All posts by Vinay Patankar

Designing Efficient Processes with Andrew Schrage of Money Crashers

Digital publishing operations leader presenting a five-stage business process flow

Efficient process design is the practice of defining a goal, mapping the sequence of work, assigning the right resources, testing the flow, and keeping the documentation current.

Andrew Schrage is CEO and co-founder of Money Crashers, a personal finance publication. In this interview, originally conducted in 2014, he explains how his team designs and documents repeatable business processes.

Continue Reading

Confronting an Employee? 11 Communication Mistakes Managers Make

Manager rehearsing a difficult employee conversation with a training mannequin

Confronting an employee should be a private, evidence-based conversation about a specific behavior or performance gap, its impact, and what needs to change. A manager’s job is to enter the meeting prepared, listen to the employee’s perspective, and leave with clear next steps.

The difficulty is balance. Too much force turns feedback into blame; too much cushioning leaves the employee unsure that anything is wrong. This guide covers 11 communication mistakes managers make and shows how a repeatable Process Street workflow can make difficult conversations fairer, clearer, and easier to follow up.

Continue Reading

Digital Procurement: How to Cut Costs Without Losing Profitability

Procurement leader balancing lower costs with higher profitability

Imagine owning a global restaurant known for one signature ingredient, then having to tell customers that ingredient is unavailable. The immediate problem is a missed delivery. The deeper problem is procurement: demand was misunderstood, supplier capacity was not challenged, and nobody had a controlled exception path ready.

Digital procurement helps teams avoid that outcome. It connects the strategic work of defining needs and evaluating suppliers with the operational work of approvals, purchase orders, evidence, delivery, invoices, and performance. Done well, it can cut costs without sacrificing profitability, resilience, quality, or control.

Continue Reading

7 SharePoint Alternatives that Actually Get the Job Done

Black-and-white operations leader presenting a seven-tool document collaboration knife for SharePoint alternatives

SharePoint alternatives are document collaboration, content management, knowledge, and workflow platforms that replace the part of SharePoint a team actually needs. The best options get the job done without forcing every document, workflow, intranet page, and approval into one oversized Microsoft workspace. SharePoint can be powerful, but it often asks operations teams to accept heavy administration before the work itself becomes easier.

This list focuses on practical alternatives to SharePoint for teams that need document management, team knowledge, workflow automation, or a cleaner intranet experience. Some tools are better for storage, some are better for collaborative editing, and some are better for turning procedures into repeatable work.

Continue Reading

Corporate Sustainability: Using System Thinking to Solve a Global Crisis

Corporate sustainability leader presenting a material flow system

Corporate sustainability means creating long-term environmental, social, and economic value without treating any one of those dimensions as independent. It is both a strategy and an operating discipline: understand the system, decide which impacts matter, and make the work accountable.

Sustainability reporting is now mainstream. KPMG’s 2024 survey found that 96% of the world’s 250 largest companies and 79% of the largest 100 companies in the countries studied publish sustainability or ESG information. Reporting alone is not performance, but the trend raises the standard for reliable data, governed processes, and defensible claims.

Continue Reading

8 Nintex Alternatives to Systemize Your Workflows Better This Year

Operations architect comparing eight Nintex alternatives for workflow automation

Nintex alternatives are workflow, process-mapping, integration, documentation, and low-code platforms that replace the part of Nintex a team actually uses. The right choice depends on whether you need recurring operational workflows, SharePoint automation, process mapping, app-to-app automation, procedure documentation, request management, or complex enterprise orchestration.

Nintex is a broad workflow automation platform with forms, approvals, document generation, robotic process automation, process intelligence, and enterprise workflow orchestration. That breadth is useful, but it can be more platform than many teams need.

Continue Reading

Effective Team Management at a Busy Software Company

Software team leader organizing work on a release planning board

Effective team management in a busy software company means setting clear priorities, protecting focus, learning directly from customers, and shipping on a predictable cadence. In this episode of Business Systems Explored, Vinay Patankar and Tony Brown speak with Nathan Kontny, who took over Highrise in 2014.

Nathan moved into the CEO role almost overnight and started coding on the same day. He learned what customers needed by owning support, then balanced product delivery, hiring, marketing, and the daily work of leading a software team.

Continue Reading

CX Design: How to Craft & Deliver Excellent Customer Experiences

Customer experience designer beside a connected model of storefront, support, and delivery

Customer experience design is the practice of deliberately shaping every interaction a customer has with an organization across the end-to-end journey. It connects customer evidence, service standards, and operational ownership so the experience works as intended.

Customers do not experience departments. They experience one brand across discovery, evaluation, purchase, onboarding, product use, support, billing, and renewal. CX design gives teams a method for seeing that whole system and improving the moments that matter.

Continue Reading

Create a Knowledge Management System to Win

Knowledge operations leader organizing a modular archive to build a knowledge management system

A knowledge management system gives people a reliable way to capture, validate, find, share, and apply what an organization knows. It is more than a repository. It combines people, processes, governance, content, and technology so useful knowledge reaches the work at the right time.

Without that system, decisions disappear into messages, experienced employees become single points of failure, and teams repeat mistakes. A strong system preserves institutional knowledge, connects it to execution, and gives owners a way to keep it accurate as the business changes. Process Street helps turn that knowledge into governed documentation and repeatable work.

Continue Reading

The 15 Most Useful Evernote Alternatives for Notes, Screenshots and Documents

Professional comparing focused alternatives to an all-in-one note application

Evernote alternatives are focused apps for capturing notes, saving articles, taking screenshots, and managing business documentation. The right replacement depends on the job you need the tool to perform, the platforms you use, your privacy requirements, and whether the work must move from a static document into an executable process.

Evernote is the Swiss army knife of productivity tools. It can handle many kinds of information, but an all-in-one notebook is not always the fastest or clearest option. A focused tool can reduce feature bloat, keep unrelated material out of one bucket, and fit more naturally into the way a person or team already works.

Continue Reading

Take control of your workflows today

Choose which optional cookies to allow. You can change or withdraw consent here at any time.