Fleet management is so much more than simply owning and operating vehicles. It’s a complex interplay of many different factors and optimizations – much like the concept of business process management.

In recent years, more and more tools for fleet management optimization are emerging. Fleet management is changing.

Projected growth of the fleet management industry to about $30 billion by 2022 is largely driven by advances in technology – and the rate at which fleet management companies adopt this emerging technology will largely impact the rate of this projected growth.

And it seems fleet management companies are aware of this.

The National Conference of State Fleet Administrators (NCSFA) recommended in a 2018 survey of 44 state and university fleet participants that fleet management companies begin implementing “robust fleet management policies and procedures” as well as “accelerating the implementation of technology to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of fleet management practices”.

That same survey showed that 38% of repairs and 39% of preventative maintenance work were insourced, on top of the in-house work that is done as part of routine fleet management. Just another incentive to tighten up your processes and streamline all of that manual work with a good, solid process.

In this article, we’ll be looking at how you can use Process Street to implement robust fleet management policies and procedures. I’ll cover:

• What is fleet management?
• What is fleet management software?
• Fleet management templates
• Using Process Street for fleet management

Let’s start by making sure we’re all on the same page; what exactly is fleet management?
Continue Reading

Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder and President of Arkenea. Rahul has been featured as a technology thought leader in numerous media channels such as Bloomberg TV, Forbes, HuffPost, Inc, among others.

Several organizations use a wide range of tools for execution and monitoring of their internal processes. These systems are interfaced by human agents who pass on the data output from one system as input to the next system in the pipeline.

Because of the non-automatic nature of manual execution, manual data entry work makes these processes slow and error-prone.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had these interfaces taken care of automatically?

That’s right, we are talking about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – a transformational paradigm that optimizes such processes by automating repetitive, rule-driven tasks.

According to Forrester Research, RPA market revenue is expected to gross $1 Billion USD in 2019.

With RPA and by using RPA tools, your internal processes can be finished faster and more efficiently. It would free your agents from trivial data entry and data exchange tasks so you could deploy them to do more strategic process initiatives.

In this article, we at Process Street will present 5 best practices for RPA. We will then introduce our favorite RPA tools, so you can walk away with actionable robotically automated processes.

This article has been structured as the following:

• How does Robotic Process Automation eliminate tasks from structured environments?
• Software silos and how they affect your teams
• How to break silos with the implementation of Robotic Process Automation
• How to achieve exceptional results with Robotic Process Automation implementation
• RPA tools: Process Street’s top four RPA tools
• How you can use Process Street’s RPA tool capabilities

Let’s get started!

Note that RPA does not aim to eliminate jobs. It aims to reduce the burden of mundane and repetitive tasks of the existing staff so they can work on more strategic initiatives.
Continue Reading

Perhaps you’ve heard about checklists. Perhaps you know someone who uses checklist templates. Who knows, you may even have a simple checklist template or two you use in your own business.

Chances are, if you clicked this link, you’re interested in learning about simple checklist templates. Or specifically, how you can use them to run your business more efficiently.

You probably already know the basics – why checklists are useful, and the value of using a BPM software like Process Street. But you want more.

You want to know the essential checklists, the ones all the top CEOs and successful executives are using. You want ready-made checklists that will save you time, money, and confusion, and you want to learn about some of the immediate benefits of using simple checklist templates, straight from the mouths of those who have used them to run successful businesses of their own.

Well, you clicked to the right article. Here, I’ll be looking at an extensive correspondence between our content team and a number of successful SMB owners who just happen to be simple checklist template champions.

Whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, or otherwise, we’ve devised this article as a resource that will help you understand how you can use simple checklist templates in your business.

Breaking it down, we’ll look at:

• Benefits of simple checklist templates
• What simple checklist templates are successful business owners using?
• Simple checklist template essentials: Recommendations from top business owners
• How to build a simple checklist template with Process Street

But first, what is simple checklist template, anyway?
Continue Reading

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)” – Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Juvenal), Roman satiric poet

We’ve spoken before about the importance of meeting high standards with your work.

We’ve also covered, in detail, how failure to comply with industry standards and bad processes cost Zenefits $7,000,000.

This all happened because they weren’t meeting the standards they should have been with their internal processes.

To help stop you from falling afoul of the same fate, we here at Process Street will be covering compliance audits in this post. These are the guidelines that you will need to follow to avoid penalties from external sources for not doing your work satisfactorily.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in – compliance audits are there to make sure that your customers are getting a satisfactory (or, at least reasonable) service.

We’ll cover:

• What is a compliance audit?
• Why is audit compliance important?
• Compliance audit types
• How to prepare for a compliance audit
• Process Street: The natural compliance audit software

Let’s get right into it.

Continue Reading

Deadlines.

Meetings.

Presentations.

As an employee and business owner, your agenda is jam-packed full of to-dos. It can sometimes be difficult to stay afloat. This is why we at Process Street have created this article to make your working life a lot easier.

We’re going to look at making checklists for the effective management of your work.

We asked business owners and employees across the globe: What tips or tricks would you give someone for making checklists?

We gathered our responses, sieved out significant commonalities, and wrapped up our findings to produce this article.

Click on a subheader to jump to any section, or scroll down to read a full in-depth account on making checklists.

• ‎Making checklists: Why use checklists?
• Making checklists: Tip 1 – Split up your large projects
• Making checklists: Tip 2 – Keep your checklists manageable
• Making checklists: Tip 3 – Group your tasks
• Making checklists: Tip 4 – Keep a record
• Making checklists: Tip 5 – Regularly update your checklists
• More tips for your checklist templates
• How to make superpowered checklists using Process Street

Continue Reading

How do you stand out against overwhelming competition? You need an edge; a value proposition isn’t enough on its own.

You need to make sure you’re out-competing the competition by keeping costs down and understanding the value you’re delivering to your customer. But how do you continuously improve your value offering while keeping costs down?

Enter the value chain.

A value chain is a model of looking at all of your business processes and figuring out how to gain a competitive advantage by focusing on developing maximum value in your product or service, while keeping your profit margins in the green at the same time.

Originally proposed by Harvard’s Michael Porter in his 1998 book Competitive Advantage, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Where do you start? What’s the process? What kind of tools exist to make the value chain analysis easier?

Well, if you’re looking for a clear, concise introduction to Michael Porter’s Value Chain model, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for a breakdown of:

• What is a value chain?
• Michael Porter’s original value chain model
• Value chain analysis
• Benefits of value chain analysis
• Value chain analysis process
• Value chain vs supply chain
• Porter’s primary value chain components
• Porter’s secondary value chain components
• Bonus: Porter’s Five Forces

By the end of this article, you should have a firm grasp on the value chain model, with a better idea of how to apply it to your own business. We’ll also investigate how to integrate BPM software like Process Street into the value chain.
Continue Reading

What are audit procedures? Can you define the term with a single definition?

How are audit procedures relevant to your business?

How would you go about implementing audit procedures?

I will stop with the interrogation. I hope though, I have you thinking – I mean really thinking – about the term audit procedure. From my own experience, most people hear the term audit and have a general idea of what this is. But when it comes to defining the term or implementing audit procedures in a business, they struggle.

If you are one of those people, then luck is in your favor for having stumbled on this article. In this article, we at Process Street will take a look at audit procedures, define what they are and how they are implemented.
We then turn our attention to a specific type of audit procedure, namely, the internal audit. Finally, I will introduce to you Process Street’s new, game-changing feature: approvals.

This article is structured as below:

• Audit procedures: What are they?
• Audit procedures: The auditing process
• Audit procedures: Four different types of auditing opinion
• Internal audit: What is an internal audit
• Internal audit: The benefits internal audits bring to your business
• Internal audit: Disasters caused by internal audit neglect
• How you can use Process Street to conduct an internal audit for your business
• Process Street’s approvals feature and its use-value for internal audits
• A whistle-stop tour through Process Street’s free internal audit template resources

In the section A whistle-stop tour through Process Street’s free internal audit templates, you are presented with 19 free templates. I have listed these templates below so that you can plunge right in. Keep reading for more information on each template.

1. Financial Audit Checklist
2. Environmental Accounting Internal Audit
3. Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist
4. Management Systems Audit Checklist
5. ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 Integrated Management System (IMS) Checklist
6. ISO 9001:2015 Internal Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems
7. PPC Audit Checklist
8. Google Analytics Audit
9. Technical SEO Audit
10. UX Audit
11. ISO 27001 Information Security Management System (ISO27K ISMS) Audit Checklist
12. SQL Server Audit Checklist
13. Firewall Audit Checklist
14. Network SecurityAudit Checklist
15. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Audit Checklist
16. Diversity Management Monthly Audit
17. Hotel Sustainability Audit
18. Laboratory Safety Procedure Audit
19. Retail Store Audit Checklist

Shall we get started?
Continue Reading

Hard work doesn’t always guarantee success.

With that bombshell, you may be wondering “If hard work isn’t enough, what should I do to help my business succeed?!”

The answer’s simple: VRIO.

VRIO isn’t the latest must-have app or some new fad – it’s an incredibly useful business framework and analysis tool for understanding whether your business has the capabilities and resources to thrive in the long-term.

Considering that following a VRIO framework could bolster your growth, increase revenue, ensure you’re always one-step-ahead of the competition, and keep your business better organized, VRIO isn’t a process to be dismissed.

But if it’s the first time hearing about VRIO, have no fear.

I’ve got you covered.

In this post, I’ll go into the definition of VRIO, tell you how it was conceived, explain the four dimensions that make up the VRIO framework, and tell you the best times to undergo VRIO so your business can reap its rewards. Simply read the following sections to get to grips with it:

• What is VRIO?
• Where did the VRIO framework come from?
• When’s the best time to undergo VRIO analysis?
• The VRIO framework: Value, rarity, imitability, and organization
• Use Process Street for continuous business success!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Continue Reading

Did you know that 69% of millennials would rather make $50k a year at a job they love, than $75k a year at a job that they think is boring?

On top of that, the cost to the US economy of a disengaged, dissatisfied employee can be up to $500 billion a year.

So how do you make sure that you provide an enjoyable position, one that addresses the needs of an employee at all levels, whilst also working with your company goals?

The answer is by adopting our HR best practices, which are detailed below.

At Process Street, we recognize the hr department as a kind of middle man between your business and your employee. By adopting our HR best practices, it ensures that a balance between your business and employee is obtained.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

• HR meaning: Understanding what HR is
• HR: A brief history
• Good HR practices and the benefits they can bring to your business
• The best HR practices used in business today
• Unique human resource practices 
• How you can implement the best HR practices

At the end of this article, you will be presented with a set of free to use templates, to help you implement the best HR processes within your business today.

Ready to get started?

Continue Reading

From humble beginnings as a simple clone of the then-popular first-person shooter Quake, Half-Life would eventually become the first installment of one of the most successful video game series of all time.

Today, Valve Inc. is one of the most renowned, innovative, and successful game development companies worldwide, boasting one of the largest video game digital distribution service platforms on the planet, a range of pioneering virtual reality hardware and an impressive roster of instantly recognizable and widely-loved game titles.

Specifically, the development of the original Half-Life makes for an interesting case-study, and represents a model of innovative agile organizational management.

Half-Life is remembered as one of the best games of all time, and the intense environment in which it was created – where the Cabal process was born – is testament to that legacy.

Companies like Valve, Zappos, Semco, and even Google have come up with different models to enable the potential of their workers. These methods give power to the employees to pursue their own entrepreneurial pet projects.

Tesla’s innovation is equal part production process as it is the product; you need only look to the hulking Gigafactories to find evidence of this.

Similarly, Facebook’s success is not just in the service it offers users, but also how it was designed to scale to billions of users.

The process of organizational management is always an important factor in the outcome of these hugely successful products.

In this post I’ll be looking at democratic methods of organizational management, with a particular focus on Valve’s Cabal process. I’ll also mention a couple of other interesting examples of holocratic organizational management, and talk about our own internal structure at Process Street.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each section, if you want to jump ahead:

• What is organizational management?
• Valve’s Cabal game design process
• Zappo’s holocratic organizational management system
• Semco’s organizational management success story
• How digital democracy plays a role in organizational management
• Process Street’s organizational management structure

Continue Reading