We developed an Automated Process that should ensure a situation is always handled the same way and have an escalation piece built in. An example would be where a service engineer is required to contact a customer within say one hour of the call being placed. A company might decide that if that customer is not shown as contacted after 90 minutes then the engineer gets an email and a text message reminder from dispatch. After 2 hours they get an email from the service manager, after 3 hours they get an email from the CEO and after 4 hours the service manager gets an email from the CEO saying call this engineer and tell me what's going on.

An automated process requires that information be entered accurately into a database so our alerts fall into two categories, those that provide the information and those needed to ensure accurate data. An example would be if you want your sales manager to get an email with a list of deals due to close this week then salespeople need an email when the close by date on a prospect has expired.