The following is a guest post by Billy Lucas. Billy is a passionate blogger sharing business tips on behalf of EngageBay. He writes primarily on SEO, email marketing, CRM, marketing automation and covers the entire gamut of marketing.

Every business wants to get the most out of its resources. Apart from making more profit, companies constantly strive towards reducing overall operational costs.

Technology has helped us in solving some of the most difficult problems where human power is just not enough, and for every big problem that is solved using technology, a number of other small problems are also solved.

Surviving in today’s competitive world requires businesses to efficiently utilize available resources and take appropriate strategic decisions. In order to prevent wastage of resources, many organizations are turning towards process automation solutions.

Business process automation has emerged as a way to carry out a number of tasks without the need for any manual input. IT departments in companies extensively use automation to efficiently provision technology resources, cut operational costs and optimize overall utilization.

The benefits of IT process automation are limitless. If you run a business or are thinking of setting one up, you should definitely consider incorporating process automation.

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Assigning team members to their tasks is a duty which is as vital as it is tedious.

Everyone pretty much knows what they should be doing, so there’s no need to directly assign them to everything when you could be spending time on more important tasks, right?

Wrong.

Human error (of which memory plays a huge part) affects 1/100 routine tasks where care is needed. This means that the people responsible either makes a mistake or forgets what they need to do (hence why documented processes are so important).

That’s why we here at Process Street have a role assignment feature in our checklists.

Role assignments let you dictate who each task in your process checklists needs to be assigned to without fail every time. All you need to do is set up the role which will have the task assigned, then Process Street does the rest.

Ready to assign your tasks without fail, fuss or tedious fiddling? Then let’s dive right in.

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The following is a guest post by Monique Danao, a writer for CandyBar and ReferralCandy.

How do you stand out in a crowded industry?

Do you create lots of sponsored content and team up with big influencers? Or, would you spend $100,000 on ad placement?

While these techniques can help your business gain exposure, will it lead to conversions?

There’s tons of marketing advice and posts on the Internet, but have you tried word-of-mouth marketing? It’s currently one of the most effective marketing tactics.

Why is word of mouth marketing powerful?

How often do you ask for recommendations in everyday conversations? How often do you discuss brands with friends and family? I bet you do a lot.

Before we make a purchase from a new brand, we ask about the experiences of people we know. We want to get their feedback because they’re the ones we trust the most.

This makes referrals super effective. Consumers are up to 50x more likely to buy a product if it’s recommended by close friends or family. In addition, 90 percent of customers trust word-of-mouth.

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This is a guest post by Nicole Cowart, an online marketing executive. She works at a cloud-based company that offers smart business solutions. She is currently studying for her Master’s degree in Web Development.

Digital marketing is the future of marketing and doing business. Most successful companies currently have their online websites and stores that generate more traffic.

Nevertheless, online marketing is also the right place for beginners who are taking their first steps in the business realm.

Even if you’re not a professional marketer, you can still design and execute a successful content strategy that helps you establish your status in the online world. All you need is a good process for it.

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A buggy Netflix account. A defective iPhone. Faulty B2B software.

There’s nothing more frustrating than when products and services encounter issues, or when they simply don’t work at all.

Consumers expect the products and services they buy to perform properly. After all, they’ve handed over their hard-earned money to the vendor in exchange for goods.

Who do consumers turn to for assistance? Customer support.

However, a customer-facing employee can only carry out excellent service if they’re onboarded correctly, fully trained, taught how to interact with customers, and given regular feedback on their performance.

If consumers aren’t impressed with their experience, they can churn immediately and leave negative reviews in their wake. Should the churn rate increase and harmful reviews accumulate, it could be the death knell of an entire business.

At Process Street, we know about – and strongly believe in – effective customer support. In fact, we operate a policy where each new employee must undergo a period of customer support experience, which amounts to a few weeks in total.

That’s why we created these 17 free templates for other teams.

The process templates featured in this free template pack will help strengthen any customer-facing team’s ability to perform successfully. From new employee training checklists to performance reviews, churn reduction checklists to a guide on responding to negative reviews, we’ve got your workflows covered.

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It is by no means easy for any organization to establish a strong identity.

It takes excellent leadership from the get-go to clearly define values, goals, and objectives that stakeholders can stand by and employees feel motivated to forward with consistent high-quality performance.

This is proving increasingly challenging for businesses as there is no clear solution, no clear method to getting it right.

But it’s time serious measures were taken to do something about it.

According to research by Deloitte, culture and engagement is the most important issue companies face around the world, with 87% of organizations citing culture and engagement as one of their top challenges, and 50% call the problem “very important.”

The importance of company culture has become increasingly important over the last couple of decades, as younger generations demand a work environment that feels nurturing, encourages collaboration, and offers challenges that keep them engaged and present opportunities to make a notable impact in some way.

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Organizations, including businesses, do not exist in a vacuum. Every organization is embedded in a wider web of societal, political, and environmental systems, that spans from smaller local networks to expansive and complex global systems.

As IAG puts it:

“Sustainability is neither a program nor an initiative, it’s considered simply good management.”

This statement recognizes the link between an organization and the social, environmental and economic wellbeing of the communities in which they operate.

An organization’s relationship to the society and wider environment in which they exist and operate is a key factor in their ability to succeed and thrive. It can also be an insight into their general performance.

ISO 26000 is a set of guiding principles for businesses and organizations to use to steer them in a more socially responsible direction.

In order to better contribute to the health and welfare of their supporting societies and environments, businesses must enforce principles of ethical and transparent behaviour.

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When it comes to running a business, particularly a SaaS company, understanding churn is vital.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s cut straight to the chase.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at:

• What is churn?
• How to calculate churn rate
• Churn examples: From Facebook to Twitter to HubSpot
• Why do customers churn?
• McKinsey’s 4 best practices to increase retention rates 15%
• 3 practical steps to reduce churn in your business
• The Harvard churn management algorithm
• Churn management resources to help you reduce churn
• Use Process Street to help you tackle churn in your business

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Offboarding a team member is never easy.

Relationships aside, the logistics of making sure that the ex-employee isn’t a security risk, their old tasks are accounted for and covered, and that there will be someone to take their place (with the appropriate training) is a tall order to meet.

That’s why this post will show you everything you need to know about offboarding an employee, including:

• Why offboarding is important
• How to effectively (and safely) offboard an employee
• How to make opportunities out of them leaving

I’ll even throw in some free templates you can follow to make sure that your offboarding goes right every time.

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We recently released 5 checklist templates designed specifically to help AppFolio users manage a handful of core property management workflows more effectively.

The following templates are a continuation of our effort to support property managers who are already using a software tool to manage their processes. This time we customized the templates for Propertyware users, with a focus on keeping rental processes running smoothly.