Business process management software (BPM) can increase company success by 70%. That’s if you’re using a tool that aligns with your business needs. 

With so many options on the market, it can be daunting to pick the right one. Doing a quick Google search will leave you paralyzed because of the endless options available. 

That’s why you’re here. We’re keeping to our promise of ‘the best,’ which is why we’ve rounded up some of the greatest workflow software solutions available to make your choice easier. 

In this Process Street article, we’re talking about all things workflow software solution-related to help you find the perfect match for your company: 

• Do you need a workflow software solution? 
• How good HR workflow software can help you
• The best HR workflow software solution
• You’re only as good as the tools you use 

Let’s dive right in! 

No process is perfect; there’s always room to improve. Unfortunately, many teams have no way to identify, test, and deploy the changes they make, meaning each tweak is a roll of the dice.

The savings can be massive, but you need a continuous improvement program to make sure that the changes you make won’t make your operations a whole lot harder.

“1 in 10 improvements save money… [each saving, on average,] $31,043 in its first year of implementation.
1 in 4 improvements save time… [each saving, on average,] 270 hours in its first year of implementation.”
– KaiNexus, The ROI of Continuous Improvement

Most successful changes will also make your employees’ jobs easier (and more enjoyable) to perform. You’ll be saving time and money, but you’ll also be getting far better value out of your current efforts and operations.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the top.

• What is continuous improvement?
• Incremental vs. breakthrough improvements
• The benefits of continuous improvement
• How to deploy continuous improvement
• Improvement resources to dive deeper

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Having an operations manual may not be glamorous, but preventing the disasters caused by human error and bad processes can save your business and even (in extreme circumstances) millions of lives.

If you’ve ever seen Dr. Strangelove, you’ll know it’s ridiculous. You’ve got a mad scientist, a cowboy pilot riding a bomb as it falls, and a nuclear holocaust brought about by a series of overblown human (and mechanical) errors.

Yet, despite being criticized as unrealistic, at the time it was entirely possible for human error to cause a Third World War. Hell, human error has already caused the worst nuclear accident to date.

“A perfect storm of 6 human errors — culminating with staff thinking it was ok to turn off the emergency cooling system — caused the Chernobyl disaster, costing an inflation-adjusted $720 billion, 30 deaths and an extreme amount of unsafe radiation.” – Ben Brandall, How Processes Protect Your Business From Crashing and Burning

The truth is, the only way to prevent such errors is to document workflows and processes, and the only way to make sure your employees know what they have to do, how to do it, and have the resources to do it is to create your own operations manual.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering:

• What is an operations manual?
• Why is having an operations manual important?
• What to include in your operations manual
• How to create an operations manual

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96% of businesses use some kind of business process documentation, indicating a desire to document processes. Yet only 2% have fully documented processes that can be relied on for smooth business functioning, despite the widely reported benefits. There seems to be a knowledge gap preventing the full documentation of business operations. This article aims to close that gap and make it easier to build business processes for leaders worldwide.

A business process is a set of steps that, when completed in the required order, deliver the desired business outcome. Process building – aka business process documentation – is the documentation of these steps to create an actionable system to work from.

In this Process Street article, we turn to the process experts. We asked our internal team to give their top tips on process building, and here’s what we found out. We present you with our 8 time-saving tips for efficient process building.

• Tip #1: Start with the big tasks & work your way down
• Tip #2: Quickly copy processes from Excel into Process Street
• Tip #3: Drag and drop media files directly into your workflow templates
• Tip #4: Tag your teammates directly with comments inside of workflow runs
• Tip #5: Use Conditional Logic to show/hide training content (and avoid inconveniencing experienced users)
• Tip #6: Add custom tasks to build truly dynamic processes
• Tip #7: Build a follow-up system & never miss tasks
• Tip #8: Build one-task-processes & master your daily tasks

Let’s start building!
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A project proposal is how you can get management to act on your ideas. They’re the bottom-up version of a project request form.

Writing a project proposal isn’t rocket science, but it is a lot harder if you don’t have something like a template to give you a head start.

Using a template for your proposals gives you a document which you can reference throughout the entire project. It’s a great example of effective business process management – the proposal acts as a banner that your whole team can rally around to ensure you’re all working towards the same goal.

So, in this Process Street post, I’ll go through how to create a project proposal, that gets approved, by going through the following topics:

• Free project proposal template
• 12 more free project proposal templates
• What makes a good project proposal?
• Key tips for writing effective project proposals
• Writing a lot of project proposals? Check this out!
• More stuff to help you write amazing project proposals

Ready to get started?
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“It is largely determined by the mindset and practices of teamwork, not by the design and structures of effective teams. Teaming is teamwork on the fly.” – Professor Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

When I started this post for Process Street, it suddenly occurred to me exactly how much of my time is spent on the concept of “teams” – writing about them, talking about them, thinking about them, participating in them.

Teams have taken over my life. It was only a matter of time before I ran into “teaming.”

Teaming was coined and developed by Professor Amy Edmondson, who also has the rather distinguished achievement of founding the MIT Leadership Center.

Obviously, she’s a very qualified person who knows what she’s talking about, but when has that ever stopped my skepticism before?

I’m kidding. Teaming is an idea purpose-built for the contemporary tech-centric, remote office, pivot on a dime work environment. This post will explain what it is, how it’s been used, and how Process Street makes it easy for anyone to adopt.

• “Teaming on the fly”
• Successful teams, teaming, and a Chilean mine
• Teaming the Process Street way

Let’s team up!
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Systematizing your business is one of the biggest challenges any founder or executive faces when trying to scale.

I’ve seen it personally in my businesses and in the experiences of our customers. It’s the problem which led to us creating Process Street when I ran a small business. It’s the problem people and businesses of all sizes now come to Process Street to overcome.

Thousands of customers like Accenture, AstraZeneca, and Salesforce are solving processes from small business needs to critical enterprise and infrastructure processes.

It’s important to learn not just how to get things done, but how to do that repeatedly, effectively, and efficiently as your team grows.

This is where business systematization comes in.

A huge part of that is process management. According to our research, 42% of respondents say their teams have no time to create processes. You cannot systematize if you fail to document your processes.

In fact, process documentation is only the first step. What about adherence, integration, automation?

That’s why, as Process Street’s CEO, I was so excited to collaborate with Foundr to create a course to take you from process-less to process pro. The course is now available for registrations – you have until September 8th to get involved, so make sure to register ASAP if you’re interested.

I’ll give you the platform and the playbook to systemize your business in just 10 minutes per day, all delivered through Foundr’s intuitive learning experience.

Foundr magazine is one of the leading media outlets for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives. The course comes carefully prepared with video lessons, playbooks, and an explanation of my proven DIA Method.

As part of the Process Street family, I’m offering you the chance to register now and get 4 free masterclass lessons where I’ll explain my 10 minute MVP approach to supercharging processes in record time.

Click here to register!

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I view most management gurus with the same wariness and suspicion the average person might approach a traveling medicine show peddling sparkling water as a miracle cure. Or, in this case, basic common sense as innovative management techniques.

Recently, I picked up Reengineering the Corporation by Dr. Michael Hammer and James Champy, both highly lauded as leading practitioners of their own concept. Based on their personal bios and their book, both are imminently pleased with themselves about this.

Fair enough. If I’d built an entire career on a single concept, I’d be pretty pleased with myself, too.

But is their idea still relevant nearly 30 years later?

I wanted to find out, so I asked many experts many, many questions (shoutouts to the ones who didn’t file restraining orders! You’re the best ) and read far too many long-winded reports.

These are the things I’m willing to do for you. That’s how much I care.

And because I care, I’ve taken all that super relevant knowledge, filtered it through my usual scampishness, and now offer you an overview of the book, the concept, and what it means for your favorite COO.

• Be the process that you want to reengineer
• If it ain’t broke: Reorganizing organizations the Hammer & Champy way
• Reengineering the Corporation: Benefits & backing
• Reengineering the Corporation: Criticism & consequences
• Can today’s COO still learn from Reengineering the Corporation?

Let’s go break some stuff.
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Premier Claims is a public adjusting firm that secures an average increase on claim payments 700% greater than before their involvement in the negotiation. They represent policyholders and contractors when negotiating fair claim settlements from insurance carriers on property damage. This includes damage from hail, wind, fire, and smoke.

Premier Claims discovered Process Street in July 2020, and have since moved many of their processes to our platform. Process Street has given Premier Claims an easy and elegant means of collecting and securely storing client information.

One such process Premier Claims uses Process Street for is their Claims and Client Intake Workflow. When the Process Street version of this workflow was first beta-tested, the salesperson’s response spoke volumes to the reliefs Process Street brings the Premier Claims team.

“[Process Street is]…literally the easiest thing in the world.” – Premier Claims salesperson, Claims and Client intake workflow Demo

Premier Claims wanted to share their positive experience from using Process Street and decided to create a video demo of their Claims and Client Workflow.
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Burkhard Berger is the founder of awesomex™. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.

Process mapping is almost always beneficial to those working within the process, and those working outside it. Not all processes should be mapped in the same way. A simple process run by only one or two people can be easily represented by a basic flow chart; a process that involves multiple individuals or cross-functional teams is going to need something more complex.

Like a swim lane diagram.

Designing your own swim lane diagram – or even just mapping a process for the first time – can seem daunting. Where do you even start?

I don’t mean to brag, but we here at Process Street are kind of experts on this whole managing processes thing, and one thing we definitely know how to do well is map out processes of every shape, size, and situation. This post will walk you through all the basics of swim lane diagrams, including how to create your own one step at a time.

You can either read on to get the whole history of swim lane diagrams, or just jump straight to the tutorial:

• Swim lane diagrams: An origin story
• Sink or swim: The pros and cons
• 5 questions to make sure you’re swim-ready
• How to create a swim lane diagram in MS Word

So, let’s dive in! ‍♀️
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