Jennifer Lockman graduated from UCLA majoring in Journalism. Now she works as a writer. Her expertise includes general education, e-learning, business, writing, and lifestyle.

Being a manager often puts you in a difficult position.

It isn’t always about smiling and cheering for your employees. It also means that you have to right the wrongs, and come face to face with unpleasant situations.

While there are countless ways to motivate the team and encourage them to attain success, when it comes to tackling the hurdles along the way not all managers have the knack for it.

Of course, one could try to instigate the fear of getting fired if you displease the manager, but that might not be the most effective way to approach a conflict with an employee. Nor is letting them assume that the manager is a pushover.

So if you are dreading that meeting you should have had a long time ago, we are here to tell you what to avoid and how to approach the situation. With adequate communication, a confrontation could help build stronger relationships in the office and boost performance.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover 11 common mistakes managers make when confronting their employees and provide you with a host of process templates to try to make your life easier!

Continue Reading

One of the most important things when running your business is understanding how your customers feel about your service.

We all know that it’s tough to gather all the feedback you would like. You’re more likely to talk to customers in your support channels when they experience an issue, but that doesn’t always give you a holistic understanding of their experience with your product.

Equally, social proof is a very important area to leverage when trying to bring new customers on board. This means that public praise of your product can increase your acquisition rates and lower acquisition costs.

Positive or negative, reviews – particularly public ones – provide huge value to businesses in how we shape immediate and long term decisions.

This is why we at Process Street are writing up a list of the top places you should make sure you have listings for, should make sure you monitor for feedback, and make sure you engage on to improve your customer’s experiences.

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

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!

Continue Reading

Whether you want to reduce your environmental impact, be more efficient, or reduce your expenses to Dunder Mifflin, going paperless is a really positive step forward for your business.

Operating in a paperless office means all activity and work is recorded and can be easily found. It means you can send work over to other colleagues in seconds. It means you don’t need huge filing cabinets taking up valuable space.

It’s just better in many many ways.

Even if you want to keep paper as a small part of your life, taking the necessary steps toward a paperless office will yield results.

So how do we create a paperless office?

The answer is in the tools you choose to use for your business. Any business may have specialist tools specific to their industry, but we’ve tried to pick out 7 tools which can collectively cover almost all aspects of a company’s operations.

You’ve got your email, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, kanban boards, BPM software, accounting, software development, automation, communication, and funny gif sending software. And that’s just the start of what these tools can achieve.

In this Process Street article, we’re going to go through each one by one and give you an introduction. Some tools you might already be familiar with, but I’m sure at least one will be new!

Here are our paperless office quicklinks:

• GSuite
• Process Street
• Airtable
• Quickbooks
• Phabricator
• Zapier
• Slack

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

Written by Andy Barnes, MotoCMS marketing manager. He is a professional content creator and an enthusiastic marketer reporting on tech news and all aspects of the web design industry. Anyone looking for more inspirational posts, tips, and advice or simply the latest industry news, email him at [email protected].

Are you dreaming of creating a powerful website by yourself? The right choice of DIY website builder can make your dream come true without much effort.

No one will deny that online presence is vital for any business nowadays. Whether you produce goods or provide services, it’s almost impossible to be on top without a highly-functional website.

However, is it possible to create one if you are not a pro in web design? Can you succeed without knowing a line of code?

Don’t worry.

It’s not a problem anymore with modern website builders. Zero need to code required.

In this Process Street article, we’ll focus on the DIY website builders you can use to create a competitive website in 2019.

We’ll look at:

• What a DIY website builder is
• What your options are
• How to know whether you need one
• What key features you’ll need to make sure your DIY website is done well.

Go from website templates to website revenue!

Continue Reading

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?

Continue Reading

This is a guest post from Kyle Anderson; a freelance tech journalist whose typical day is spent scouring the web for the latest developments in the world of business tools and software. He loves any type of software that automates his life! For his pastimes, he is an avid lover of travelling, poetry, and photography.

When it comes to prospecting and the wider sales process, there’s never a shortage of tools you can use to make your work easier and more efficient. One of the most versatile of them is Outlook, a Microsoft tool that is popularly known for email and business calendar management.

However, Outlook is not limited to just these two functions.

You can easily unlock its hidden power by integrating it with compatible add-ins and other extensions. In the end, you’ll be able to complete a broad range of business functions including market/customer research, communication with your clients, document sharing, accounting, and more.

In this Process Street post, we take a look at how you can run a successful outreach campaign for your sales cycle using Outlook and its supported add-ins.

We’ll cover:

• Lead qualification Outlook Add-ins
• Email template Outlook Add-ins
• Meeting scheduling Outlook Add-ins
• Contract signing Outlook Add-ins
• Accounting and invoicing Outlook Add-ins

Continue Reading

This article is a guest post from Wendy Dessler; a super-connector who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans.

It’s easy to check a few boxes when it comes to backgrounds and ethnicities, but does that really equal inclusivity?

Let’s face it, these are conflicted times. Everything seems to be coming to a head, and as workforce leaders, we need to make it a priority to make sure people feel valued.

Diversity is more than just a buzzword.

Diverse companies have a better reputation, and they also reap the endless benefits of having people from a variety of cultures, experiences, and backgrounds. Even if you don’t think inclusivity and diversity is a real issue today, it is.

An unfortunate 44 percent of managers are “too busy” to bother with diversity initiative. Including more people and encouraging a variety of perspectives does take time. It’s not always easy. It’s a team effort in many ways, yet it’s so essential to success today.

It’s not all about diversity. It’s also about building a culture of respect and appreciation.

We’ve all experienced working somewhere where we didn’t feel welcome. Maybe the leaders were too harsh and demanding. Maybe the hours were ridiculous. These jobs aren’t worth keeping, and they cause employees to feel undervalued.

You work hard to bring the best talent into your company. Don’t you want those individuals to feel excited about where they work? Believe it or not, it’s hard to find top talent today. According to the ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage research, 45 percent of employers across the globe struggle to find the skills they need. This is the highest in over a decade.

It’s time for your company to thrive thanks to different perspectives, skills, and personalities. Give your top performing employees a reason to love working at your organization.

If you’re ready to create an inclusive environment built for thriving, keep reading this Process Street article to explore the top 3 steps for cultivating diversity, inclusivity, and more.

Continue Reading