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Recurring work is an absolute pain. With all your responsibility, the last thing you want to do is spend your valuable time doing work that doesn’t need to be done.
The answer? Process management software.
But that isn’t the real issue, is it?
You understand that process management software can help you increase productivity while saving you time and money.
The problem is that there are tons of software options on the market. You’re likely overwhelmed with the endless products presented to you in a single Google search.
This list will give you all the information you need to understand your team’s needs and ensure you make the best purchase decision.
Needed by every business, business process management software (BPM) helps teams focus on vital standard procedures that keep your organization running.
This BMP tool is designed to manage your business’s fundamental processes, automate any repetitive tasks, optimize your business operations, and manage logistics around the inner workings of each task.
With effective process management software, employees are empowered to focus on higher-value work and any exception cases that might pop up in daily operations.
This is because the software makes sure all documented work is managed with tasks delivered to the right stakeholders at the assigned time.
Let’s clarify the difference between projects and processes.
Both involve taking action on work to be done with an end result in mind. A key difference is whether the steps and tasks are known upfront.
A project is a one-time undertaking. With a project, you have a goal in mind but the tasks your team needs to complete that goal aren’t yet clear. You have to gather knowledge as you go, in order to determine what needs to be done. Once the project is done, it’s done. It’s unlikely you’ll need to manage that same project again, in the same way, with the same desired result.
A process is a recurring work pattern. You already know the tasks your team needs to complete in order to get the outcome you want. With a process, it’s a matter of how fast, well-coordinated, and consistent your team can reach that outcome every time.
Understanding the difference between project and process will help you make sense of the multitude of applications that are intended to help teams work better together. (Including some software companies that claim they can be used for process management when they’re actually project management tools.)
This is a question of culture fit.
If your team doesn’t understand the importance of process management, it’s unlikely that they will be enthusiastic about adopting process management software.
They may not see the value of building and maintaining clear process documentation. Or updating and continuously improving the processes they use as part of their daily work.
Making an effort to educate your team as to the benefits of process management can go a long way to making sure that you’re getting the most value out of your process management software.
You won’t always know where your team will be in the future, but you can prepare with the help of your long and short-term goals. This offers a projection of what you can expect in the future.
Making a list of specific requirements is often a good starting point. By making a checklist, you can prepare questions and address each requirement directly with your vendor.
Obviously, your budget will be one of the first considerations. The longer the setup time, the longer the expected time to ROI. This cost will compound if you need to pay for extra consulting or setup costs.
The price should be the highest value for the cost of initial purchase, maintenance, and any additional needs.
Ideally, a good process management software will allow you to benefit immediately from some kind of ROI, whether that’s by:
The best process management solutions require basically zero setup, and certainly nothing from your engineering team.
You should be able to sign up, jump in, and start building & documenting your processes in minutes.
Once you’re all set up, consider how long it will take your team to learn how to use the platform before you start to see value.
If the platform is intuitive and easy to use, you should be able to benefit on some level immediately, without enlisting additional expert or consultation services.
Consultation services can be a valuable supplement. Speaking to process design experts about how to improve process efficiency and make the most of the software’s features can be very valuable.
But you shouldn’t have to pay extra overhead to simply start using the platform to manage your processes.
When you invest in process management software, you’re investing in the long-term development of your team’s operational efficiency.
Choosing a platform that is capable of supporting your growth is crucial to getting the most value out of process management software.
If you need to train every new hire on how to use a complex, unintuitive software platform, that will inevitably form a bottleneck.
If the platform is intuitive and easy to use (with well-documented help resources and responsive customer success), you should have everything you need to scale your team.
A process management software vendor should serve a diverse customer base. This means catering to companies of many sizes, industries, departments, and use cases. You can be assured that the solution they are offering is truly robust and representative of the cutting edge of process management software.
Pro-Tip: Research customer reviews on software you’re interested in using third-party SaaS review sites like GetApp or Capterra to get a better understanding of the vendor and if they’d be a good fit for your company.
Process management software should be supported vendor-side by dedicated departments like:
Understanding that entire teams exist to support various aspects of your chosen process management software means you can be safe in the knowledge that you will reap the benefits for years to come.
Consulting should not be necessary, but it can be a very powerful platform to take your process management software to the next level.
Consultation services provided by process design experts can help you build and document your processes to save you even more time and money.
Often basic training and guidance will be provided alongside the initial purchase in the form of support by the customer success team. This will help you get the most out of your process management software.
Your data is precious. That’s why you owe it to your team and your customers to ensure that your process management platform has security accreditation by a recognized authority (e.g. SOC 2 Type II accreditation).
These kinds of accreditations are industry-standard audits performed to make sure your vendor is securely managing your data. That’s because they are typically granted by a 3rd party firm that has reviewed and examined your vendor’s objectives and activities to make sure that everything is operating with your best interests in mind.
Consider when the company entered the space. Perhaps they are new or relatively inexperienced. This could mean:
Older, more established companies with top investor backing will typically have:
Here are the top 5 best process management tools to help you narrow your search:
Process Street offers users pre-made templates as well as an easy drag-and-drop interface to build custom workflows from scratch without any hassle. The software is designed to help businesses create a centralized system for all their process management.
Internal documentation features, called Pages, can be used to store all process information. These documents in Pages then lives alongside its correlating workflows to ensure maximum transparency and efficiency to all team members.
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Zoho Creator offers a low-code platform and is a great option for users of other Zoho products. Users can easily customize their business operations by creating applications designed to fit their organization’s exact needs.
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Pipefy provides users with software to effectively manage requests and approvals. The tool is well-liked by Volvo and Warner Brothers for its strong form builder. However, many users struggle to make do with the limited features while more advanced elements are quite costly.
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Another no-code process management software, Kintone is designed to help users build applications but is also used to store process documentation. The software provides API integration and basic database functionality.
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beSlick offers a process workflow builder to help managers have a more visually appealing overview of their organization procedures. Users can also utilize the flowchart feature to better understand how their processes are running.
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No-code functionality
You want a no-code editor to ensure your UX is intuitive and easy to use.
Documentation features
You want to be able to capture, organize, and share your team knowledge.
Interactive workflow construction
You want process management software that will empower you to create automated, fully-featured workflows with ease.
Real-time workflow run updates
You want process management software that enables true continuous improvement in your team. This way, you can make updates to new and existing workflows to ensure consistency.
Detailed analytics and reporting
You want to have a transparent overview of all your processes. Everything you need to know is only a few clicks away. You then know who is doing what work, what processes are currently active, and when work was completed.
Approval functionality
You want process management software with approval features where work can be sent automatically to responsible stakeholders. You can easily have work approved, which ensures no bottlenecks occur.
Scheduled workflows
You want to better your automation capabilities by scheduling your workflows. This can save you time as a new workflow can be created when certain parameters are set.
Integrations
You want to pick process management software that offers integration capabilities with other work applications. Data entry can be reduced and your workspace can become more centralized and “speak to one another.”
Flexibility
You want the ability to easily streamline complex workflows. Effective “if this then that” technology can be used to break down your complex processes into simple ones that respond in real time to different conditions.
This bonus section will outline best practices and approaches from process design experts to help you succeed with your process management software of choice.
Ultimately, your processes are useless without the people behind them. Listen to feedback from your team and prioritize creating a healthy workplace culture that places people before processes.
The people on your team are the process owners. They are the ones who will maintain, update, and improve your internal processes. If you are trying to roll out process management software in your team, take the time to explain the benefits. Also stress that this platform should make your team’s life easier, not the opposite.
Sometimes, people worry that process automation will displace their job security or make them obsolete. Make it clear that process management software allows teams to eliminate tedious manual tasks and focus on the work that really matters.
Don’t worry about building the perfect process. A rough yet complete and actionable process built in an evening is always far more valuable than a half-finished (but near-perfect) process that you or your team have been chipping away at for weeks.
You’ll never truly have a ‘perfect’ process because things are forever changing and evolving. That’s why you want to encourage incremental improvements to an existing process.
Get the basics down. Start using it. Figure out what could be improved, and make those changes on the fly.
This allows you to see results immediately from a structured process in place. It also means you get to test how the process performs in a work environment, and figure out what needs to be changed.
Don’t restrict internal knowledge to a single team or department. With process management software that allows seamless collaboration and document sharing, you can achieve horizontal knowledge distribution and improve interdepartmental collaboration.
Operational excellence is what you achieve when you have well-documented processes that are also actionable.
The operational knowledge that then supports your processes allows for enhanced transparency across your entire organization. You can begin to operate excellently when everyone understands the work they need to do (and how to do it).
Execute work correctly, quickly, and confidently — with consistency. That’s where transforming your static documentation into actionable workflows adds so much more value to the business.