Work from home is here to stay and it is time that all firms adapt to the new work culture. While a lot of companies had integrated work from home to their employee weeks, the inevitability of the work from home is a recent change, owing to the pandemic. The pandemic struck the economy, faced massive challenges and the corona virus has proven to be here for a long time. With the extent of the pandemic, we were pushed to new work cultures that did not falter at the pandemic restrictions.
Work from home has proven effective in not compromising the productivity of the companies while achieving adequate safety measures for the health and well being of the employees and customers. Restructuring your business to efficient performance during and after the pandemic can be quite beneficial in increasing the profits of the company. A long-term structural change that foresees both offline and online business management is adequate to face any changes that the future holds.
A lot of management changes can go a long way in making your business take the reign and work well, in the probable contactless future. The few things that are most probably here to stay from both employee end and customer end are
1) Work from home
2) Contactless delivery
3) Paperless documentation and so on.
Now with the companies surpassing the barriers to step out of the traditional sales and marketing methods, versatility is what brings success. The more you deliver during these tough times, the stronger you hold.
We will look at the Odoo modules that can lend a hand in taking your company past the hurdles of the pandemic hit economy and workspaces.
Odoo for sales management
The post-pandemic market would require the companies to deal with clients from across places and with minimal face to face contact. Moving to an ERP software that can automate the various sales processes will help any business cope well in the future.
- Sales
The odoo sales module is designed for efficient communication. It opens the possibility of easy communication of quotations to the prospects via email and customer portals which gives access to customers. The eSignature and ePayment feature can be enabled in the configuration to allow digital transactions and authorization. We can also integrate with online platforms like eBay and Amazon by installing connectors.
- Invoicing
This module lets us convert sales orders to invoices in a single click. We can share the same with the clients. We can email the invoices to clients as Pdf attachments.
- eCommerce
We can create our own ecommerce website with the Odoo eCommerce module. With shipping and payment integrations, the eCommerce website is sure to win the market in the post-pandemic era of growing eCommerce sales.
Odoo for work from home
Work from home is the big shift in a workspace that the pandemic brought with it. Remote working has been slowly gaining momentum pre-pandemic, but pandemic pushed us all into the remote working culture. A lot of companies struggled to adapt to this change and had to compromise considerably on their productivity. While the infrastructural challenges were the most significant in third world countries, others found challenges in organization and management.
Managing and communicating with the different units of the company, now functioning away from the well-oiled machinery of office workspace is surely a challenge. Bringing together the multiple families that have now taken the shape of home offices surely would have its own concerns. The various apps provided by Odoo helps to facilitate this shift to remote workspaces. From communication to employee time management, odoo can help you manage the workspaces efficiently from anywhere.
The following Odoo Modules are essentials in working out an efficient management system in the pandemic world. These are also gonna be the needs of the future when we carry with us this new work culture to the post-pandemic world.
Communication
- Odoo Discuss
We can create multiple channels that aid communication between individuals and departments or teams. The employees can either send individual messages or communicate with the teams and groups in the company. The discuss module in Odoo will keep the employees connected and help brainstorm ideas as a team. Employees remain updated and informed with the app. This can be very important in joining the connection between the employees while working away from each other. We can cut down the alienation of the employees and keep them motivated through a good communication app.
- Odoo planning
Create and communicate the schedule with the employees using the Odoo planning module.
You can define the roles and manage the shifts in the module. The schedule can then be communicated with the employees.
HR Management
The one department that struggles with work from home is the HR department. From managing the attendance to scheduling meetings a lot happens under the HR department.
The HR modules that are necessary to prepare us for work from home are
- Odoo employees
It centralizes all employee information and helps easy information access. The employee information along with departments, managers, and organizational hierarchy can be uploaded in the employee module. This can be the one-stop for all employee-related information.
- Attendance
The attendance module tracks the attendance of the employees. It helps analyze and review the attendance of all the employees of the organization. We can enable employees to sign in with an assigned pin code. This would allow employees to sign in to work from anywhere with their system.
- Project and Timesheet
The project module can be used to create new projects and tasks. The various tasks under the project can be created and assigned to the various employees of the company. We can manage the time spent by the employee on the assigned task using the Timesheet module.
- Calendar and Appointments
The calendar module can be used to create and schedule meetings and appointments with the employees and customers. We can create a new meeting from the calendar module and add attendees.
We can set notifications to remind the employees of the scheduled meeting. This would ensure that the employees do not miss out on meeting wherever they are.
Integrating with Appointments we can schedule individual appointments with employees.
Odoo for contactless delivery
Online signature and online payment are the future of transactions as it would reduce contact. The pandemic has left us all in reluctance to make any unnecessary contact. This has particularly led to a lot of businesses to avoid contact in signing documents or in making transactions. Many delivery partners have completely withdrawn the pay on delivery option and have shifted to digital payment. With the Odoo Sales module, we can allow online signatures from the configuration.
Sales> configuration> settings> online signature
Similarly, we can enable online payment from the settings under sales configuration. We can then activate the payment acquirers.
Odoo for paperless documentation
The Documents module enables us to shift to paperless documenting. Though it cannot be considered a pandemic change, we as an environmentally conscious society are taking steps to revert the mistakes of the past. Moving to a paperless environment is one step closer to using technology to reduce the stress we impart on the environment. With the Documents module from Odoo, we can be a part of this change.
Making use of these various modules from Odoo we can ensure that our company is ready for a post-pandemic world that will function through an integrated mode of both online and offline workspaces.