Chain of Custody: The Learning Hub

For many funeral directors, chain of custody is a term more commonly heard in medical, legal, or law enforcement settings. But in reality, it’s a foundational part of funeral service — even if it’s not always referred to by name. Every identification, every transfer, every belonging entrusted to your care is part of a larger documented sequence. And today, families, regulators, and state laws are placing more focus than ever on making sure these steps are tracked and recorded. Whether your funeral home handles fifteen calls a month or fifty, a strong chain of custody protects your families, your staff, and your reputation. Let’s break it down more.

Decedent logistics plays a vital role in ensuring that funeral homes and hospice care facilities can effectively manage their workflow and provide the highest level of care for their patients. With the help of innovative solutions like MorTrack, decedent logistics has become more streamlined and efficient than ever before. In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of decedent logistics and discuss how MorTrack is helping to improve processes for funeral homes and hospice care providers alike.

Over the years tracking inventory for clients, I have seen many companies rise and fall. Some from external issues, some from change management failures, and some from holding on to their problems like they are a company asset. However, the largest example of where companies first show decline is from their inventory. Regardless of the industry, things go south when inventory management gets sloppy. Usually by the time sloppy inventory management practices show up on an accounting ledger, it is no longer a problem; it’s a crisis. We have worked for Fortune 100 companies who love their inefficiencies and know that, even though they manufacture a product, it's their IT team that drives their overall ability to be efficient. This didn’t become clear to them until COVID disrupted the supply chain last year (the microchip shortage around the globe is an accurate analogy). Imagine if they would have known even 30 days earlier that they were in for a raw material shortage. Now imagine 60-120 days in advance. Invoices and purchase orders can only go so far to tell an organization "how" inventory on hand is used. One company's blind reliance on the IT department to author reports based on financials alone has left them in a place where they are spending more than ever to have employees sit idle waiting for materials. These material shortages come from the supply chain disruptions that created a gap in raw material acquisitions. Based on financial data, the manufacturer said they had enough materials to bridge the supply gap. However, that turned out to not be the case. Why would this happen? It starts small at first. One senior manufacturing floor employee had a bad experience with a product they were proud of not passing the testing conducted by a third party QA process. This widget failed because of a design flaw, but even though the design was updated to fix the shortcoming, that employee felt personally responsible for ensuring that the product never failed a QA test again. As a senior associate, they ran the line and added just 3% more material than what was called for on new builds. Seems benign right? Wrong! By allowing employees to continually "alter" manufacturing specs without oversight, even if they believe they are providing value to the customer and ensuring the company looks good, these employees' changes can snowball into major issues. This small change was then altered without knowledge of design to all of the other products that were manufactured by that plant. Over time, that senior associate was involved in cross-training other plants. And, as we all learn from Good Manufacturing practices, it is good to share "best practices." However, that increase of 3% has spread to hundreds of products and plants. This is all without design, purchasing, and the C-level departments knowing the change ever happened. To bring this back full circle, if a product is being made that used to cost a dollar and now costs $1.03 by itself, it is not an alarm. However, this company makes 500+ million units on an annual basis. Another example is smaller but just as relevant. Say you have a VAR company that purchases products, adds some customizations to that product, then sells an experience (electrician, plumber, security company, AV installer, etc.). When a product is specified and that product is replaced in the field for any reason, are there more costs involved than just the delta of the new item's cost? Sure there are. It is the same issue as above. Even small changes gone unverified or explained foster a business environment of sloppy inventory management. These small changes all add up to take from the bottom line, first in ways that are hard to detect, then they start to build as time goes on and those habits become ingrained and are oh so hard to break. "I just didn’t want to have to go back to the truck for this specific part. So I used what I had within reach." - Said by everyone, at least once. One of the complaints we hear all of the time is "I don't want to micromanage my employees, they are a good group of people." In those instances, the real issue is usually a leadership or cultural issue. Besides, it's not micromanaging if you have a process that is well defined and ensures organization success. Asking employees to be accountable for their material usage is not micromanaging either; it's being smart with your resources regardless of the scale. Inventory management systems don't have to be evasive but they do need to think differently than your accounting platform. Your inventory under the eyes of "best practices" should be tracked to a point where acceptable loss is a known acceptable value. Moral of the story, if you have high dollar inventory or your revenue per item is high, then a single line on a P&L simply isn't going to explain "how" your business is running. The whole picture of how a business is functioning is simply not viewable from a P&L or a balance sheet. It requires another tool designed to offer incoming and outgoing inventory information from a non-financial point of view. Or in other words - trust but verify. From process improvement to change management. KPI's are important. Do you have KPI's or access to easy to access data that highlights your progress? If not, Cairnstack Software can help. Hello, Thanks for your time to read this post. I have a quick question for you. Did this post resonates with any company you have worked for or with? We would love to hear your story. If YES, send us an email at: Sales@cairnstack.com If I am way off base or have been naïve, please send us an email with your comments at: failedblog@cairnstack.com So we can understand what we are missing. One of our goals it to provide the best information possible. Sometimes that starts with a tough conversation but we can handle it. We sincerely appreciate your input and perspective.

Writing studies:

For those of you who attended the ICCFA, one of the ideas that resonated with attendees and was a repeating topic from the keynote speakers was the importance of bringing the industry into the digital age. We're speeding toward a digital future, yet the general consensus from the industry is interested the concept, yet uncertain with how to adapt to this new reality. The use of digital tools is so common place it's hard to imagine starting or purchasing a business who doesn't utilize software to manage key tasks. With the increasing power of the computer and handheld devices there are so many other options to provide benefits that increase efficiency, track efforts and ensure compliance in other areas of the business. For a long time, service businesses have been plagued by a lack of mechanisms that enable management to be withdrawn without negative effects to the day-to-day operations. When systems and guidelines are aligned with the company's culture it often leads to a successful and long-lasting organization that doesn’t burn out employees or have a high turnover. Wise ownership recognizes when humans should be replaced by systems, not because people aren't important - it simply frees up people to do the work that computers simply cannot do. Systems on the other hand create consistency, which fosters a culture of measured and repeatable experience for its customers day in and day out. When considering a software platform understand that best practices are defined by what 80% of successful companies are doing on a day-to-day basis. Best-practice workflows are included into software platforms because the developers need to set rules that the software can be defined by. This is why there are so many alternatives to fix the same "problem". It is also why offerings you see on the market are difficult to compare as they all appear to start and stop at different points of custody or have a nonsensical overlap in functionality. Even the largest of software providers such as Intuit with QuickBooks or MS Dynamics, to pick on a few - They offer add-ons or features that sound great but are an afterthought in development of their main application. The feature of inventory management or case custody may "check-off" a box to say "we have that feature", but usually cannot do case management tasks justice or are unable to scale efficiently. Item and Case custody is difficult to do. It's difficult because its complicated to do it thoroughly and quickly. It takes years of refinement to exception management with at-scale workflow design to release a solid system that is usable at-scale. This is expressly why most accounting and CRM tools do not attempt to add or if they did create a module it is not kept as required module of their core application as they realize how intensive the exceptions are and what needs to happen to protect its users from themselves. Inventory or case management as a standalone application is offering you the ability to have an efficient and connected, yet individually auditable platform. Think about how you choose each application you use within your organization. Accounting, Customer management (CRM), and Point of Sale (POS) platforms. These tools have vastly different use cases that are all important and have overlap in functionality. Each system need to connect to the other. However, the users don't all need the same access on all systems. Keeping your books for instance limited to ownership and bookkeepers is extremely common. Even though the sales team may take payments or create orders but they rarely have an accounting brain to know how to code such payments. Same goes for CRM tools, and for this article how inventory is added, consumed or "how" custody is tracked. With defined processes, you can accomplish more with less. The way we see it, To grow your business you must reduce duplicate efforts that come from bad processes, manual handwritten documentation, and know where your staff is. Then use this real-time and measurable feedback to organize, and optimize your team in ways that were simply too complicated to manage in the past.

The loss of a loved one is a difficult time for families, and entrusting the care of their belongings to a funeral home or transport company is an important responsibility. Personal effects tracking is a crucial aspect of decedent transportation, as it ensures that a deceased individual's possessions are handled with care, dignity, and respect. In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of personal effects tracking and how MorTrack's software makes this process more reliable and secure.

Discover how the powerful integration of Osiris and MorTrack can revolutionize your funeral home's efficiency, enhance client service, and elevate your business.

In today's fast-paced world, funeral homes and hospice care providers need advanced tools to help them manage their decedent transportation and logistics processes. MorTrack is a comprehensive platform designed specifically for this purpose, offering a wide range of features and benefits to simplify decedent management for these organizations. In this blog post, we'll take an in-depth look at MorTrack's platform and explore how it can help funeral homes and hospice care providers enhance their operations, improve communication, and provide better support to grieving families.