In a study of 400 businesses in the UK and US, global analyst firm IDC established that 23% of employees don’t understand a core part of their job. Combined with the potential damage that human error can cause, it’s easy to see why it’s important to make sure that your processes are being followed to the letter.

Still, nobody enjoys hearing the term “ensure compliance” when it comes to their team. It’s cold, impersonal, and conjures up images of school students being sent to detention or prisoners under strict watch, and if your team feels the same then their morale will quickly plummet.

Here at Process Street, we’re well versed in the problems with documenting, managing, and deploying your processes. That’s why this post will take care of those compliance problems by giving you some killer tips to make sure your team sticks to their methods without alienating them with harsh policies.

Let’s dive right in!

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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 employee’s jobs easier (or more pleasant) 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.

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Slack has changed the modern workplace.

No longer do we have to deal with the clunkiness of email for internal communications.

But it doesn’t stop there. You can use Slack for external communications too. In fact, you can use Slack for a whole load of different things from automation to analytics.

If you’re using Slack (if you’re not, you should be) then it’s worth making the most of it. That’s why we’re going to run through 22 key tips to help you see how to use Slack to maximum potential!

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at 3 key sections in tackling Slack and becoming a pro:

1. The basics of Slack and how to start with best practices
2. How Slack can boost and smooth your daily workflows
3. How to turn Slack into a stats and monitoring dashboard

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It’s thought that a high-touch approach to customer success does not scale.

Here are the common objections:

• There aren’t enough hours in the day to personally oversee 10,000 users.
• Even if there were enough hours in the day, there aren’t enough of us to do it and still be profitable.
• Even if there were enough of us, there’d be no way to keep track of it all effectively.

Zapier, a SaaS middleman for app integration, thinks differently.

The idea is simple: connect your SaaS app to Zapier, and Zapier will connect it to over 1,000 apps. The formula is one programmers will be intimately familiar with since it’s basically an if/then statement. For example: if a user submits a Zendesk ticket, then post the ticket to a Slack channel.

Apps can create actions and triggers, controlling each other and automating frustrating admin work behind the scenes so you don’t have to bother with it.

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In our increasingly mobile-first world, we’ve come to rely on getting business done on the phone much more than ever before.

The difficulties of efficiently managing email on a smartphone has likely been a major factor for the rise in team communication software like Slack.

However, it doesn’t need to be this way. And we can’t let it be this way.

That’s why this Process Street article is dedicated to exploring the different email apps for iPhone in order to find which ones have which strengths, and to crown an overall winner.

The apps will be judged primarily on how well they achieve their intended aims, with depth of features and ease of use affecting their scores from that base. I’m going to try not to consider price while calculating a score, but I will mention pricing where relevant.

You can check out the quick overview of scores below and the full breakdowns app by app through the rest of the article.

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If the following benefits sound like something you’d like for your business, you need to use lean manufacturing principles:

• 80%+ waste reduction
• 50% lower production costs
• 80-90% reduction in standing inventory
• 90% lower cost of quality (it’s 90% cheaper to make quality products)
• 50% increased labor productivity

Lean is a system, method, school of thought, and even a way of life, all focused on reducing waste. Although it’s usually applied to manufacturing (hence “lean manufacturing principles”), the methods to achieve it can be used to reduce waste while maintaining high quality no matter what operation you’re running.

The key is knowing what each principle involves and how to use it, which is exactly what we’re going to cover today!

Keep reading to get the full rundown on the following lean principles (with two techniques for good measure):

• Eliminate waste
• Kaizen (continuous improvement)
• Respect human elements
• Heijunka (level production)
• JIT (Just In Time) production
• One piece flow
• Quality built-in
• Poka-Yoke (mistake proofing)
• Jidoka (detecting defects through automation)

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Salesforce is the most popular CRM in the world, and the most fully-featured. It has been developed constantly for almost two decades, and the company has tried its hardest to build every single feature that sales teams need to be more efficient.

However, it doesn’t do everything out of the box…

That’s why the Salesforce AppExchange features thousands of apps which have collectively been installed more than 5,000,000 times. These apps stand in for other software to save you switching between programs, breaking focus, and pasting data over and over.

But, like I said, there’s thousands of apps. How do you know what to choose, and what to avoid?

In this post, we’ll cover 36 of the best Salesforce apps on the AppExchange so you can improve your sales operations and productivity.

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So, you want to know how to beat procrastination? Well, here’s the simple answer.

You can’t.

At least, not completely.

No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to completely eliminate procrastination. There will always be tasks you put off, and there will always be projects that get shelved in favor of others.

You can, however, learn how to use procrastination to your advantage and make what many see as a chronic issue into one of your greatest strengths.

First, however, you need to know your enemy. That’s why today I’ll be covering:

• What causes procrastination (and when that isn’t a problem)
• The benefits of procrastination you can take advantage of
• The drawbacks that can come back to bite you
• How to use it to your advantage

It’s time to stop stalling and get stuck in.

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What does your sales process look like right now? According to research by Vantage Point Performance, 66% of B2B sales teams don’t even have a sales process.

The vast majority of companies surveyed in that Vantage study had a revenue over $250m, and 39% made over $1b each year. These companies aren’t failing. In fact, they’re doing well.

So many companies get by without documented processes, it’s enough make you question why it’s worth implementing them at all.

…That’s until you check the rest of the stats.

Why you should bother with a formal sales process:

• A formal sales process improves revenue by 18%
• 3 hours per month on pipeline management improves revenue by 11%
• Trained salespeople bring in 9% more revenue
• Organizations that followed all three of these best practices above saw a 28% increase in revenue vs. those that do not
• A formalized sales process leads to a 65% increase in individual reps hitting their targets and an 88% increase in companies hitting their goals
• A sales playbook makes you 33% more likely to close sales at a higher rate

Simply playing it by ear — especially when you’re in the realm of $1b+ revenue — seems ridiculous. The benefits of documented processes are obvious to many organizations. As you can see, the numbers relate to real money.

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When I started at Process Street, I was just a writer. I had the organizational skills of a child, and I was used to delivering a single piece of work at a time. As I was given more responsibilities, I started forgetting my regular tasks and working on whatever seemed important at that moment.

Since every task management system I’ve tried has quickly become crowded and unmanageable, I decided to create a Process Street checklist specifically for my recurring weekly tasks.

Now, I get a simple list of tasks in my Process Street inbox every week. As I work through them, I can track my weekly progress and use the checklist as a way to report my work to my manager. You can do the same, and it only takes about 10 minutes.

Here’s my checklist:

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