BONUS MATERIAL: Once you’ve installed the Process Street Slack App, it will transform your Slack space into a superpowered tool for all your team’s recurring work. Learn how to get it, how it works, and why you need it in your life here.

Slack has changed the way we work.

From being able to easily stay in touch with colleagues, no matter where they are in the world, to sending important files and docs in real-time, teams can work more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

It’s no wonder, then, that Salesforce bought Slack for a whopping $27.7bn (and just a few months after they invested in Process Street’s very own Series A).

But Slack really becomes a productivity powerhouse when using Slack Apps — additional made-for-Slack applications that can help you communicate, receive crucial information, and complete work faster.

That’s why Cameron McKay, Process Street‘s CTO, built a Process Street Slack App enabling teams to simultaneously superpower both their Process Street and Slack usage!

Sound exciting?

It is.

In this Process Street post, I’ll be discussing why we decided to build a Slack App, how our CTO managed to build a Slack App for Process Street in just 2 weeks, and how you too can install the Process Street Slack App immediately.

Read the following sections to get clued-up:

• How Slack Apps can help you improve workplace productivity
• How we built a Slack App in 2 weeks
• How to install the Process Street Slack App right now

Ready for a peek behind the scenes?
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Every 28 days, a lovely Hermes delivery-person brings a crate of the world’s finest craft beer to my house.

But if it were up to me, I wouldn’t receive these beer boxes at all.

In early 2020, I tried to unsubscribe from [REDACTED] — a monthly beer subscription company — as I felt it was an unnecessary expense. I soon realized, though, that unsubscribing would be a Herculean task. There was no way to cancel digitally, and if I wanted to stop my subscription altogether, I’d need to ring them up during their (very limited) business hours.

Having to go through all that rigmarole dissuaded me from unsubscribing.

Annoyingly, I’m still receiving my delicious craft beers a year later.

These frustrating (read: unethical) tactics to stop customers from unsubscribing have been deployed by all manner of companies — from those in the food and drinks industry, all the way to those in the tech world.

And while it may seem tempting for your SaaS company to do similar, it’s nothing more than a quick win when, in reality, you should be focusing on improving the customer lifecycle. After all, it’s positive business-to-customer interactions that’ll stop people from wanting to unsubscribe in the first place.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’ll be discussing SaaS renewal. I’ll go over the definition of SaaS renewal, explain why customers think about unsubscribing from SaaS products, and provide you with actionable SaaS renewal best practices that’ll stop folks from hitting that unsubscribe button. (Providing you have one!)

Read through these sections to get in the know:

• What SaaS renewal means & how to figure out your SaaS renewal rate
• 5 reasons why customers unsubscribe from SaaS products
• 5 tried-and-tested SaaS renewal best practices for boosting renewals

You’re about to become a SaaS renewal pro — let’s cheers to that!
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We’re an ambitious bunch here at Process Street.

In terms of numbers, we’ve published over 1,000 onsite blog posts, over 300 offsite blog posts, penned 5 huge ebooks, attended many an external webinar, and created many a podcast, too. And this is only our content marketing team’s efforts. If I were to discuss the phenomenal accomplishments of our other departments — from engineering to sales, product to customer success — we’d be here all day.

Despite our company-wide accomplishments, we knew in 2020 that we could push ourselves further (especially considering our $12m cash injection from Accel, Salesforce, and others). Naturally, we turned the ambitious goals and objectives we’d set ourselves up a notch.

This meant that, rather than only working with KPIs, we threw OKRs into the mix as well.

Not to toot our own horn too much, but I can say with confidence that the choice to do so went in our favor. In fact, we’ve had some of the best months ever since deploying OKRs!

This is why, in this post, I’m going to tell you everything that we learned from internally deploying OKRs at Process Street. Specifically, I’ll give you a quick recap on what OKRs are, go over our method for implementing OKRs in detail, recount my experience of getting used to (and then loving) OKRs, on top of providing 5 tried-and-tested tips for deploying OKRs at your company.

Just read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• OKRs: A quick breakdown
• How we deployed OKRs at Process Street
• Deploying OKRs: How do they impact the rest of the company?
• 5 tips and tricks for deploying OKRs at your company

It’s time for you to pivot to OKRs and hit challenging targets like a pro, too.

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There’s no better moment than the ‘lightbulb moment’.

The one where you finally figure out a solution to a tricky problem, or just come up with an ahead of the curve plan, scheme, or proposal. The euphoria is intense enough to make you get out there and shout about it from the rooftops. Or, do a song and dance on the street, à la Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

OK, perhaps the latter is a little hyperbolic. But the point remains that coming up with a great idea is a wonderful feeling.

The only problem is that, at some point in the relative future, more ideas need to be thought of. And for those working in creative fields such as advertising, design, and software engineering, ingenious ideas need to be generated on a regular basis. We’re talking daily, here.

So how can you and the rest of your team continually think of stellar ideas?

Through ideation.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’m going to spell out what ideation is, the benefits of ideation, 7 different ideation techniques to use, and what to do before undergoing ideation for the first time.

Read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• The definition of ideation
• The team and business benefits of ideation
• The 7 best ideation techniques to use
• Undergoing your team’s first ideation session

Let’s not make this a song and a dance.

It’s time to get straight into it!
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Once upon a time, the word “canceled” was only applicable to objects and things. Like the meeting you didn’t want to attend. The subscription to Netflix or any other subscription-based product. Your favorite TV series (Firefly, anyone?).

But since the mid-2010s, the word has evolved. It’s no longer objects and things that get canceled, but people and companies too.

Kanye? Canceled.

Scarlett Johansson? She’s canceled.

Bon Apetit? Canceled.

Pepsi? Completely, utterly canceled.

The specific reasons why these people and companies were canceled in the first place vary. But it’s ultimately their actions, statements, or sentiments that led them to be canceled by the internet-at-large.

To learn about their missteps — and ensure you don’t go down the same route — here’s this informative, insightful Process Street post where I’ll be covering:

• The definition of canceled and what it means to be canceled
• Cancel culture examples: Ellen, Kanye, and Pepsi
• How to stop cancelation from happening in the first place

Let’s get right into what is cancel culture and canceling.

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Major setbacks. Lengthy delays. Unnecessary bottlenecks. When important items aren’t rejected or approved in time, progress is halted.

Take the United States’ government shutdown in 2019.

The shutdown meant the U.S. Small Business Administration – which backs entrepreneurs and small businesses with financial loans – could no longer approve loan applications.

The result? Small businesses turned to high-cost, short-term lenders, entrepreneurs couldn’t buy the necessary products their business relied upon, and the delay itself caused widespread anxiety among those who were relying on loans being granted. Financially-speaking, the lack of approvals caused a delay of $2 billion in SBA lending.

At Process Street (if you don’t know our app, it’s state-of-the-art BPM software!) we know how important it is for teams to get items approved or rejected, so that business processes and projects can be completed on time.

That’s why we’ve introduced approvals.

With approvals, decision-makers can give the go-ahead (or rejection) regarding important items, on top of providing any necessary comments.

Want to know more about this game-changing feature and how it can dramatically improve workflows for your team? Read through the following sections:

• A brief explanation of approvals
• Supercharge approvals with Process Street’s features
• Using approvals in Process Street
• Approval use case #1: Holiday and time-off requests
• Approval use case #2: Client onboarding
• Approval use case #3: The hiring process
• Approval use case #4: The time-strapped CEO
• You can approve (or reject) tasks directly from your phone’s email app
• Harness the power of a simplified approval workflow today!

Now, let’s dive straight in.

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I love winning.

It doesn’t matter what’s involved or what the prize is, I’ll do what I can to achieve my goal of clinching that ‘winner’ title.

When I was 6, my primary school held an egg and spoon race as part of its sports day activities. The prize was a yardstick of chocolate. Let’s just say that, by lunchtime, there were tears and tantrums elsewhere while my face was smeared with chocolate.

To this day, I’m still (perhaps unhealthily) incentivized by goals. Particularly in the workplace. I’m not alone in this though, as numerous studies show that goal-setting improves employee performance and engagement.

Do you relish winning, too?

And do you want the next quarter to be your team’s best quarter ever?

Then you need to know about OKRs (objectives and key results). It’s basically an adult version of the egg and spoon race.

That’s why, in this short, informative Process Street post, I’ll define OKRs, describe their business benefits, give advice on how to write solid OKRs, and also provide OKR examples from the likes of Google.

Just make your way through the following sections to learn all about OKRs:

• What is an OKR?
• The business benefits of the OKR methodology
• How to write inspiring, useful OKRs
• 3 OKR examples — including ones Google use
• Moving forward as an OKR-aligned team

Now, let’s make this quarter more than OK.

Let’s make it internally record-breaking, thanks to OKRs!

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This is a guest post by Donald Fomby. Donald is a freelance content writer who works for ClassyEssay. He has spent more than seven years in the copywriting and blogging industries, writing articles, guides, and checklists for small eCommerce businesses. Donald uses his curiosity about online business to write about topics valuable to small business owners.

The product manager’s role is a juggling act.

To fulfill the needs of expectant customers, the product manager needs to work with the sales, marketing, and engineering teams — alongside the rest of the product team — to facilitate necessary changes and improve the product(s) in question.

But that juggling act has gotten even harder as of late.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many product research and management processes that were done collaboratively and in-person have now pivoted online. Needless to say, this change had made it more difficult for product managers to succeed in their role and complete projects in the way they’re used to.

This transition may have caused workloads to build up, task lists to overflow, sprints to stagger, and thus, impacting the rest of the product team.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The truth of the matter is that you can successfully manage any product research or development project remotely with optimal organization.

It’s the key to bettering collaboration with your remote team, and ensuring you and the rest of your product management team are keeping on the right track. If you strategically organize your work, you will also be able to instill and maintain successful collaboration with the people you’re working with, despite the many miles that keep you apart.

Seeing as 86% of executives say that a lack of collaboration is the most common reason for failure in their companies, it’s something that you need to get to grips with, particularly as a product manager.

By reading through this Process Street guest post, you’ll do exactly that. To boot, I’ll also provide some extra tools to help you thrive as a product manager! Just make your way through these sections:

• The 4 must-follow tips & tricks to excel as a product manager
• Product management tools to thrive in 2020 and beyond

Let’s get started.

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Republican or Democrat. Brexit or remaining in the EU. Pepsi or Coke.

There are some things that people just can’t agree on.

These debates all pale in comparison to the one argument that is so vitriolic, so polemic, and so bitter that it’s infamous the world over: The Mac vs Windows debate.

The heated rivalry has brought out the worst in people, with message boards, forums, and social media threads being the digital battlegrounds for these two factions to clash. The primary method of attack for Windows supporters is to scoff at the price of Apple’s Mac products. Mac aficionados — while they only make up 9-13% of all operating system users — go for the throat by ridiculing how error-prone Windows is.

But I’m glad to say that the operating system war has finally come to an end with a clear victor.

Mac.

With their trojan horse — Big Sur — they’ve created an OS that’s so streamlined, easy to use, and downright fast — all while tying it in with the interface of iPadOS and iOS — that Windows 10’s defeat was inevitable.

But what’s changed, exactly? What are Big Sur’s most exciting features? And, more importantly, when is macOS 11 being released?

Make your way through the following sections in this Process Street post to find out:

• Introducing Big Sur, Apple’s 11th MacOS
• Everything that’s changed since Catalina
• Why Big Sur is such a big success — particularly for productivity
• When is the Big Sur release date?
• Productivity tools to enhance Big Sur even further

Hey, Siri?

Scroll down so the reader can continue on with the post.

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In the Before Time (read: before coronavirus struck and remote work became more commonplace) there were four types of people on the morning commute.

First, there was the person falling asleep in their seat – most likely one of the 15% of Americans who doze off while at work. Second, there’s the one working on their laptop while drinking their fourth cup of coffee of the day. Then there’s the person who’s listening to music or reading a book, conserving their productivity for the office. Last but not least, there’s the individual who’s working one minute but snoring the next.

These people are wolves, lions, bears, and dolphins respectively.

Not sure what the hell I’m talking about?

Then you haven’t heard of chronotypes.

Luckily for you, in this Process Street post I’ll be exploring what a chronotype is, the 4 different sleep chronotypes, and how to find and hack your chronotype for maximal productivity.

Just read through these sections to get completed clued-up:

• The chronotype definition
• Bear, wolf, lion, and dolphin: The four chronotypes
• The benefits of identifying your sleep chronotype
• How to find your chronotype
• How to hack and make the most of your chronotype!

Time’s ticking, so let’s dive in!

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