Jonathan Bond is a Process Street Staff Product Designer, Star Wars fan, and human problem solver. Reach him on Twitter @jrbond.

The path you actually take in life is often wildly different from the one you thought you’d take. I spent years undertaking a fine arts degree. However, after I graduated, I wanted to get my hands metaphorically dirty (and literally cleaner — goodbye, paint!) by going into graphic design.

Initially, I bounced between various agencies doing what you’d expect any freelance graphic designer to do: logos and websites. While it was interesting and paid the bills, there was a new buzzword on the block in 2010 that sounded even more exciting: UX.

“A user interface is like a joke.
If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”
– Martin LeBlanc, CEO

User experience (UX) design is focused on the individual thoughts about a product or service a person might have. It takes into consideration qualitative data like the user’s emotions and attitudes towards a product, as well as the more practical elements like ease of use, efficiency, and so on.

The more I read about UX design, the more I liked what I read. I felt it fit my own design philosophy; I just connected with it. This was something I wanted to be involved in.

As luck would have it, a company that wanted someone to improve their app’s aesthetic hired me to be involved with that. I still didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I kept reading and studying, and ten years later, I’m still doing that – now at Process Street.

This post will cover:

• Product design at Process Street
• The details make the (UX) design
• You are not your user

Let’s begin!
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A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the way in which a company brings a product or service to market.

No matter how good your idea is, you need a go-to-market strategy.

Why?

Because statistically speaking, your business is more likely to fail than succeed.

In fact, if you’re a startup, your chance of failure is a dreary 90%. That’s not to say that your idea isn’t a brilliant one, or that you haven’t got what it takes to bring it to market.

Startups fail for different reasons. Perhaps the market is already awash with companies offering the same solution as yours, or the market isn’t mature enough to welcome your product. Or, maybe the cost of developing and launching your product is so steep that it’s unprofitable.

If successful, a go-to-market strategy will be your salvation and prevent you from failure. The question is, how do you develop a winning strategy? Which factors should you consider?

I asked our VP of Marketing Bryan Sise these very questions. Through the course of his career at companies like Twilio, SendGrid, Twitter, Dynamic Signal, and now Process Street, Bryan has noticed what contributes to GTM success.

In this post I’ll share with you what he has to say. I’ll cover what a go-to-market strategy is, types of go-to-market strategies, the key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy, and what GTM strategies we use here at Process Street.

• What is a go-to-market strategy?
• 6 factors to consider when building a go-to-market strategy
• Types of go-to-market strategies
• Key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy
• Go-to-market strategies at Process Street

Let’s get strategizing.
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Nouman provides ghostwriting and copywriting services. His educational background in the technical field and business studies helps him in tackling topics ranging from career and business productivity to web development and digital marketing. He occasionally writes articles for carpet cleaning.

Working from home has become the new normal. However, it can be difficult to ensure productivity when you work at home.

Although the concept of a traditional office is no more, we all require a dedicated workspace to get things done.

If you are having trouble staying productive while working from home, then chances are that you need to set up a home workspace that inspires productivity. Not many people realize just how important it is to have a dedicated workspace.

According to data, workspace design plays a huge role in our productivity levels.

The question is: How can you design your workspace in such a way that boosts creativity, connection, and productivity? Fortunately, this Process Street blog post is here to help. There is no need to worry as this guide will provide you with all the information you need to feel motivated to work.

When you decide to work remotely, you need to understand that it comes with a fair share of complications. The main of which involves setting up your home workspace to ensure maximum productivity. Fortunately for you, this article is here to help you get started.

• Getting started with your home workspace
• Setting up a home workspace: Top tips from a small business owner
• Setting up a home workspace: Top tips from an SEO team lead
• Setting up a home workspace: Top tips from a graphic designer
• Key takeaway: Set up the perfect home workspace to boost productivity

Let’s jump right in!
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This is a guest post by Michael Zipursky, CEO of Consulting Success® and Coach to Consultants. He has advised organizations like Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, and helped Panasonic launch new products into global markets. Michael is also the author of the Amazon Best Sellers ACT NOW: How successful consultants thrive during chaos and uncertainty, The Elite Consulting Mind and Consulting Success® the book.

You know the feeling; you’d love to take a vacation and a break from your business…

…but there’s no one to handle the day-to-day operations for you.

You’ve built up years of experience, and you feel like you’re the only one who can run the show. I know, because I’ve been there. Early on in my career, I was convinced I could do everything.

I told myself I was better than anyone at the work I did. It would take me too long to train anyone up to my level. I persuaded myself that this was true…but I was wrong. I could have certainly taught someone else – and it would have saved me a lot of time and energy to focus on higher-value work.

Studies indicate that business system documentation can boost productivity and save up to 6,000 hours per year, equating to 2.4 full-time staff positions.

On top of this, documenting systems and processes builds a foundation to train new team members so that your business can run without you involved in the day-to-day operations.

By the end of this Process Street article, you’ll understand why it’s so important to document systems and processes, see some real-life examples and learn how to do it in your business.

• Business system documentation: What it is and why it is important
• Document your most common business systems
• Documenting systems for clients: Network Reactivation Campaign example
• Frequently asked questions about business systems development
• Using Process Street and process documentation for business system development

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90% of customers feel that the companies they buy from could do better when it comes to how they experience onboarding.

Customer success is about helping your customers understand and leverage the value of your product; you’re basically helping them achieve their goals. In a sense it’s one step beyond traditional customer support, taking a proactive approach to understanding and addressing customer needs.

A key component of customer success is making sure your customers are effectively onboarded.

Onboarding provides a unique opportunity for the CS team to nurture and address the key needs of a new customer, and an effective onboarding program can mean the difference between a long-term customer and a rapid churn.

For customer success teams to succeed with onboarding, CS managers should drive clear best practices and use well-structured processes to make onboarding as effortless as possible for everyone involved.

In this Process Street article, we’ll dive into:

• Customer success onboarding best practices
• Designing your customer success onboarding framework
• The customer onboarding process
• Measuring success with key customer success onboarding metrics

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The other day, my household experienced one of the great tragedies of the home delivery era: our grocery delivery was canceled.

You know what that means. I had to go to the grocery store. Like, physically, in person, go inside the grocery store.

I survived, but phew. Let’s just say there were a few close calls.

All in all, though, it was a successful trip. I picked up a couple of prescriptions, had an eye exam, switched the pet insurance, got some advice about first-time homeownership, and even remembered to get dinner fixins. I would’ve gotten my oil changed and tires rotated, too, but I don’t have a car so… Yeah. I didn’t do that.

This is what economies of scope look like. Economies of scope are when it’s more cost-effective to produce related items together than it is to produce them individually. In the 21st century economy, it’s also an increasingly familiar model as brands continue to expand their offerings to consumers.

As a consumer, this model is great. We don’t have to run around all over the place to take care of all our responsibilities. For companies, it’s not a bad model, either.

Economies of scope – offering all of these services under one roof – companies are actually spending less by offering more.

But wait – how does that work?

Well, I’ll tell you:

• What do we mean by economies of scope?
• Economies of scope: Pros and cons
• Economies of scope vs economies of scale
• Economies of scope in action
• If all your friends jumped off a bridge…

Welcome to Process Street! Right this way, please.
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When you’re doing any kind of content marketing, you want to be able to understand how well you’re doing. You want to be able to look at the performance of the content you’re creating and feel assurance that you’re:

1. Driving forward key goals and objectives tied to your content strategy;
2. Continuously optimizing and improving the quality of your content in order to hit those goals.

Especially when you’re creating this kind of content that involves a degree of creative input (writing!) it can be difficult to measure quality.

This is where maturity models come in. Maturity models can be a great way to build and assess how successful an organization or system is at achieving continuous improvement.

Ultimately, it’s the idea that you’re constantly seeking to test and improve the way in which your organization runs. You’re not standing still.

We’ve written before about more generally applicable Capability Maturity Models, but this post takes a look at our internal Blog Asset Maturity Model (BAMM) process that we use to audit and continuously improve the quality of our blog content.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:

• How to assess content quality
• Content marketing metrics to measure success
• What exactly is a maturity model?
• Our internal process for quality control: The BAMM review
• Using processes to systematize content creation – more reliable and higher quality

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This is a guest post written by Kashyap Trivedi. Kashyap is a Project Manager, working with an awesome team at Launch Space. He helps SaaS companies conquer the SERPs with Expert Outreach. When he is not working, you’ll find him playing Table Tennis or Meditating.

The Sales, Marketing, and Support teams form the three significant points of a business’ interactions with customers. Because of this, they must work together to create a seamless transition for the customers that are moving from one stage of the buying process to another.

When all three teams work together in sync, they can easily help each other to reach organizational goals quickly. This article will show you how these three teams can work together and how your business can benefit from it. To jump to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below.

• How the Sales team can help the Marketing & Support teams
• How the Marketing team can support the Sales & Support teams
• How the Support team can help the Marketing & Sales Teams
• Designing a perfect process for an optimized Sales, Marketing, and Support team sync
• Using Process Street for synchronized cross-departmental collaboration
• Cross-departmental collaboration: Key takeaways

Let’s start with Sales.
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Who resolved to read more this year? ✋

Who actually has?

Let’s be honest: you’re never actually going to make it through that folder of bookmarked articles you’ve been collecting since last year. Hey – not judging. I’ve been cultivating my own To Be Read monolith for months.

So what’s the deal? How do you catch up with all those industry insights, actionable advice articles, and entrepreneurial retrospectives when there never seems to be any time to, y’know, read?

Simple: let us read them for you.

Introducing Tech Out Loud – the coolest podcast around bringing those must-read articles directly into your waiting ears.
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There are plenty of great quotes from inspirational leaders that perfectly sum up the importance of workforce planning, but in my mind, none of them quite capture it like this one:

“Making a plan without the right tools is like making spaghetti without a pot.” – Kris Hughes, Content Strategy Consultant

You are absolutely not going to be making any spaghetti without a pot, or at least a pot-like vessel that will hold boiling water in a way so as not to burn the crap out of your hands in the process. When it comes to workforce planning, the spaghetti is your business and the pot…

Okay. I took the simile too far. You get the picture: if your business doesn’t have the right people in the right place, you got nothing.

Think beyond that: if the right people don’t stay or aren’t being utilized properly, you still don’t have a pot to… make spaghetti in.

There is a lot out there about workforce planning, and by a lot I mean, a frickin lot. It’s my job to do research and even I got a little dizzy trying to sort through all the different takes on what is or isn’t or could be/might be the best way to manage your workforce.

This post aims to simplify all that. I’ll cover the foundations of workforce planning, specific considerations for remote work, and examine some common methods for finding the right approach for your organization.

This Process Street post is designed so you can jump straight to the info you need to know, so feel free to skip ahead.

• Workforce planning foundations
• Challenges for remote workforce planning
• Future-back planning process
• Recruit, retain, reinforce
• Workforce management tools

Let’s get planning!
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