ISO means standards. A standard is just a set of requirements, decided by experts, for doing something specific.

A lot of standards exist under the banner of ISO, for all sorts of things, from quality management, to environmental and social responsibility guidelines, to how to design medical devices.

They’re useful because they help you to write good processes; how to structure, organize, implement, and improve on them.

At the heart of ISO is the principle of systematizing your approach to process management in your company – simple as that! You might be scared of ISO, but there’s really no need to be intimidated. What’s more, recent changes have made it easier than ever to get started with ISO standards.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at everything ISO, including (but not limited to):

• What is ISO? A simple introduction for normal people
• Management System Standards (MSS)
• Quick tips: How to use Process Street for ISO
• ISO & SOP (Standard Operating Procedures)
• ISO for BPM (Business Process Management)
• Continuous improvement: a central theme of ISO
• ISO templates index
• Agile ISO
• Automating ISO with Process Street
• Relevant case studies
• Further reading on ISO

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is ISO?
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LA Creative Technologies used Process Street to standardize its client onboarding offboarding process and project management across a distributed managed IT services team. Its workflows collected client information, routed work to the right roles, and adapted steps with conditional logic.

The case shows how an MSP client onboarding workflow can turn technical handoffs into repeatable execution while preserving customer input. The examples come from founder and CIO Josh Weiss and the team’s real workflows. LA Creative Technologies was acquired by Logic Technology Consulting Group in 2022.

Consumer Reports publishes an annual reliability survey, which includes data on over 470,000 cars.

In this report, owners of Tesla’s Model 3 experienced a number of problems, including chassis hardware, paint and trim related faults, indicative of a build quality that fell far shorter than expected standards set across the automotive industry. The Model 3 represents Tesla’s first real attempt at a mass-market electric vehicle, and the issues surrounding its launch created much frustration and controversy among electric vehicle enthusiasts.

This lack of quality assurance has lost at least one major $5 million order of Model 3 vehicles from a rental company, in relation to problems with the service and performance of previously purchased vehicles.

In an email, NextMove wrote:

“Tesla Model 3 vehicles, which NextMove was supposed to take over after payment and only a short examination, sometimes had serious defects: defective tires, paint and body damages, defective charge controllers, wrong wiring harnesses or missing emergency call buttons. Such quality defects would have endangered the safety of the customers and the profitability of NextMove.”

Stefan Moeller, Managing Director of NextMove, went on to say:

“We had to insist on compliance with general quality standards and processes in order to protect our renters and our business model.”

Why did Tesla have so many problems? Crucially, Tesla made the decision to deliver the product to market and sort out the issues later.

Basically, they didn’t have a strong enough system for managing quality.

We call these Quality Management Systems (QMS) – and they work.

The rest of the auto-industry follows a specific quality management system structure. It’s called ISO/TS 16949:2009 and it’s a variant of ISO 9001.

People follow quality management systems for various reasons; they improve quality first and foremost. But they also have a positive impact on the bottom line.

The return on investment (ROI) of a quality management system is typically impressive:

As a guide, a recent study undertaken through the American Society for Quality (ASQ) showed that for every $1 spent on your QMS, you could expect to see an additional $6 in revenue, a $16 reduction in costs, and a $3 increase in profits. On average, they saw that quality management reduced costs by 4.8% – ASQ

In this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at how ISO 9001 can be used to assure quality control across all types of organizations, with benefits like improved company performance, higher demand for products, and a competitive advantage towards increasing market share.

What we’ll cover:

• ISO 9001: Free templates!
• What is ISO 9001? A simple introduction
• Anatomy of ISO 9001: 2015 for Quality Management
• Quality management: What is it & why does it matter?
• ISO 9001 for continuous improvement
• Agile ISO
• What does it mean to be ISO 9001 certified?
• ISO 9001 audit
• Implement ISO 9001 with Process Street
• Related ISO standards

For the uninitiated, what is ISO 9001, as simply as possible?
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One of the most important things you can offer your customers and employees is consistency.

Your customers need consistency in your products and services, your employees need consistency to help them do their job efficiently, and your company needs consistency in order to continuously improve your policies and procedures.

The best way to make sure that you have consistency within your company is by implementing standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Most companies already have SOPs that their employees follow, but they’re either rarely updated, or they’re never even properly documented to begin with.

This is often because writing, reviewing, and regularly updating your SOPs can typically take a lot of time, especially when starting from scratch.

But thankfully, there are ways to make your job a lot easier.

That’s why in this Process Street article, we’ll go over the general guidelines for the SOP format and other ways you can streamline your processes to help you get started building your SOPs.

We’ll be covering:

• What is a standard operating procedure (SOP)?
• What does the SOP format look like?
• Should your company use an SOP template?
• Using Process Street to build your SOPs

If you’re simply looking for a SOP format to get started with, then look no further!
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This is a guest post by Sam Bocetta, a retired engineer and current freelance journalist who specializes in writing about cyber defense, data privacy, and online security.

Cybersecurity is a process, not an event.

Though there are some tools and systems that you can put in place to dramatically improve the security of your workflow, in reality the best way to protect yourself against hackers is to stay constantly vigilant for emerging threats.

For this reason, rigorous cybersecurity practices should be built into your general workflow. They should be an integral part of building a knowledge management system, and integrated into everyday business practices.

One of the most powerful ways of doing this, and one that will also ensure that you don’t miss anything important, is to use checklists to codify daily, weekly, and monthly security tasks.

This system should also clearly indicate responsibility for each task, and specify mitigation steps should any issues be found.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Building a security checklist
• Creating a security culture
• How to use Process Street to incorporate security into your workflows
• More information security resources

Before specifying the tasks that should be part of your security workflow, let’s look at why having a regular security checklist is so important.
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ISO 9001; you may have heard of it. You may be somewhat afraid of it. And, if you’re reading this article, chances are you’re probably at least somewhat confused about how to actually implement it.

It’s possible you even Googled something like “what is ISO 9001?”. Perhaps you felt you knew at one point, but the important bits never really stuck.

Well, with the 2015 updates to a whole range of ISO standards, it’s a lot less scary.

Before now, if you wanted to implement any ISO standard, you’d have to undertake a lengthy process involving unwieldy paper manuals and cumbersome bureaucratic procedure.

In short, ISO 9001 was hardly agile.

Now, you have far more flexibility to implement ISO 9001 the way that works for you best; with BPM software like Process Street to make things streamlined and simple.

This is why we’re presenting you with this handy overview of ISO 9001, including all of the essentials you need to get started.

We’ll cover how to combine structured compliance with the rapid process improvement of a startup, including:

• Free ISO 9001 Templates
• What is ISO 9001? The most popular QMS standard
• Benefits of implementing ISO 9001
• Quality management with ISO 9001: Key principles
• ISO 9001 certification: Is it necessary?
• Agile ISO 9001 in 5 simple steps
• More ISO resources

Before we dive in, here’s some free templates to help you hit the ground running!
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I’m very proud and excited to announce that Process Street has raised a $12M Series A for its no-code workflow app. Accel leads the round, with participation from Atlassian, Salesforce Ventures, and other amazing investors.

The funds will go towards our vision of building the GitHub of no-code, where teams around the world can find and use checklists, workflows, and automations to improve their productivity at work.

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The importance of the relationship between product and marketing is something that’s often overlooked.

But when the product and marketing teams aren’t on the same page regarding the product and the problems it aims to solve, chances are the marketing won’t match the product’s value proposition and in turn, will discourage potential users from signing up.

This could be detrimental to the success of a product organization.

So, what can you do to avoid these miscommunications and build a synergistic relationship between the two?

In this article, I’ll share some tips and information that will be critical in strengthening the relationship and performance of the product and marketing teams at your company to achieve success.

We will cover:

• What is product marketing?
• Understanding the product-first marketing approach
• Product marketing synergy
• Benefits of product marketing
• 3 Key elements to product marketing synergy
• How to use Process Street to strengthen product marketing strategy
• Product marketing synergy: The bottom-line

Let’s get started!
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Microsoft Visio is the industry standard for business process modeling, but you might want something different. Something a little more… agile. Just because it’s the most widely used, doesn’t mean it’s the best.

The main reason it’s so widely used is that it’s packaged with Office 365 and often comes pre-installed with enterprise tech suites.

If you’re tired of Visio’s lack of integration, lack of macOS compatibility, and sky-high price point, then you should consider investigating one of the many Visio alternatives out there (like Process Street!) and asking yourself what they can do for you.

There are a lot of options for different use cases; in this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best Visio alternatives and talk about why they might be a better choice.

Here’s a breakdown of the article:

• What is Microsoft Visio?
• What should business process modeling software be good at?
• Best Visio alternatives
• Using Process Street to implement business process modeling

You’re probably all-too-familiar with Microsoft Visio, but for the sake of clarity, let’s start with a quick overview.
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This is a guest post from Hugh Beaulac, a content strategist at MC2 who also works as a social media manager. With over 6 years of digital marketing experience, Hugh helps small and medium businesses grow online and likes to share his tips and tricks with top-notch marketing blogs like Wordstream, CrazyEgg, and Semrush. Follow him on Twitter to read his latest articles on Instagram marketing.

In the era of social media, when over 2.82 billion people have at least one social media account, email marketing isn’t the most obvious marketing tool.

It’s no wonder that more and more brands use social media platforms to promote their products and services as their target audience is active on these channels.

But here’s the thing: Although email is one of the oldest messaging channels, it still matters.

Why? Because nearly all social media users have active email accounts.

Recent Hubspot report claims that email marketing is still effective: 99% of customers check their email every day, 73% of people claim that email is the preferred communication channel to receive branded news and offers, and 59% of customers say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.

For marketers, this means that combining social media and email marketing is a must. And with the growing popularity of Instagram marketing, there’s a perfect way to connect with engaged users and get more email list subscribers.

In this Process Street article, we’re covering:

• Why use Instagram to get email list subscribers
• Make the most out of your Instagram bio
• Give your customers a reason to share an email
• Use Instagram Stories to promote sign-ups
• Reach potential subscribers who don’t follow
• Benefits of Instagram marketing
• The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Marketing

Let’s take a look at four effective ways to grow your email list with Instagram.
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