All posts by Vinay Patankar

Process Street 3.0: Even More Versatile for Every Kind of Workflow

process street 3

Process Street is a simple, free and powerful way to manage your team’s recurring checklists and procedures.

Process Street helps you automate tasks, track progress, and manage documents — plus it integrates with over a thousand of your favorite apps.

Thousands of businesses in every industry use Process Street to make their recurring work fun, fast and faultless. We’ve been listening closely to our customers, and Process Street 3.0 proves it. Sign up for a free trial and take Process Street for a spin.

Processes are a part of daily life for every person in every role in every business. We designed Process Street to power any kind of process: employee onboarding, rental property inspections, new client onboarding, firewall security audits, monthly sales forecasts, and many more.

We’ve built strong lines of communication with businesses who use Process Street every day; with the launch of Process Street 3.0, their feedback has helped us make our platform:

  • More powerful, with greater control to orchestrate and automate complex multi-departmental workflows.
  • More intuitive, with a redesigned user experience to help you implement and manage all your processes even faster.
  • More accessible, with new time-savers like application speed improvements, single sign-on, and a slick iOS app.

Before we dive into all of our 3.0 features, you have to check out our new explainer video! As you watch, consider what it can mean for your business if every person on your team knows what to do, and when.

Satisfying, right?

The feeling of working together to get processes done right, and right on time.

Ok let’s jump into it.
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Approvals: How to Streamline Decision-Making in Process Street

Operations manager setting an authorization gate for an approval decision

Major setbacks, lengthy delays, and unnecessary bottlenecks follow when important work is not approved or rejected in time.

The United States government shutdown in 2018 and 2019 showed how quickly an approval stoppage can reach businesses waiting for capital.

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How to Launch on Product Hunt: What We Learned from 30+ Launches

how to launch a product on product hunt

Way back in 2014, we first tried our hand at launching on Product Hunt with an early version of Process Street. It got featured, but that was a different time; when Product Hunt’s staff manually selected each product feature (these days Product Hunt claims that an automated algorithm decides).

It was hunted (Product Hunt lingo for “promoted”) by Audrey Melnik of Funnel Ventures, didn’t even have a maker (another Product Hunt termin for the creators of a product), yet still found its way to the front page of Product Hunt.

Six years, a couple of relaunches, and a $12 million Series A on from that humble effort, Process Street has changed a fair bit. We’ve shipped over 30 products on Product Hunt; from podcasts, new Process Street feature launches, to whole product launches, to eBooks.

Some of them were great successes, with multiple top 4 spots and a whole bunch of front-page features. Others weren’t so great; some garnered next to no traction and were essentially dead-on-arrival.

The point of this article is to impart some of the lessons we’ve learned, from common myths and misconceptions, to what worked well for us (and what didn’t work so well).

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ll be covering:

Let’s start with the basics, which often get taken for granted when it comes to deciding whether or not to launch on Product Hunt.
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What is Form Automation Software? How to Pick the Best Form Software

form automation software

I have a riddle for you:

What has four sides, often goes missing, comes from trees, and can be expensive to reproduce?

I’ll give you a hint.

It wastes up to 40% of on-the-job time, and about $120 billion per year in the US alone.

Need another?

Around 7.5% of them will be lost or misplaced each year (about one lost every 12 seconds), and for each that gets lost you’re looking at a loss of between $350 to $700 in employee time.

Did you get it yet?

Condescending sarcasm aside, I am of course talking about paper forms. But this article isn’t about paper forms, per se; it’s about how you can get rid of paper forms in your business with form automation software.

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How To Write Consulting Proposals in 10 Easy Steps (+ Free Template!)

how to write consulting proposals

This is a guest post by Victor Eduoh, a SaaS content strategy consultant and copywriter. He helps early- and growth-stage SaaS companies drive growth, using the SaaS content topic clusters strategy and Product-Led Storytelling, two concepts he developed.

“And, after all, winning business is what writing proposals is all about.” Tom Sant, in his bestselling book, Persuasive Business Proposals, continued:

“Although a great proposal by itself seldom wins a deal, a bad proposal will definitely lose one.

Tom is right.

Writing a consulting proposal isn’t a silver bullet to land your next client. But fail to craft an excellent, professional one and you won’t close any deal.

Since you found your way to this post, you don’t want that, right? We don’t want it either.

So, in this Process Street article, you’ll find ten practical steps to make your next consulting proposal excellent (i.e., worthy of closing deals).

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Sound good? Read on for a free checklist to get started.
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Marketing Communication Mix: How to Build Strong Connections with Your Customers

marketing communication mix

This is a guest post from Alissa Zucker, marketing manager and writer at Mcessay. You can find her reading classical philosophy and writing short fiction in her spare time.

It’s predicted that by the end of 2020, businesses will have spent ~$110 billion on digital advertising alone in the US. To put that into context, that’s more money spent on digital advertising than what would be spent on both television and print ads combined.

This just goes to show the importance of digital advertising in the modern marketing communication mix.

It is essential that every business know how to effectively market their products and services in order to not only survive, but to grow and prosper in a competitive global market.

It’s not uncommon when questioned about marketing, that a business owner will simply produce a business card, a brochure stitched together using a Microsoft Office template, or a barely functional website with little to no traffic.

In this Process Street post, I want to provide you with an overview of everything you need to know about the marketing communication mix, including:

Before diving into the specifics of the marketing communication mix, let’s first discuss the 7Ps of marketing.
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Making the Remote Work Transition: Advice from Chanty & Problems They Faced

remote work transition

This is a guest post from Julia Samoilenko, a marketing specialist who writes about digital marketing trends and strategies for the Chanty blog. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work. Feel free to connect with Julia on LinkedIn.

Many of us like the idea of working remotely (especially if we have never experienced it). Out of bed and —Voila!— you are ready for work. No commuting, no noisy colleagues. Top level of independence and flexibility.

But what is remote work really like in practice? One day here at Chanty we had to answer this question and discovered what new benefits and challenges teams face when transitioning to remote-only mode.

Spoiler: there were many productivity pitfalls on the road to beneficial collaboration. It turns out that being an efficient remote worker is quite challenging. And that it’s twice as tough to manage a high-performing virtual team.

If you want to adapt to remote working best practices and maximize the benefits, then you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to reveal the ugly truth and teach you everything we’ve learned about a successful transition to remote work. After reading our ‘confession’, you’ll understand the challenges and methods on how to overcome them.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering:

Let’s dive right in!
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How Scope Creep Negatively Impacts Project Success (& How to Fix It)

scope creep

This is a guest post written by Ashley Ferro, a freelance content writer & copywriter specializing in SEO content marketing.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a project manager than witnessing the slow, painful death of a healthy project to the beast known as scope creep. When last minute changes transform their straightforward, A-to-B project plan into a sprawling mess of up-ended sprint plans and gold-plated feature requests, branching out in all directions with no concern for time or resources.

In one extreme example, the head contractor for the extension of a city library ended up actually suing their client in a scope-creep induced rage, claiming that their almost 55-week delay was a direct result of the large number of last minute changes.

In order for a project to be successfully completed on time, the project manager and their team need to agree on a clearly defined project scope before getting started.

However, life isn’t so straight forward and changes to the project will inevitably need to happen.

But additional problems can arise if the changes aren’t dealt with properly.

Scope creep can quietly sneak its way into your project and set your team down an unproductive and self-destructive path, wasting your company’s resources, missing deadlines, weakening team communication and, ultimately, ruining any chance of your project’s success.

So what can you do to avoid this fate, and overcome scope creep once and for all?

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know scope creep–from what (and who) causes it, to how to manage it, even in an agile environment where change is embraced.

We’ll be covering:

If, however, you’re struggling with planning your own projects and want a quick solution, grab our free Project Request Form Template below!

So, let’s get started with the basics!

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How to Build the Perfect Product Roadmap (Free Template + Extra Tips!)

product roadmap

Product roadmaps are an essential part of understanding how to align your product to a long-term vision for product-market fit. They are also one of the key deliverables for product managers and are useful to almost all teams and stakeholders.

What the product roadmap should provide:

  • Clear overview of key launch dates and milestones
  • Clearly communicate which teams are responsible for what
  • Clearly communicate important deadlines and time allocation
  • A beacon to align different teams to core company goals and objectives

What the roadmap shouldn’t include:

  • Goals and objectives unrelated to the product
  • Overload of information about specific product features and specifications for development
  • Big Surprises
  • Too much data without clear association with company goals or objectives

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

First off, here’s a template you can use to get started building your own product roadmap.

Product roadmap process

For those of you who came just for the template, here it is:

If you’re interested in the why behind this template design, and more insight into an effective product roadmap approach, read on!

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How to Use Social Media for Indie Game Marketing: A Beginners Guide

indie game marketing

Travis Taborek is an SEO and content marketing specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s a graduate of General Assembly’s digital marketing course, and has since written content and optimized websites for Wescover and TiVo. He also has a side-business doing PR and social media work for indie games and reviews indie games in his spare time. His most recent accomplishment was finishing Homestuck and thereby winning shelter-in-place.

Back in 2011, you might have been able to get away with uploading your indie game to Steam’s marketplace and expect a revenue of $30-50K in the first year, without any effort or marketing knowledge.

Hell, you might have even been able to get away with that as late as 2014. But these golden days for indie game developers are long gone.

Steam has made many changes to the way it promotes indie games and the current market is far more saturated. There are more game developers than ever and tools like Unity and Unreal have made game development more accessible than ever.

Just getting that final build finished and uploaded to your storefront of choice is no longer enough. To have a successful launch, whether you’re a solo dev or a small team, you have to understand how to market your game.

In principle, marketing your game is relatively straightforward; you just need to know where to start. If you understand who you’re making the game for (your audience) and how to talk about your game as a product (meaning: you’re able to communicate what your game offers and how that aligns to the expectations of your target audience), then you’ve already done most of the hard work. The rest is as simple as following a process.

Once you have this base knowledge, it’s just about taking your product to market and doing the legwork that’s involved with getting the word out and making sure you get eyes on the finished product.

This Process Street article takes a look at one strategy for marketing your indie game: social media marketing.

What is social media marketing?

It’s basically exactly what it sounds like: using social media to get your game in front of your target audience. The term ‘social media marketing’ is a bit vague and encompasses a bunch of different approaches; we’ll be looking at some of the different ways you can use social media to market your game in this article.

Social media marketing is great for connecting on an intimate level with your fans and building lasting communities around your game, from early development until launch, and beyond. When done properly, it can allow you to develop trusting relationships with your audience that will drive them to not just purchase one of your games, but every game you put out.

Here’s a high-level overview of what we’ll be looking at:

Let’s get started beginning with the theory of social media marketing.
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