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Historically, he says, each would receive their email, followed by more emails to chase those who don’t respond, and eventually, they would manually collate the results and put them into a report.

“With HighQ, we can now send the questionnaires automatically, as well as tailor them so people only receive the questions relevant to them,” says Hayes. “There are then automatic reminders and the ability to filter reports and highlight who hasn’t responded or the exceptions reported. We can also automatically create the quarterly report for the compliance team.”

On the other side of the business – infrastructure – a similar process automatically asks parties environmental and social governance questions about the investment project and applies a scoring methodology to the responses.

The result: Improved process, monitoring and compliance, plus time savings

The efficiency gain should be clear, but it’s also measurable. “There were two people in the business who had to pull all these things together before. One has now been completely released to get on with other things,” says Hayes.

With use cases like this already well-proven, the business is now in the process of bringing on some other candidates for improvement, for example, a portal for the annual audit, which also involves InfraRed’s external auditor and accountants.

Hayes explains: “We can track each audit entity – again without email – plus, use the portal to upload draft accounts for review and approval. An audit issue log also alerts people to any queries and answers in a single place.

“Data is clear, current and can be cut into different views for insight into even more possible improvements. The benefit, while less measurable, ought to be faster responses to queries and a smoother process for all concerned,” he says. “There has been a clear benefit in using workflow to standardize approaches and force governance across multiple parties, minimizing misinterpretation errors and so on.”

In other examples, workflows can be adapted for another business area or broken down into smaller ones. For example, the team has digitized the due diligence sign-off for buying a new asset. “That was quite simple to bring into HighQ, but we can now separate out stages such as incorporating all the companies or conducting a building survey,” he says. “We won’t create workflow for the sake of it, but there are many steps where it would be useful to track their completion.”

The future: Flexibility to expand into other business areas

“HighQ won’t replace all emails, but it takes some things off that probably shouldn’t be on in the first place,” says Hayes. And although it’s early in their HighQ journey, it could also mean change is in store for both the business intranet and some investor communications in the future.

Indeed, a general benefit HighQ presented as a provider was the fact the company can choose to take it in any new directions – such as project or task management – at its own pace. “A difference compared to some products is that we can develop it ourselves and become self-sufficient with workflows quite quickly. We didn’t want to be reliant on consultants to build out more solutions in future,” says Hayes.

“It’s also particularly good that it’s cloud-based — accessible to anyone in all the countries we’re expanding in – and clearly secure, as lawyers have been using it for years!”

It should even get business functions collaborating more about exactly what they could do with HighQ. “We’re talking to HR, compliance, the company secretary – there are processes to improve in all these business areas,” says Hayes. “And in the years to come, we’ll really try to build it out across the business.”