In a study of 400 businesses in the UK and US, global analyst firm IDC established that 23% of employees don’t understand a core part of their job. Combined with the potential damage that human error can cause, it’s easy to see why it’s important to make sure that your processes are being followed to the letter.

Still, nobody enjoys hearing the term “ensure compliance” when it comes to their team. It’s cold, impersonal, and conjures up images of school students being sent to detention or prisoners under strict watch, and if your team feels the same then their morale will quickly plummet.

Here at Process Street, we’re well versed in the problems with documenting, managing, and deploying your processes. That’s why this post will take care of those compliance problems by giving you some killer tips to make sure your team sticks to their methods without alienating them with harsh policies.

Let’s dive right in!

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No process is perfect; there’s always room to improve. Unfortunately, many teams have no way to identify, test, and deploy the changes they make, meaning each tweak is a roll of the dice.

The savings can be massive, but you need a continuous improvement program to make sure that the changes you make won’t make your operations a whole lot harder.

“1 in 10 improvements save money… [each saving, on average,] $31,043 in its first year of implementation.

1 in 4 improvements save time… [each saving, on average,] 270 hours in its first year of implementation.” – KaiNexus, The ROI of Continuous Improvement

Most successful changes will also make your employee’s jobs easier (or more pleasant) to perform. You’ll be saving time and money, but you’ll also be getting far better value out of your current efforts and operations.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the top.

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Research indicates that inefficient workflows can cost up to 30% of your total revenue every year. That’s a third of your enterprise’s earning being wasted on everything from a single missed email to a stock of excess inventory.

Imagine what you could do with that money. You could hire new employees to scale your business even further. Department budgets could be expanded to allow better equipment to be used.

All of this and more can be achieved with business process automation.

To demonstrate, let’s go over three core automation examples for processes which often include many of those typical inefficiencies, such as:

• Customer success (client onboarding process)
• HR (recruitment process)
• Support (customer support process)

All of these processes will be given in full, and by the end of this post you’ll know how to eliminate inefficiency by using basic, process, integration, and robotic automation.

It’s time to take back that 30% of your revenue.

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“About half of all the activities people are paid to do in the world’s workforce could potentially be automated” – McKinsey Global Institute, Harnessing automation for a future that works

For many, enterprise automation is a complex and scary topic. Many team leaders believe that it takes too much work to set up your automated systems, and a huge number of people are worried that doing so will let robots take over their jobs.

It’s not true.

Those who understand automation for what it is – a powerful tool which lets your team massively increase their value output – quickly find themselves ahead of the curve. Using it lets you quickly and accurately hand off all of your menial tasks so that everyone can focus on more important items.

Here at Process Street, we know how difficult it can be to get started with enterprise automation. That’s why this post will take you through:

• What automation is
• What types of business process automation there are
• Why you should be using it in your enterprise
• Methods to let you get started with automation

It’s not complex, it’s not scary, and it certainly won’t be putting your team out of a job. If anything, automation is entirely designed around letting people perform their jobs better than ever before.

It’s time to join the newest revolution in enterprise efficiency and accuracy.

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Dodson Property Management is a Richmond-based property management company which uses Process Street to track the progress of everything from recruitment and onboarding to managing tenants and creating monthly reports for their landlords. This lets them make sure that their processes are carried out accurately and reliably, even when their team is on the go.

We spoke to their Vice President of Single Family Management, RMP, and MPM Tim Wehner about how they use Process Street in their business.
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“Why didn’t they see this coming?”

I had just learned of yet another company catastrophically failing to understand their audience. Who thought it would be a good idea to host an AMA after your company was involved in one of the biggest financial scandals in modern history?

Then it hit me. Every team makes silly mistakes. It’s all down to forgetting to ask yourself some basic marketing questions.

While this post was originally going to be reviewing Getting Goosebumps by Bryan Adams and Dave Hazlehurst, the examples and theories they pose in that book (which is well worth a read) are perfect for demonstrating how easy it can be to avoid marketing disasters. All you have to do is keep asking these questions to form a coherent strategy with no nasty surprises.

But enough rambling – it’s time to learn how to avoid marketing disasters!
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You might use the most efficient software on the market. Maybe you’ve hand-picked the most dedicated team available. Perhaps you documented and improved your methods until every rough edge and bottleneck has been wiped away.

You’re still going to fail if you can’t track your processes.

It’s the only way to know for sure that your methods are being followed, that work really is being completed, and to have a clear view of the state of your business at any given time. That’s why, over at Process Street, we’ve created a way to quickly review any and all information from the checklists your team uses.

If you’ve ever used a spreadsheet, think of an interactive version of that, except all of the information is automatically formatted based on your Process Street checklists.

It’s called the “Template Overview” tab, and here’s how it works…

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Documented processes don’t just save you time, money, and give a consistent method for your team to follow. They make everything you do more reliable and efficient, even increasing project success rate by 70%.

Unfortunately, getting started is the hardest part. Whether you don’t feel like you have time to set up your management system or just don’t know what to use for your needs, it’s difficult to get over the initial learning curve.

That’s why I’m going to outline the 9 organizational tools you can use to get started right now.

From their pros and cons and best use guidelines to general tips on what to do with your organizational tools, this post will cover:

• Process Street
• Office 365 (Microsoft Word and Excel)
• Trello
• Airtable
• Google Suite (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Drive)
• Zapier
• …and 4 process management techniques to get you started

It’s time to learn what organizational tools you need to manage your processes, and how to use them.

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Documenting processes is great in theory, but creating and following them can be a pain.

Your processes need to be standardized so that everyone’s performing the same tasks consistently. However, that often leaves you with either a large, complex and unusable process which covers every situation or lots of smaller, specialized processes which become difficult to manage or track.

Conditional logic saves you all of that trouble by letting you create processes which change to suit the situation at hand.

By setting rules for your processes to follow and update based on their outcome, you can simplify your processes and make even the most complicated task list easy to navigate. All optional tasks can be automatically hidden from view until (and if) they are required to keep your dashboard clear and encourage teams to avoid taking shortcuts.

Nobody wants to work through a horribly complex process that you know you won’t need half of to complete your task.

However, as with business process automation, conditional logic’s power is best shown through examples, so today I’ll be showing you both how to use it and giving eight example processes which take advantage of it, including client onboarding and user support.

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DenaliTEK is an Anchorage-based IT services company which uses Process Street to perform and track everything from payroll to client maintenance. This lets them provide quality services to their clients more consistently and in less time.

We spoke to their Controller Lisa Clark about how they use Process Street in their business.

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