THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO AVOIDING ORGANIZATIONAL ‘CHART …

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TOAVOIDING ORGANIZATIONAL

‘CHART-ACHE’

The Most Advanced Org Chart Application for Office365


Start your free trial today at teamorgchart.com 02

Small organizations are often organized around one or two key individuals, everyone knows everyone, who does what and why. As organizations grow

beyond 50 people though, a more formal structure will emerge with defined seniorities and roles.

Interestingly, this is a phenomenon replicated throughout human societies, across different cultures and spanning time-periods. Simply put, beyond 50 individuals it is very difficult for everyone within an organization to know what everyone else is doing!

This challenge is amplified within the business environment, with organizations operating across multiple locations, diverse cultures and different time zones.

It’s no surprise then that these businesses soon turned their attention to developing an administrative tool that could overcome these challenges.

A tool that captured a snapshot of their business structure, empowered managers and oriented staff.

And the result? The now ubiquitous organization chart was born, and all was good.

All organizations have a structure, whether this is formally recognised or not.

However, as the world of business has undergone a digital transformation that has seen the pace of change ratchet up several notches, the challenge of maintaining an accurate and usable organization chart soon became a difficult and time-consuming task.

This guide has been written to help businesses navigate these challenges. We’ll discuss the common pitfalls and problems encountered maintaining and distributing an organization chart before examining how a modern organization chart application can reduce your workload and increase awareness of the organizational structure within your company.

Let’s get started shall we?

A Brief Introduction to the Organization Chart



professional only and are not well suited to distributing the charts to a wider audience.

Inevitably, the HR system will also contain a lot of confidential information, for example salaries, that you do not want to accidently leak onto the organization chart. There’s nothing more nerve-wracking for a system admin that potentially exposing this kind of data to a public platform.

In addition, there are commercial reasons why this kind of solution may not make sense. This is because HR systems are often licensed “Per Seat”, meaning that giving access to the whole organization can be a costly affair.

Whether produced using a standard application like Visio or by using a HR system, that problem of sharing applies to both. Once created the chart needs to be distributed internally, often by email, or simply uploaded onto a company intranet where it will vie for attention amongst the hundreds of other documents.

A lot of hard work can go in to creating and maintaining a chart that lies unused and unforgotten, its potential as a business asset remaining untapped.

A lot of companies try to maintain accurate organization charts using tools like Microsoft Visio or Microsoft PowerPoint, effectively

creating and updating these charts by hand.

This approach is time-consuming in the extreme – the task of moving and trying to line up boxes alone can seem endless! Adding, removing and transferring or updating people’s profiles within a large organization can become a task almost impossible to keep up with and one open to human error.

And as businesses are dynamic and ever-changing these manually administered charts are, more often than not, out of date before they are even published.

The harsh reality today is that tools like Visio and PowerPoint are great applications BUT they are just not designed to manage complicated organization charts at scale.

It is also the case that many HR systems will contain an “Org Chart” module. While these can provide a functional and quicker way of producing a graphical organization chart, they are normally targeted at the HR

The Battle to Maintain an Accurate Chart

The relentless pace of modern business has increasingly made organization chart maintenance a real headache for administrators.

So, what’s the solution?

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As people join, move or leave the organization, and updates are made to the core connected administrative IT systems, your organization charts will remain accurate and relevant. Importantly, this all happens without the organization chart admin having to do a thing.

Distributing the charts within the organization is simple as well. The organization charts can be added to your intranet as a dynamic, searchable tool and staff and stakeholders can access TeamOrgChart to view, search and, if required, print the charts.

How would we sum up TeamOrgChart and what the system achieves for businesses and administrators then? Well, get ready for the puns, because we like to think…

Today, organizations don’t necessarily have to look to their HR systems for the consolidated personnel data required to build a functional

organization chart. The modern workplace is built on a digital platform and all members of the business are connected to central administrative systems – systems like Microsoft Office365, Active Directory and SharePoint.

It is these core parts of an organization’s technology stack that TeamOrgChart utilises to gather personnel data which can then be used to produce dynamic organization charts.

TeamOrgChart is capable of reading organizational chart information from a wide range of sources, including these central systems and more, which can then be presented, interpreted and deployed within system-produced charts.

Organization charts are automatically created and formatted and, once configured to suit your needs, TeamOrgChart will keep your charts accurate, up to date and well-presented with very little manual intervention required.

Time for TeamOrgChart

TeamOrgChart is the leading organization chart solution developed for Microsoft Office365 by the application experts at TeamImprover.


Start your free trial today at teamorgchart.com

TeamOrgChart helps you avoid “chart-ache” so that you don’t end up “broken-charted”!



However, if you have a complicated set of requirements, TeamImprover’s professional services team can help design and implement a

bespoke solution to your problems.

TeamOrgChart has an extensive library of useful features, and this overview does not attempt to cover them all, but below we present some of the solution highlights:

Ease of configuration

TeamOrgChart is simple to set up, configure and start using. No coding is required to configure TeamOrgChart. The design and maintenance of the charts can be easily undertaken by non-IT staff.

Supports wide range of data sources

TeamOrgChart can use a range of data sources to create the chart. These include Active Directory, SQL databases, SharePoint and Excel.

The TeamOrgChart API allows you to populate your organization chart from a range of other IT systems.

If you don’t have the skills in-house to develop an interface then TeamImprover’s professional technical services team can help.

Simple maintenance

Once configured, TeamOrgChart is generally a ‘hands-off’ system. There are no regular maintenance tasks required to keep your dynamic charts updated and running.

TeamOrgChart: A Technical Overview

TeamOrgChart has been developed as a fully featured application intended to meet the needs of modern orgs out of the box.

Vacant positions support

A recurring challenge for any organization chart administrator, with TeamOrgChart you can add vacant or temporary positions to your organization charts.

This allows a structure to be preserved even when vacancies or temporary positions alter or disrupt these during a certain time period.

Reporting & printing

Need to print part of the organization chart for a board meeting? TeamOrgChart can do that.

Need a PDF of the entire organization chart to archive for compliance reasons? TeamOrgChart can do that too!

Conditional formatting

Create “Rules” to allow you to colour code the organization chart, presenting the structure of the business, its departments and people in as easily digestible way as possible.

✓



Powerful Design Tools

The system’s powerful chart drawing algorithm automatically lays out the organization chart to make the most of the available screen-space.

This means you never have to manually adjust the layout of your chart again, a task that can often be as onerous as drawing the data

together in the first place.

TeamOrgChart also delivers some really neat functionality around position management within your chart, the system being capable of representing positions as: Assistants, Co-managers and Coordinators.

These and many more unique features designed to help you control and configure your organization chart with minimum effort, including an interactive staff directory and overview, are what makes the TeamOrgChart solution truly indispensable to any business looking to develop a fit for purpose and dynamic organization chart.

Assistants

CoordinatorsCo-managers

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At first glance, the humble organization chart seems a relatively simple documentation exercise.

A tool a business needs to keep track of its people and one that’s not too difficult to put together once you have the HR data required.

However, as we’ve discussed in this guide, the modern business environment is complex and constantly changing as structures evolve and people are added, move or leave. There is also the issue of there being multiple IT systems in place with data spread throughout them, with much of this data being of a sensitive nature.

This all adds up to a big maintenance challenge for any organization chart administrator.

Then you can add to this the fact that a good organization chart does more than list people and positions, it supports many critical functions:

✔ It helps businesses to understand their structure and their workforce which is essential if they are to achieve maximum effectiveness.

✔ It allows both new and existing people to quickly orientate themselves in large organizations.

✔ It quickly provides boards and management with the organizational information they need at their fingertips.

All this can lead to huge pressure on the organization chart administrator to deliver a genuinely useful chart, while the rest of the business is often still left thinking that it’s a pretty straightforward job. A connected and dynamic solution like TeamOrgChart makes the task just that, solving an administrative nightmare while empowering businesses and their people alike.

This is the future of the organization chart and it’s one any modern business should be getting on board with sooner rather than later.

Conquer your ‘chart-ache’ today with TeamOrgChart.

The Last Word in Organization Charts



Your Next Steps with

If you would like to find out more about TeamOrgChart please contact us at: [email protected]

Or if you are ready to start yourfree trial go to: teamorgchart.com

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THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO AVOIDING ORGANIZATIONAL ‘CHART …