How to spot broken handovers
- Repeat checks: two people independently verify the same information before the next step.
- Missed deadlines or last-minute firefighting when a task moves between teams.
- Spreadsheets resurfacing: manual lists or ad‑hoc sheets appear to track things that systems should do.
- Customers repeating the same details to different people, or surprises on invoices/appointments.
The three-step method you can run in a morning
- Step 1 — Capture critical journeys and touchpoints with a one‑page handover map. Pick 1–3 journeys (eg customer onboarding, job scheduling, invoicing). For each journey list the micro-steps where work moves between people or tools, the system used at that touchpoint, and the single key field that must travel with the task (eg customer ID, job reference, agreed price).
- Step 2 — Assign clear owners, simple rules and SLAs for each handoff. Use a RACI-lite approach: one owner for the handover, one doer, and one fallback contact. Add a short rule ("do not pass until X field is complete") and a lightweight SLA ("acknowledge within 4 hours, complete within 24 hours"). Keep SLAs measurable and realistic for a small team.
- Step 3 — Pick two low‑effort fixes and test for a week. Good examples: a naming convention for job folders, one canonical field in the CRM to use everywhere, or a small integration that pushes a status update between two apps. Run the fixes for seven days, track whether checks/chasing falls, and adjust.
Tiny template to copy, and when to clean data or automate
- Handover map template (copy into a single sheet or one A4): Journey name | Step number | From team → To team | Touchpoint/system | Key field (single source) | Owner | Rule | SLA
Start with the template filled for one journey and keep it to a single page. If you find lots of missing or inconsistent values in the key field, stop and do a short data cleanup (dedupe, standardise formats, backfill required fields) before adding rules or automations.
If ownership is unclear, fix owners and rules first — buying another tool won’t help when people don’t know who is responsible. If the same manual action repeats across systems and the data underneath is already consistent, try a lightweight automation; if the data is messy, clean it first.
If you’d like a practical pair of hands to run the first workshop or the week‑long test, Optira can help.