According to a survey performed by KPMG and Forrester only 34% of decision-makers say they feel confident in their data …

A sad state of affairs.

Fortunately for the 66% of decision-makers who cannot rely upon their data, there is an answer *drum roll please* . . . the Enlightenment . . . of data.✨

Who would’ve known a school of thought that revolutionized the 17th and 18th centuries could be harvested to optimize our present-day data management?

“The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason.” Dorinda Outram, Panorama of the Enlightenment

Governed by a philosophy of rationality the Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) made decisions based upon a single source of power or primary source of knowledge. The source of truth and knowledge in this instance was determined by the senses.

Single Source of Truth or SSOT, the focus of this Process Street blog post, also takes the sovereign approach.

However, rather than the senses, the sovereign power for SSOT is a reliance on un-replicated, autonomous, self-contained, and enhanced data.

To find out more about SSOT and how it can enlighten your data processes, keep reading.

Alternatively, to jump to a specific section of the post, click the appropriate link below.

• The path to Data Enlightenment
• ‎What is Single Source of Truth
• The role of data for Single Source of Truth
• ‎How to obtain a Single Source of Truth
• ‎Single Source of Truth in practice
• ‎Single Source of Truth is Data Enlightenment

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In our previous post – What is an SLA? How to Use Service-Level Agreements for Success – we gave you the complete lowdown on SLAs.

From learning what an SLA is to why you need one, and what goes in an SLA to the different types of SLAs available, you learned about the incredible usefulness of SLAs without the high-level, confusing baloney.

It piqued your interest, right?

Perhaps you even thought about making a shiny SLA template yourself, but realized creating an SLA is not exactly an easy endeavor.

Don’t worry.

I too know the difficulty involved with creating SLAs – but they’re needed. They’re there to establish trust and accountability, and at a time when 10 out of 15 companies are rapidly losing the trust of others, creating SLAs for your customers and clients will put you at a great advantage.

That’s why, in this post, I’ll be providing you with additional tips and tricks for creating, editing, and using SLA templates. You’ll also get your hands on easy-to-use Process Street SLA templates, from which you can create an infinite number of SLAs without hardly any effort (I’ll be focusing on one in particular)!

Just read through the sections below to get started:

• Free SLM and SLA templates
• What is the SLA definition?
• How is a service level agreement created?
• Using Process Street’s service level agreement template process
• SLA example templates to use as inspiration
• How Process Street can aid you with further SLA management!

Let’s get rocking and rolling.

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“Productivity vs efficiency; which do you think is more important?“

A colleague asked me this the other day and I had to catch myself, because my initial response was:

“Aren’t they the same thing?“

That’s the problem – the words have become so overused and confused that they are almost taken to mean the exact same thing in casual conversation. There are, however, key differences between the two that you should know in order to correctly analyze the performance of something.

Simply put, productivity measures output over time whereas efficiency measures input versus output. Together they can tell you how quickly something is completed, the resources it takes to get there, and (through analysis) whether the whole thing is worth your investment.

There are also dangers associated with these metrics. For example, I tried to spend an hour every night working on one of many projects. Monday was playing guitar, Tuesday was physical drawing, Wednesday game development, Thursday digital drawing, Friday playing piano, and the weekend dealer’s choice.

Not only did I give up within a week and a half, but I couldn’t muster the motivation to do any work on any of my projects for weeks following. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the best productivity apps around; when you’re using productivity and efficiency as your goal, rather than the method to reach it, something will inevitably break underneath you.

So, in this post I’ll go through:

• What is productivity?
• What is efficiency?
• Productivity vs efficiency: Which should you focus on?
• Productivity vs efficiency: What’s the final result?

It’s time to analyze performance and improve your workflows without all the meaningless jargon. Let’s get started.

Some workflow apps you might be using to help manage your processes require constant attention – reporting, updating, or having to contact other colleagues to get them to complete their section of the workflow.

These are interruptions, and according to Professor Gloria Marks from the University of California, with each interruption, there is an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds wasted to get back to the task.

Other workflows experience inefficiencies simply because your current processes take too long. Full stop.

The more time things take, the more work you have to do.

In this article, we’ll guide you through a series of tools which can help you create workflows, follow workflows, and automate workflows.

• Workflow apps for creating templates
• Workflow apps for task management
• Workflow apps for communication
• Workflow apps for storage
• Workflow apps for recording ideas
• Workflow apps for automated reporting
• Workflow apps for task delegation
• Workflow apps for process automation
• Workflow apps for dual-screening
• Start streamlining your processes with workflow apps

Joseph Juran, the Architect of Quality, paved the way for the active pursuit of quality in Business with the Juran Trilogy.

The Juran Trilogy redefined quality management; reducing chronic defects and the costs associated below a 20% industry expectation.

The Juran Trilogy has been shown to give benefits across multiple parameters, increasing productivity, reducing cycle-times, improving human safety, and reducing product failure rates – with a 80% reduction in some cases.

For us as Process Street, the Juran Trilogy is one of our favorite tools for improving business operations. It’s a straightforward methodology that brings results.

Learn how to apply the Juran Trilogy for your business, and improve the quality of operations. Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is the Juran Trilogy?
• Using the Juran Trilogy for quality control: Quality planning, control and improvement
• Implementing the Juran Trilogy using Process Street
• Juran Trilogy examples: Quality improvement in the real world

Let’s get started!

I lost $45,000 because I didn’t have a statement of work in place.

What makes it worse (or perhaps better?!) is that it wasn’t even my money.

It was my previous employer’s.

I was managing a website build for a big client and was under huge pressure to meet a tight deadline. So, as many do, I decided to start the project before the client signed the Statement of Work (SoW).

This was a big, expensive, mistake to make.

It cost an additional $45,000 to re-work parts of the build that the client had verbally approved, but hadn’t legally signed off.

Ouch.

(Despite what you might think, this isn’t the reason I don’t work there anymore!)

According to research, 37% of projects fail due to a lack of defined and approved project goals and objectives, which come with a Statement of Work (SoW). This causes around 80% of organizations to spend at least half their time on expensive rework.

“Not using a Statement of Work – SOW during the project initiation is a major cause of project failure” – 4PM, Statement of Work – SOW

But what is a Statement of Work (SoW) and how do you create one?

All will be revealed in this Process Street post, as we go through:

• What a Statement of Work (SoW) is
• Why bother with a Statement of Work (SoW)
• How to create a Statement of Work (SoW)

If you’re in a hurry, grab this free Statement of Work Process Template now, and catch up with the rest of the post when you can:

Click here to access the Statement of Work (SoW) Process Template!

Otherwise, keep reading and we’ll go through this template, in a little more detail, later.

Let’s get into it!

An employee feedback loop can be a great tool if you’re trying to improve the quality of your products or boost the satisfaction of your employees.

There are numerous benefits to gathering and utilizing feedback but there are also several key things to remember that will help you make your feedback loops as effective as possible.

We will look at the different types of feedback loops, how they can positively impact businesses, and the best practices for making them work the first time, every time.

According to ITSMA and Vision Edge Marketing, 74% of marketers don’t keep track of their efforts. This is problematic as it means marketing teams aren’t able to report on how their efforts impact the business as a whole.

At Process Street, we make sure our marketing operations are documented, tracked, and easy to understand, so we can stay on top of our marketing OKRs and ensure they align with top-level company goals. To do this, we utilize Process Street‘s saved view feature.

The saved view gives a summary of workflow data. You can customize these views and present the data to suit your needs. For our marketing team, this means work is tracked and can be easily correlated with internal OKRs. Saved views have helped our marketers gather data, detect patterns, and keep their work on track.

We’ll be covering:

• What are Process Street reports and saved views?
• How our marketing department uses saved views in Process Street’s reports

Let’s get started!
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Let’s get straight to the point – you’re probably searching for a policy and procedure template you can use.

Moreover, if you want an actionable policy and procedure template, you can find two hand-crafted examples below. One is a blueprint you can use to build your own, and the other is a filled-out example of the first, using a fictional company called Brightstar Marketing.

In fact, both can be easily edited and updated by you inside Process Street.

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Whether starting a business or trying to improve an existing one, you have to understand how things will get done. Writing standard operating procedures can seem complicated on the surface, but with some thought, the process can be easy.

Start by answering the following questions: What tasks do you need to do? Who needs to do them? What are the best ways to approach these tasks?

This will be your first step toward systemizing your business. Consequently, creating processes and workflows will define how your day-to-day activities function.

One popular approach is the creation of SOPs (standard operating procedures). But what exactly are SOPs?

Read through these sections to get clued up:

• What is an SOP?
• Writing standard operating procedures: A quick how-to guide
• Examples of Process Street’s fully-written and usable SOPs
• Ensure your SOPs adhere to ISO standards