As you brainstorm and design your business operations, you’re probably thinking about how to address any problems that might arise along the way. There are issues you can anticipate — for example, if you work at a post office, some mail might inevitably get misplaced or lost.
But what about problems that don’t readily reveal themselves until they happen? You need a way to track all of your problems, big and small, in an organized fashion. That’s why you need incident reporting software.
With incident reporting software, you can establish a centralized location for cataloging your issues and tracking how far along you are in solving them.
Here’s what you need to know about incident reporting software and how it can serve as your problem-solving safety net.
Build a database
One of the main benefits of tracking and categorizing your bugs and issues as they arise is that you can take steps to ensure they won’t happen again. By separating each problem, getting specific about what went wrong, and properly filing this information away with incident reporting software, you can establish a clear database to refer back to.
Plus, you can start to identify different types of issues and take note of their frequency and how long it takes to solve them. If you find that problems happen within a specific part of your business or an individual team, you can focus on correcting this instead of making educated guesses as to where the problem lies.
Define your operations in total
Auditing your business processes means assessing the good and bad, and being honest about both. The only way to do this is to keep proper and detailed records.
Understanding your business’s faults is a healthy exercise — when you present and market yourself to clients, you’ll have a more refined language to describe what you do well and how you work internally. Any business can offer a great product, but what separates the good ones from the great ones is how they handle adversity and form a plan to deal with that adversity.
With incident reporting software, you can establish a digital paper trail.
Admit what you don’t know
Incident reporting software gives you a lot of control. There aren’t regimented guidelines to adhere to — you can describe the problems you encounter, which are unique to you. No two issues, even if they occur in the same area of your business, are going to be entirely the same.
Describing these nuances and paying attention to detail might seem tedious in the moment, but you’ll be thankful you did it when a similar problem arises in the future.
What’s more, when you clearly define each of your issues, these records can serve as a written diary of the places you might have gone wrong in planning a project or workflow. Humility is a good trait to have, and if you commit yourself to use incident reporting software, there won’t be any gray areas when it comes to how your business can improve.
Track your issues with Jotform
As you notice specific problems, you’re going to need trusty incident reporting software to catalog them all. Jotform has you covered. With its different incident reporting templates, you can break down a specific problem and attach a form to summarize it. These forms are fully customizable, and you can add widgets to help include all the information you want on your form.
If you’re a business on the go, Jotform’s Mobile Forms app allows you to collect data and file reports without an internet connection. Even better, you can get specific, laying out information like the time of the incident, the context, the location, and other important details. Jotform’s mobile forms also give you the capability to assign an issue to another team member so you can be sure the problem is resolved.
Create detailed reports
In addition to hosting templates specifically designed for incident reporting, Jotform’s Report Builder gives you the option to expand your reporting capabilities. You can track your issues in real time once they’re filed, generate visual reports and graphs as each of your filled incident report forms comes in, and share your data with anyone in your organization.
The ability to shape and shift your incident reporting data in different ways is invaluable. It can help unlock different perspectives and give you a 360-degree view of where your business is lacking and what you can do to fix it.
Cleaning up the mess
Using incident reporting software is a way to keep your business honest. Maintaining this honesty and admitting where you need to improve is a worthwhile exercise — in the same way you’re innovating your business, you should also be open to tinkering with and adjusting your processes.
Clearly defining these problems and making sure everyone in your organization understands their role in causing and eventually fixing them can only make your company stronger. That way, the next time you encounter a problem, you’ll have a shorthand for attacking the problem head-on and launching right into action.
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