Ecommerce is a massive sector, with a projected value of $4.5 trillion by 2021. However, without the proper ecommerce processes in place, it’s more than easy to fail before you even get close to selling your first product.

And have you ever heard:

“That’s fantastic! Have you thought about selling those?”

We’ve all had a moment of inspiration for our own online store. Whether (like me) you took up a new hobby (crochet) and showed your project to a family member (my gran) or you stumbled across a cheap source for a certain product, the lure of online sales is difficult to ignore.

“… data from Statista anticipates a 246.15% increase in worldwide ecommerce sales, from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $4.5 trillion in 2021. That’s a nearly threefold lift in online revenue.” – Aaron Orendorff, Global Ecommerce: Statistics and International Growth Trends

That’s why we here at Process Street have put together this ecommerce processes pack. These templates will provide you with detailed instructions on how to do everything from setting up an online store to listing products, designing a logo, and promoting your content.

Better yet, every last process is completely free!

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s start selling!

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Are you in need of some workflow examples to make your teams smarter?

But what makes a team smart?

Several things do, but powerful workflows are one critical ingredient which makes teams smart.

Teams that use workflows don’t set goals and simply hope to reach them; they create checklists (workflows) to make sure they reach their goals.

No wonder 50% of businesses that use workflow management systems say the results are substantial.

It’s incredible.

Teams that use workflows are super organized and able to perform daunting tasks — no matter the long processes involved.

But what types of workflows should you be using this year?

It’s different for every organization; workflow systems are not always one-size-fits-all. But these nine Process Street workflow examples should give you inspiration for how you can build important systems to run your business with.

Our workflow examples:

1. Employee onboarding workflow
2. Customer support workflows
3. Customer onboarding workflows
4. Content marketing or writing workflows
5. Podcast publishing workflows
6. Request and approval workflows
7. Travel workflows
8. Content promotion workflow
9. Standup meeting workflows

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Overlooking task automation is losing you money

According to Harvard Business Review, marketing executives are losing 10-15% of their time due to not automating simple tasks.

Task automation should already be saving you huge amounts of time and effort.

If it’s not, I can only assume that’s because you’re not using it!

If you’re a heavy user of different SaaS platforms, you’ve probably grown tired of having to jump back and forth from one to another to perform simple tasks.

Would it not be easier if you could click one button and the different platforms just spoke to each other and got the job done for you?

Yes, it obviously would be.

In fact, according to Chui, Manyika, and Miremadi writing in the Harvard Business Review, not only could a marketing executive be automating activities which account for between 10-15% of their current time using existing technology, but for 60% of existing US jobs, 30% of their time could be reduced by automation.

You can read the full report, Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation, at McKinsey.

Note, that this important study is already over a year old, and the speed of technological advancements in available automation software has likely caused those given percentages to rise even further.

Task automation is where you doing one task results in multiple tasks being done. Bit of a mouthful, but let me give an example…

Or, if you want to watch a step by step example, check out this Process Street video about automating client onboarding.

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We love process documentation.

But what is a process, exactly? Technically speaking, you can boil just about anything down to a process. Here are a few examples of some processes that you might find in your everyday life.

• Hiring or firing someone
• Conducting a meeting
• Creating a weekly blog post
• Cooking a meal
• Pouring a glass of milk

Everything is a process, but some are certainly more straightforward than others. Either way, document all of them! Well, maybe not the glass of milk one…

For the rest, let’s look at some process documentation best practices:

• Why do I need to document my company’s processes?
• How do I start documenting a process?
• Share your process documentation

Alright, so your most recent marketing campaign has generated a ton of interest among your target consumers.

You’ve seen a huge spike in web traffic, mailing list subscribers, and your social media following.

But, despite all this, you still aren’t seeing much of an increase in the area that really matters:

Sales numbers.

It’s a disheartening feeling, for sure – especially considering how high your hopes were after seeing such a huge spike in traffic and engagement.

If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone.

According to data collected by HubSpot, 79% of marketing qualified leads never end up converting. In other words, nearly four of every five people who show a genuine interest in a given brand end up walking away without making a purchase from said company.

Now, one of the main reasons this number is so high is because many companies implement sub-par strategies for nurturing these qualified leads – if they implement lead-nurturing strategies at all.

On the bright side of things, this means that if you focus heavily on nurturing your qualified leads, you’ll almost definitely be doing more than your competitors are in terms of providing value to your target customers.

In this article, we’re going to focus on how to use email workflows as part of your marketing strategy to nurture leads and increase their probability of converting into paying customers.

Before we get into the best practices for creating automated email workflows, we first need to explain exactly what email workflows are, and how using them can benefit your company.

Let’s get started.

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Business systemization gained notoriety from the bestselling book by Michael E. Gerber, published in 1986, The E-Myth – Why most businesses don’t work and what to do about it. In 2011, this groundbreaking book was named the number 1 business book of all time by The Wall Street Journal. In The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) Gerber explains how businesses are usually started by those who know the content of a business – so-called “Technicians”, people who know how to do the technical work involved in an enterprise – rather than by those who know business itself – so-called “Entrepreneurs” – and why start-ups are therefore by definition prone to failing.

In order for a company or business to thrive, it must move beyond relying on the so-called “Technician” who is now also the company owner. Gerber uses the franchise model to demonstrate how a business does this: Franchises are prototype businesses that are operated in terms of well-documented systems, i.e., there are manuals describing in minute detail how to run the business. Gerber argues that the entrepreneur should spend time creating a business that can run by itself, without the presence of the entrepreneur, and this is achieved through business systemization.

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British Airways chief executive described the incident as “catastrophic” as 800 flights were canceled and 75,000 travelers were affected.

Flight compensation website flightright.com estimated that British Airways would have to pay around €61m to passengers for refunds alone under EU legislation. Add to this the cost of reimbursing angry passengers for unexpected hotel stays and other inconveniences, and the total financial damage to British Airways has been estimated at £100m.

Why? Someone turned their data center off and on again.

The entire airline was down for almost 2 days. This wasn’t a natural disaster, it was a process failure.

In this article, we’ll explore how to spot process failures before they occur using a system called Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). We’ll assess an overview and then delve in deeper to ground our understanding and include a premade Process Street FMEA template to help you run your own assessments in future.

In this article we’ll cover:

• Your free FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) template
• FMEA? What is Failure Mode and Effects Analysis?
• When do we use FMEA?
• Conducting and documenting Failure Mode and Effect Analysis: A user’s guide
• What happened to British Airways?
• Why did it happen?
• How can FMEA help us prevent this happening again?

Writing standard operating procedures is a cumbersome task but a serious requirement for businesses the world over.

In many industries it is important to have documentation which shows you have been adhering to ISO guidelines. This can help you clinch major clients and demonstrate your professionalism.

However, when you’re starting out with your first SOPs it can be difficult to know where to begin.

That’s why we’ve pulled together a range of the best free and premium SOP templates for you to work from.

Simply go through the available SOPs below and pick out the one best suited to your needs. We’ve included Microsoft Word templates and Process Street ones too. You’ll also find a guide for writing SOPs to help you get started.

Given that it can be intimidating writing standard operating procedures, we have provided a number of industry-specific examples plus suggestions for how you can pull together basic SOPs even if they’re not documented according to ISO standards.

Read through the following sections to get completely clued up:

• Process Street helps you effortlessly manage your SOP templates
• Our Process Street SOP template for creating procedures
• Writing standard operating procedures in 16 steps
• Using Process Street for your SOPs
• Process Street SOP templates for every industry and sector
• Free Microsoft Word templates to build your SOPs
• More NHS standard operating procedure templates
• Risk assessment SOP templates to review your procedures
• Premium SOP Templates
• Pick the right SOP template and get started

Let’s dive in.
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A 2018 survey by BPTrends found that 93% of the organizations studied used multiple process improvement tools.

This is because business processes are the life-blood of your organization. Process improvements, therefore, prime your organization to run like a well-oiled machine, bettering your chances of business success.

On that note, in this Process Street article, we take a look at our top 46 process improvement tools. Using these tools will improve customer satisfaction, save you money, strengthen customer retention, and boost project success rate (+ more).

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say.

• Why you should care about improving your processes
• 46 top process improvement tools
• How to improve your business processes using business process documentation

For clarity, I’ve split each tool as per the following subheaders – click to jump to the unique tool category.

• Process improvement visualizations 👀
• Process improvement exercises 🏃
• Process improvement frameworks 🎞
• Process improvement methodologies 👩‍🔬

At Process Street, we’re all about process optimization: creating, implementing, analyzing, mapping, improving, and automating.

There are a lot of layers to processes and it’s easy to get caught up in the complexities.

But really, it’s quite simple.

You need to document your workflow and then follow it, making improvements where necessary over time; continuous improvement.

All of this can be summed up by the concept of process optimization.

In this Process Street article, we’ll give you a quick actionable overview of how to optimize your processes with some tips and tricks of what to look for and how to do it.

We’ll cover:

• Process optimization basics: What you need to get started
• The business process optimization workflow
• How to work out the goals of your process optimization
• How to optimize processes with automation
• Process optimization resources to get started now