Services, services, services.

We seem to be in a world of managed services.

Everyone’s outsourcing nowadays. And when they’re not outsourcing, they’re insourcing in an outsourced way.

It’s all very confusing.

That’s why we’ve decided to break down the core document which tends to regulate and organize this kind of service provision: the humble service-level agreement (SLA).

Service-level agreements, amongst other things, bolster trust in and between organizations – making it clear what needs to be done, to what standard, and when.

Trust is a hugely important thing in business. Accenture’s Competitive Agility Index found:

following a drop in trust, a company’s index score drops 2 points on average, negatively impacting revenue growth by 6% and EBITDA by 10% on average.

One of the main ways to keep trust alive in your business is to know what is expected of people and to hold them to it. Enforce reliability.

SLAs are one mechanism to help you in that battle.

In this Process Street article we’ll answer the following questions:

• Free SLM and SLA templates
• What is a service-level agreement (SLA)?
• Why do you need a service-level agreement?
• What are the different types of SLA?
• What is in a service-level agreement?
• What kinds of companies use an SLA?
• What are some SLA examples?
• What are the alternatives to SLAs?
• How you can use SLAs with Process Street

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Automation has been one of the key emerging trends of the late 2010s, and will likely be a defining characteristic of the 2020s.

It’s something we’ve covered extensively at Process Street, and something we’ve taken huge advantage of internally as well.

The move from companies only providing enterprise-level API access to their software over to commercially available Internet of Things style mass integration has been a dramatic shift in the marketplace. This has opened up huge potential for individuals and small businesses; you can integrate with thousands of services in just a few clicks.

Now, so many services, SaaS products in particular, provide a means to integrate with other platforms that there are very little restrictions on what you can and cannot automate.

Tools like Zapier, Flow, and IFTTT have made these integrations so easy that anyone can set them up.

But they’re not the only ones – new connectors and middlemen are cropping up all the time, helping people without tech skills connect with APIs or Webhooks of their choosing. The No-Code Movement has gone mainstream and it now has a full suite of tools at its disposal.

Even in 2015, according to Chui, Manyika, and Miremadi writing in the Harvard Business Review, not only could a marketing executive be automating activities which account for between 10-15% of their current time using existing technology, but for 60% of existing US jobs, 30% of their time could be reduced by automation.

For those interested in that kind of thing, you should check out Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation by McKinsey. An illuminating text which is already somewhat out of date!

Here at Process Street, we integrate with thousands of other apps and platforms via our direct, agentic integration framework, we have large customers making use of our API, and we’ve now added webhooks to our array of automation options to try to cover the rest of the use cases our customers tell us about.

In this article, we’ll look at:

• What are webhooks?
• What do people use webhooks for?
• What is the difference between webhooks and APIs?
• How do I use webhooks?
• How do Process Street webhooks work?

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If you’re manufacturing food, drinks, or medicine, you know you have a sea of regulations and standards which you need to hit and adhere to.

You knew that starting out.

But it does leave you with two questions:

1. What are the regulations and standards that I should adhere to?
2. How do I get my organization to run in an effective manner so that we consistently adhere?

Lots of companies are very good at asking the first question, but the second sometimes gets overlooked.

This is how we end up with malpractice and lawsuits and all kinds of bad things.

You don’t just have to know what the standards are, or intend to reach those standards, but you have to consistently hit those standards in order to be the successful safe business you want to be.

That’s why in this Process Street article we’ll be looking at:

• What is CGMP? Current Good Manufacturing Practices explained
• What are the current Good Manufacturing Practices?
• What is a Quality Management System and how does it help CGMP?
• How Process Street can help you build your Quality Management System

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I moved house not too long ago.

Now, I’ve always been a pretty terrible record keeper in my own life.

To remedy this I tried the hoarder technique. If I thought something was even remotely important, I’d throw it in a box file and vow to come back to it one day in the future.

It was only when I came to moving, and thought I’d try to Marie Kondo my crap away, that I dug out all my box files and the piles of messy paper inside them.

I’ll be really honest with you – it’s not an approach to records management that I would recommend.

Your business probably creates exponentially more records than I do, so you certainly can’t use an unthought-out approach to records management either.

That’s why we’ve decided to take some of the basics of records management, explain them, and give you a series of actionable ways to get started taking control over the lifecycles of records in your company.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at:

• What is records management?
• Why is records management important?
• The 5 key steps to records management
• How to build a records management process

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How do you know how much money your business might make?

How do you know how big your business could grow to in future?

How do you explain all that to someone else in a way which makes sense?

Well, a huge part of these kinds of calculations comes down to understanding your market.

Who might need this product? Who tends to buy this type of product? How many of them can you sell to?

There are lots of questions you might ask.

These questions, once you’ve dug deep enough into them, give you your TAM SAM SOM.

In this Process Street article we’re going to look at:

• What is TAM SAM SOM?
• How to calculate TAM SAM SOM
• How you can use Process Street to understand your business

Let’s get started!

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When it comes to running a business, particularly a SaaS company, understanding churn is vital.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s cut straight to the chase.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at:

• What is churn?
• How to calculate churn rate
• Churn examples: From Facebook to Twitter to HubSpot
• Why do customers churn?
• McKinsey’s 4 best practices to increase retention rates 15%
• 3 practical steps to reduce churn in your business
• The Harvard churn management algorithm
• Churn management resources to help you reduce churn
• Use Process Street to help you tackle churn in your business

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Building a solid product strategy is often thought of as a complex challenge and many companies fail to approach it systematically.

Other teams sometimes operate with a lean methodology and think this excuses them from developing a strong product strategy to guide development.

It doesn’t.

A solid product strategy is an important part of building a functional and coherent product and it shouldn’t be overlooked.

In this Process Street article, we will avoid long explanations and unnecessary detail, cutting straight to the point to give you a clear and actionable understanding of product strategy.

And we have provided an actionable product strategy template you can use in your business!

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You’re here because you’re looking for a purchase order template to make your life easier.

Well, here are 5 different templates in different formats which you could use:

• Purchase order template in Excel
• Purchase order template in Google Sheets
• Purchase order template in Word
• Purchase order template in Google Docs
• Purchase order template in PDF

If that’s all you need, pick the one in the format you prefer and have a great day.

However, if you didn’t already have a purchase order before you came to this article, then you probably didn’t and still don’t have a system for your purchase orders.

The system is more important than the template.

In this Process Street article, I’ll do a really quick explainer of your options for systemizing your purchase order and tying it into the rest of your accounting activity.

Systemizing it will save you time and effort in future. So it’s in your interest to check out some of the options.

We’ll cover:

• What is a purchase order?
• What is a purchase order workflow?
• 5 free purchase order templates
• Top workflow ideas for purchase orders
• More accounting workflows to make life easier

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You no longer need to understand HTML, CSS, or server administration to publish a credible website. A modern DIY website builder gives you visual controls, reusable page sections, hosting, and practical publishing tools in one place.

The easy part is getting a page online. The more important work is choosing a platform that suits your goal, planning useful content, checking how the site performs, and making sure you can maintain it after launch. This guide explains those decisions from the ground up.

Marie Kondo has been a bit of a Netflix phenomenon.

For those not familiar, she ventures into untidy cluttered homes and encourages people to get rid of the things they don’t need.

It’s a pretty simple base concept, in all honesty.

But the show has caught on thanks to a cutesy approach of seeing deeper meaning behind the art of decluttering.

Does this bring me joy?

… is the question Kondo forces her subjects to ask.

Sparking joy is a central theme of the Kondo approach, and this cleverly takes the workplace concept of 5s and resituates it within the home.

In this Process Street article, we’ll explore:

• What is 5S?
• What can we learn from Marie Kondo’s interpretation of 5S?
• How does 5S fit into other workplace concepts?
• How can you implement 5S into your business?

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