Guest post by Revv’s Seema, originally a Product Expert at Revv, whose document automation and eSignature technology was later acquired by LegalZoom. She believes in the power of words and storytelling, and she writes here from her own experience explaining the difference between closely related business terms.

A business plan is the company-wide roadmap for how a business will operate, grow, and fund its goals. A business proposal is a tailored offer designed to win a specific client, project, or opportunity. You may use both, but they serve different readers and decisions.

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Do you have a brand that you go back to, time and time again?

If you do, what is it about this brand that’s captured your loyalty?

I do not doubt that an exceptional customer experience plays its part. That is, think about how that brand makes you feel. Good huh?

According to Bain & Company, businesses that invest time and effort to optimize their customer experience (CX) flows, experience above-market revenue growth between 4-8%. With the vast choice of products, services and brands available, exceptional customer experience comes as the ultimate seduction and differentiation for businesses to stand out above competitors.

In this Process Street article, you’ll learn how to engage your customers at every point in their journey with you. You’ll learn how to consistently create a service with a smile, a product to praise, and a beloved brand.

Learn from the best as we take a glimpse into the CX operations used by the likes of Netflix, Microsoft, and of course Process Street. You’ll then be given 5 tips on how you can optimize your CX flows, taking into account the changing business landscape, and the impacts of digitalization on customer behavior and experience.

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all for an in-depth understanding of CX.

• What is CX?
• Case studies: How top tech companies deliver excellent CX
• How to optimize your customer experience flows
• Using checklists to optimize your CX flows in 5 steps
• Understanding customer experience flows in a digital world

Let’s jump to it!
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This is a guest post by Ray Slater Berry, a freelance writer for Chameleon with over nine years of content marketing and social media experience. He specializes in product tech, travel, SaaS and working one time as a CMO at Study Clerk. Ray is also a published fiction writer, with his first novel titled Golden Boy.

“Every dollar invested in ease of use returns $10 to $100.” – IBM, The ROI of UX

The above statement was made by the global business powerhouse, IBM. The company explains that it’s far more economical to consider user needs early in the design process than to try and solve them later. Based on the returns given in the above quote, we can calculate an ROI of 9,900%.

And considering the user needs early is exactly what a user experience (UX) map does, meaning creating an effective UX map has the potential to bridge the gap between business success and failure.

By understanding your user’s needs in the early stages of a design process, you’re more likely to consistently meet those needs, meaning a happy customer and reduced churn.

This is why we at Process Street have produced this article, your practical guide to user experience mapping.

Welcome and gather around the user experience campfire. Grab a marshmallow on a stick, a cup of something hot, and relax. Today you’ll learn the ins of outs of user experience maps and how you can create one in the leanest way possible.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding user experience mapping.

• What are user experience maps?
• The benefits of UX mapping
• How do you create a UX map?
• Examples of user experience maps

Once upon a time, in a land not so far from here…
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When you’re doing any kind of content marketing, you want to be able to understand how well you’re doing. You want to be able to look at the performance of the content you’re creating and feel assurance that you’re:

1. Driving forward key goals and objectives tied to your content strategy;
2. Continuously optimizing and improving the quality of your content in order to hit those goals.

Especially when you’re creating this kind of content that involves a degree of creative input (writing!) it can be difficult to measure quality.

This is where maturity models come in. Maturity models can be a great way to build and assess how successful an organization or system is at achieving continuous improvement.

Ultimately, it’s the idea that you’re constantly seeking to test and improve the way in which your organization runs. You’re not standing still.

We’ve written before about more generally applicable Capability Maturity Models, but this post takes a look at our internal Blog Asset Maturity Model (BAMM) process that we use to audit and continuously improve the quality of our blog content.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:

• How to assess content quality
• Content marketing metrics to measure success
• What exactly is a maturity model?
• Our internal process for quality control: The BAMM review
• Using processes to systematize content creation – more reliable and higher quality

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According to a report given by Queens University, 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration to be very important.

Despite this, reports by Globe and Mail and the Harvard Business Review indicate that 20-44% of employees experience workplace communication and collaboration challenges. And if you’re operating remotely, well, these challenges just became harder to overcome. There is a gap between want and reality.

In this Process Street article, we consider how using office hours can close this gap by supporting the effective implementation of an open door policy for your remote team.

Office hours are times in the week managers set aside to answer questions, address issues, and discuss topics with employees. This effectively implements an open door policy, to establish aspirational communication and collaboration goals. An open door policy is a culture that supports complete workplace transparency, communication, and productivity by establishing strong communication channels between employees and their managers.

Today you’ll find out exactly how office hours and an open door policy complement each other – plus top tips on managing your remote open door policy.

Click on the relevant subheader below, or scroll down to find out all.

• What do we mean by office hours?
• The top challenges with a remote open door policy
• Remote open door policy challenges (and how to solve them)
• The benefits of office hours and supporting an open door policy

Let’s get straight to it!
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Agent *reader*, I call upon you today as we’re at a time of crisis. Humans have annihilated 83% of all wild animals and are disrupting a natural climate balance, throwing us into a projected future that is 4.1 – 4.8°C (39.38 – 40.64 °F) warmer.

It’s our duty, as citizens, business owners, and employees to change the narrative for our children’s lives; to kickstart a transition into a more sustainable future, one that enriches biodiversity and a balanced climate. And for this, we turn our attention to sustainable cities.

According to the World Health Organization, the global world population living in urban areas is expected to increase to 66% by 2050, making cities a perfect place to transform society and support biodiversity and a balanced climate.

In this Process Street article, we’ll become time-travelers, zipping into the future to assess two separate predicted scenarios.

• Scenario 1: The continuation of human activity as normal.
• Scenario 2: Transforming into a more sustainable future, starting with our cities.

Today, we meet at a crossroad, where our future could go two ways. We’ll explore these two separate scenarios, before addressing the role of sustainable cities in creating a more desirable world. We’ll look at how businesses must adapt to survive in a future that is carbon-neutral with rich biodiversity.

After all, who wouldn’t want such a future?

• What are sustainable cities?
• Our future cities are sustainable
• Sustainable cities: Key takeaways for corporate sustainability

Seat belts on, time-machine ignited, to the future here we come!
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“Startups that regularly conduct qualitative research (not just quantitative) experience faster results in their quest to achieve product-market-fit.” – Mitchell Posada, I’m a startup, do I need to do Qualitative Research?

Why?

Because by regularly doing qualitative research, you are engaging with (and acting on) the voice of your ideal customer. To the point where the customer actually becomes a part of everything you do.

Whether you’re a founder about to launch a product or someone who is simply keen to understand and put into practice qualitative research methods – you’re in the right place.

Just keep on scrolling and I assure you that on finishing this Process Street blog you will be well versed in all that is qualitative research.

Alternatively, to skip to a specific section of the post click the links below:

• What is qualitative research?
• A closer look at qualitative research
• Types of qualitative research
• Qualitative research in practice: The chocolate method
• Is qualitative research for you?

Keep reading to find out exactly what chocolate has to do with qualitative research!
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This is a guest post from Alissa Zucker, marketing manager and writer at Mcessay. You can find her reading classical philosophy and writing short fiction in her spare time.

It’s predicted that by the end of 2020, businesses will have spent ~$110 billion on digital advertising alone in the US. To put that into context, that’s more money spent on digital advertising than what would be spent on both television and print ads combined.

This just goes to show the importance of digital advertising in the modern marketing communication mix.

It is essential that every business know how to effectively market their products and services in order to not only survive, but to grow and prosper in a competitive global market.

It’s not uncommon when questioned about marketing, that a business owner will simply produce a business card, a brochure stitched together using a Microsoft Office template, or a barely functional website with little to no traffic.

In this Process Street post, I want to provide you with an overview of everything you need to know about the marketing communication mix, including:

• The updated marketing mix: The 7 Ps of marketing
• What exactly is the marketing communication mix?
• Twelve factors of the marketing communication mix
• How to make the most of the marketing communication mix

Before diving into the specifics of the marketing communication mix, let’s first discuss the 7Ps of marketing.
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Etymologically-speaking, the word “template” has an interesting history. Our modern usage of it is linked to the Proto-Indo-European word “tempos”, which means “to stretch”. Specifically, though, it refers to time and the stretching of it.

As time-bound human beings, making use of templates allows us to have more time each day. By completing recurring processes and actions far faster overall whether they’re marketing processes or sales processes, we’re able to, in a way, cheat time itself.

For sales teams, templates are a necessity for both cheating time and doing great work, repeatedly.

Seeing as 20% of sales staff turnover happens within the first 45 days, there needs to be a thorough, documented template for how to onboard staff properly. Similarly, for the sales process itself, there needs to be a sales process template (or better yet, templates).

With such playbooks at hand, it could help your team become high performers by a whopping 33%!

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’ll discuss what a sales process template is, provide you with a stellar sales process template, and tell you how you can use more or even build your own templates from scratch.

Just read through the following sections:

• What is a sales process template?
• Why sales lead qualification is the most important sales process
• Have sales reps utilize a template for every stage of the sales process
• Use Process Street to revolutionize your sales team!

Or, if you can’t wait and want to start using the aforementioned stellar sales process template, here’s our MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template:

Click here to get the MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template!

Carry on reading to find out how to cheat time further. ⏳

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70% of projects fail, and the cost of this failure is a staggering $50-75 million.

Project breakdown can be mitigated via a project charter, and in this article, we at Process Street will show you how.

By following our Project Charter Template, you will target project failure from the root. Our template will guide you through the recognized process needed for successful project completion.

Click here to access our Project Charter Template!

From this article, you will learn what a project charter is and why you need one. The key elements that make a successful project charter and how you can implement these elements using our free Project Charter Template.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to the section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding project charters.

• What is a project charter?
• Elements that make a good project charter
• Why do you need to create a project charter?
• Project charter examples: When projects go wrong and how a project charter could have helped

Let’s get started!
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