing up your team to focus on higher-value tasks. 

For example, consider the procurement team. They spend countless hours developing contracts and negotiating. Why? Because there are no or very few standards across agreements resulting in little consistency. 

Standardizing agreements ensures your company gets the best possible deals consistently. The myTrack platform helps align your agreements with industry best practices, promoting consistency and well-documented terms. This means better-negotiated contracts, fewer discrepancies, and enhanced overall procurement efficiency.  

myTrack empowers procurement teams to keep vendor agreements up-to-date and accurate. By automating contract management, procurement ensures agreements are maintained consistently, leading to fewer surprises, more reliable partnerships, and fewer discrepancies. With myTrack, procurement teams can easily track, update, and enforce contract terms, ensuring alignment with industry best practices and reducing administrative burden. 

However, vendor disputes and even arbitration cases may arise. These cases tend to be frustrating and time-consuming due to the administrative burden. This burden is alleviated when you have a self-auditing and reporting tool that provides the necessary data for invoice disputes and ensures compliance with certifications. 

Resolving vendor disputes efficiently can save time and resources. myTrack’s self-auditing capabilities provide comprehensive data and reporting, helping to prevent disputes before they arise. These features streamline the arbitration process, ensure compliance, and significantly reduce administrative burdens. 

Performing a rate comparison across contractors and sites is often challenging due to the discrepancies in the rates and items involved.  myTrack breaks down rates and strips away items that should not be included in them, keeping rate comparisons between contractors and sites meaningful.  With accurate rate comparisons, the procurement team can make more informed decisions. 

The robust contractor spend management platform also provides near real-time visibility into on-site and remote labor, removes timesheet and invoice errors, and curbs off-contract spending, such as invoicing for unapproved items.  

When processes are streamlined, simplified, standardized, and automated, and paired with advanced technologies like myTrack, productivity increases, and everyone benefits.  The ESSA method and myTrack foster effective communication. Plus, teams are empowered to use their time more productively and improve business outcomes even in uncertain economic times. 

Take the next step – learn more about the myTrack Platform.