Obit Reaches New Milestone with the Release of Version 4

Version 4 of Obit was released in October and is the culmination of many months of consultation and development. It’s easily our biggest single release of new features to date and includes several improvements to streamline workflows and aid internal communications. Continue reading below to learn about the key enhancements we have made to our funeral director app.

Launch of a helpful Funeral Wizard

With our new Funeral Wizard the process of entering a new funeral is smoother than ever before. It’s designed to accompany your initial phone call or meeting with a client so you can easily step through the most important data. This saves you time and also helps avoid any data being forgotten or entered incorrectly.

After you enter basic information like whether it’s a Burial or Cremation, which branch and staff member is handling it, you will then step through the following sections:

• Deceased Details - Name, Address, Date of Death
• Places - Place of collection, viewing, service & burial / cremation. As well as the preferred or estimated service date.
• Client - Relation to Deceased, Name, Address & Contact Details.
• Next of Kin - Relation to Deceased, Name, Address & Contact Details.
• Notes - Any other details the client may mention or important to the funeral.

The wizard works great on mobile too so if you’re receiving a call out of hours then simply open Obit and enter the details while speaking with the client and avoid having to transfer your notes later.

Streamlined and fully customisable Internal Processes

From consulting with many of you over the years we’ve seen that everyone has their own method of ensuring a funeral runs smoothly. With version 4 we now allow you to configure exactly what that looks like. Questions like:

• Do we have medical clearance to collect the body?
• Are the cremation forms completed?
• Have we published the death notice?

These are just some of the situations you can easily track using this new feature.

With these configured, every funeral will now have access to a set of dropdown controls to easily alter the state of these and add a note to explain if needed. The set of controls available will depend on what stage the funeral is at, Pre or Post-Funeral. Pre being when you are actually carrying out the funeral and Post for afterwards.

Instant notifications and alerts to suit your business

In this version we’ve also introduced notifications to ensure that these status updates are received by the correct people. Notify your arranger as soon as remains are ready for collection or alert the embalmer when remains have arrived. The possibilities are endless and can be configured on a branch by branch basis.

Your notifications are always available in a new slide-out panel. If you click on one it will bring you directly to the funeral in question and mark the notification as read. This has the added benefit of also allowing your colleagues to see you’ve read it and are abreast of the matter.

Besides the status updates we have also added some other useful notifications and will continue to add more in the future. Current ones include:

• New Funeral
• New Note added
• New Complaint Received
• Complaint Resolved
• New Condolence Message Received
  
  

Operational Dashboard

With all of these new features to track your internal processes you were probably wondering how you can get an overview of everything that’s happening? This is where the Dashboard comes in. The new Dashboard serves as a nervecentre for your company allowing you to see everything from ‘what funerals are coming up?’, ‘has the embalming been finished?’, ‘have the drivers acknowledged their instructions for tomorrow?’, it’s all clearly visible.

Also included is a quick summary of how each of your branches is doing and your overall standing. How this month is shaping up, the previous one and the running total for the year. The dashboard has been designed so you can see it on your desktop at work, check it on your mobile while you’re on the move and even display it on a 50” TV in your head office so everyone is always up to date.

Define your workflows to take advantage of the new features.

The new functionality allows the Funeral Director to review their process and reflect them by  defining rules and communication flow governing the states for any of the activities.

For example the Activity of Embalming might have the following rules:

Who is Notified may be limited to only those that need immediate updates - all other colleagues will be able to stay abreast of the situation simply by checking the dashboard display.  

To summarise, with version 4 you can:

• Manage funerals even quicker than before, Obit continues to save you work hours.
• Fully customise the app to your business and to every funeral, run Obit your way.
• Track everything easier and faster with real time alerts.
• Understand your business at a glance without getting lost in spreadsheets and calendars or making endless phone calls.
  

We believe the addition of these features really sets Obit apart from the pack, allowing a level of coordination and control never seen before in Funeral Management Software. And it’s all thanks to your invaluable feedback and suggestions, so please keep them coming.

If you are interested in becoming part of the Obit family and shaping what the next version will look like then please get in touch, we’d love to have you on board.

We offer a 30-day free trial to new customers to help you see if Obit is right for you.

Contact: https://www.obit.cloud/#contact