When shelter staff talk to our shelter solutions team at Adōpets the most common request is to help them automate manual tasks. While no two shelters operate exactly the same way, they share the need to use staff time wisely, to provide a great experience to their community, and to operate efficiently. In this post I cover how automation can play a critical role in helping streamline your processes with fewer resources.
How Can Automation Improve Process and Shelter Outcomes?
Shelter workflows vary from one organization to another and even with configurable animal welfare software there are almost always shelter-specific requirements that can’t be met out-of-the-box, which means shelters end up doing things manually and outside of the system.
In these situations, the ideal solution is usually communicated like this: “When A happens, Adōpets should do B.” The “A” could be when an adopter puts in an application, a meet and greet is scheduled, or an application is approved. The “B” is typically some kind of manual task or communication that needs to take place like emailing the chosen adopter or foster parent, updating the other applicants, or archiving the application.
Requirements can get even trickier when you consider how they might vary by team, workflow, location, and more. So how do you get technology to take care of manual tasks so that it makes your life easier? That’s where Adōpets automation and workflows come in.
Workflows Determine Automation
Adōpets automations are tied to your specific workflow priorities, for example adoptions, foster management, visitor management, and reporting. This enables you to configure communications and tasks so that repetitive work is automated to provide a consistent high level of experience while saving your staff time. This type of automation gives you configurable “building blocks” to make your own rules within the constructs of your shelter. At a time when shelters are seeking more efficiency, Automation Workflows can execute key functions, from alerting applicants when an animal is adopted by someone else to scheduling adoption counseling.
Some of the automation possibilities include:
- Automatically hiding animals from your website when an application limit is reached
- Automated response to adoption inquiries
- Notifying interested parties when an animal has been adopted by someone else
- Auto-flagging of adoption applications based on key fit criteria
- Automated data and reporting based off what is important to your shelter
- Scheduling automation
- Foster parent communications, notifications, and approvals
- Visitor check-in and queue management
- Automated SMS/email notifications when new animals are available
- Automate sending of E-contracts and payment link to approved adopters
- Smart Kennel cards that enable paperless applications, requests to meet the animal, and more animal information
- Intelligent pet matching based on animal characteristics
- And so much more...
Automation Finally Allows Shelters to Do More With Less
Automation delivers consistent shelter processes, fewer missed actions, and better adopter/foster experience, while simultaneously freeing up shelter staff time to focus on more important things. For Adōpets shelters using these features on a daily basis, we’re thrilled to see the thousands of manual tasks being automated daily and look forward to continued suggestions on how we can improve the shelter experience.
To learn more about how Adōpets can automate and elevate your shelter processes we invite you to schedule a demo here.
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