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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At Process Street, we serve over 450,000 registered users including the likes of Salesforce, Spotify, and Airbnb. We work with our users to help them get the best out of our software. With this goal in mind, we bring you this article detailing the top 5 secret hacks and tricks in Process Street.

We found out how the Process Street team uses our nifty workflow documentation software in their day-to-day activities. We gathered the responses given from every department and narrowed them down to present 5 top hacks and tricks you can incorporate into your Process Street experience today.

• Trick #1: Document your daily schedule as a checklist
• Trick #2: Automate date form fields to pre-fill
• Trick #3: Use saved views to summarize workflow data
• Trick #4: Order Conditional Logic instructions and use hidden admin tasks
• Trick #5: Embed webpages inside Process Street’s workflows

With that said, let’s jump straight to it!
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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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According to Deloitte Insights, advances in technology are changing the business landscape and they are calling this a digital disruption. This is altering customer expectations and demands, presenting critical challenges for customer success teams globally.

To successfully ride this wave of change, Deloitte – and us here at Process Street – believe businesses should rethink how they are measuring value delivered to the customer. The aim is to ensure these measurements are customer-centric to refine CS activities and enhance the customer’s experience.

Think of it as a customer success evolution in response to digital disruption.

This CS transformation has the potential to bolster positive referrals by 83%, lower costs by 20%, and increase customer lifetime value by x1.6.

What have you got to lose?

In this article, you’ll learn how to apply a customer-centric means of measuring customer value generated for your organization. I’ve split the process down into three steps based on the Customer-Centric Digital Transformation report by Deloitte.

• From churn reduction to customer value generation (applying customer success 2.0)
• Measuring value in 3 steps: Determining customer and internal success
• Determining value generated – Step #1: Measure the outside-in value perception
• Determining value generated – Step #2: Measuring inside-out value perception
• Determining value generated – Step #3: Measuring internal success using business outcomes

With that said, let’s jump straight to it!
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“The truth is mistakes happen. The accepted data says that most mergers and acquisitions don’t work out.” – Martin Sikora, professor of management and editor of Mergers & Acquisitions: The Dealmaker’s Journal

Mergers and acquisitions are complicated. Like, really complicated. A simple mistake at any point can delay the deal, derail the process, and potentially cost your company millions.

No matter how highly trained or experienced a person is with M&A procedures, human error happens. In fact, errors are more likely to occur in processes we’re overly familiar with. Once we’ve performed a task so many times that we “know” the steps, we tend to run on autopilot, which means routine actions can be overlooked or forgotten.

Making a mistake during a process with as much risk and expense as a merger or acquisition can ruin one or both companies. This makes having a thorough, well-documented process is an absolute must for any M&A executive.

After analyzing the main reasons mergers fail, I’ve used that knowledge to build several Process Street workflow templates for essential M&A processes. Feel free to jump ahead if you’re looking for a particular template, or continue reading for a walkthrough of all the features these workflows use:

• M&A processes: Plan to plan – and plan again
• M&A Target Search Process
• M&A Strategy Checklist
• M&A Due Diligence Checklist
• M&A Acquisition Checklist
• Post-Merger Integration Checklist
• Process optimization & Automations with Process Street

Ready to acquire some new workflows?
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A recent Deloitte study found a mere 30% of respondents stated customer success was a strategic priority by the board of directors. Only 26% reported official business communications to regularly mention customer success.

At Process Street, we find this concerning. Technological advancements and the rise of Industry 4.0 are altering the business landscape. Businesses are facing new pressures, with changing customer demands and expectations as the biggest catalyst altering how business is done. To respond, organizations need to focus on customer success (CS).

Businesses need to lead a successful customer success transformation, one that means they’re more customer-centric. In this Process Street article, I explain how organizations should do this in three simple steps.

• Why we need to think differently about customer success
• The companies leading in customer success are making a customer-centric transition
• 3 steps to manage your customer-centric transition

With that said, let’s jump straight to it!
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90% of customers feel that the companies they buy from could do better when it comes to how they experience onboarding.

Customer success is about helping your customers understand and leverage the value of your product; you’re basically helping them achieve their goals. In a sense it’s one step beyond traditional customer support, taking a proactive approach to understanding and addressing customer needs.

A key component of customer success is making sure your customers are effectively onboarded.

Onboarding provides a unique opportunity for the CS team to nurture and address the key needs of a new customer, and an effective onboarding program can mean the difference between a long-term customer and a rapid churn.

For customer success teams to succeed with onboarding, CS managers should drive clear best practices and use well-structured processes to make onboarding as effortless as possible for everyone involved.

In this Process Street article, we’ll dive into:

• Customer success onboarding best practices
• Designing your customer success onboarding framework
• The customer onboarding process
• Measuring success with key customer success onboarding metrics

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You are an HR leader at an executive search firm and you have landed a big client, who has agreed to kick-off a retained search with your company. What’s your next move?

Who am I to know anything about executive retained search? Well, I am an ex-associate from one of the top executive recruiting firms in the industry. In an article from the Economist about corporate headhunters, it was said that:

“Nobody has ever studied to become a headhunter but the profession is becoming more diverse. Those serving in its ranks include ex-engineers, a former Olympic gymnast…”

– and me, a former visual artist and administrative assistant. Working in executive search, I developed a deep understanding of how each role on the search team can greatly influence the quality and success of the retained search.

The executive search business has been operating since the first World War, through the 1940s. According to AESC (The Association of Executive Recruiting Consultants), it’s likely that Thorndike Deland formed the concept of executive search back in 1926 when he founded the first retained executive recruiting firm.

Meaning, the executive retained search industry has been evolving for over 90 years and will continue to evolve with the digital revolution. Although, there are elements of the retained search business that will remain constant, like the drive to deliver the highest quality service.

I believe it’s crucial for everyone on the executive retained search team to understand how they fit together within the retained search process. However, to impact the performance of your retained search, you have to work on the system. 94% of problems and opportunities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual.

In this post, you’ll learn the difference between a retained search and a contingent search, how to optimize the retained search process (based on my personal experience and reports backed up by leading firms in the industry), and how to maximize the efficiency of your process, especially in the era of remote work (using digital tools like Process Street).

• What is a retained search?
• What is the difference between a retained & contingent search?
• The process of a retained search
• 5 lessons on how to run an effective retained search
• Mediocre to exceptional

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We’ve all been there: an hour and a half into a 45-minute meeting. You’re trying to reach a consensus but as one department makes a suggestion, the next disagrees.

Customer success insists the next product should be geared towards students; sales thinks their parents are a better demographic. Content marketing started out by spitballing potential names until someone brought up the latest Process Street post and they all got sidetracked discussing whether it’s better to use odd or even numbers in a post title. Social marketing is scrolling through newsfeeds and graphic design isn’t even sure what they’re doing in this meeting at all.

It should have been simple: get everyone together, brainstorm ideas, then form a game-plan and timeline to use moving forward. Except no one can agree on anything and, at this rate, the only accomplishment the meeting will have made is wasting everyone’s afternoon.

Group decision-making is complicated. Fortunately, there are processes for that.

You may have already read our post on DECIDE, which is a great decision-making process for individuals. However, what works for an individual does not necessarily translate to a group. In this post, I’m going to introduce you to one of the most popular group decision-making frameworks: DACI.

The DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed) decision-making framework is a set of processes geared toward doing just that. As a variant of the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) responsibility matrix, DACI’s emphasis on decision clarity for complex projects often makes it the go-to framework for product managers.

That’s a lot of acronyms all at once, huh?

Don’t worry. We’ll take it slow – or you can jump straight to the point:

• Group decision-making: yay or nay?
• What is DACI?
• DACI and Atlassian’s Team Playbook
• How to create your own DACI framework (with free template)
• Other ways Process Street can streamline your decision-making processes

Let’s get some decisions made!
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