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Here at Process Street, we love workflow automation.
After all, our platform was designed with the purpose of making things easier for our customers. And well-designed workflow automation can do just that.
Because, let’s face it, inputting data manually is both tedious and inefficient. It wastes time and resources, and it generally makes a lot of people miserable!
But what is workflow automation, and why should you care about it? Can it help transform your business from slow-progressing to dynamic and efficient?
We’ll be exploring those questions in more detail, so stick around.
And if you’re particularly keen to find a specific answer, feel free to click on one of the below:
Let’s dive in!
Generally speaking, many workflows have processes that are dull, waste resources, and are filled with errors. And for teams, this can become a real burden.
Badly run processes often end up costing companies way more than investing in good automation software.
What’s more, according to Zapier’s 2021 rapport, over 90% of workers perform time-consuming and repetitive tasks. This often causes unhappiness and work dissatisfaction that leads to burnout.
Luckily, workflow automation uses software to streamline, reduce costs, and remove errors.It’s a way of passing repetitive work on to a clever tool that will automate it for you.
And there’s more to it than meets the eye!
Workflow automation can:
What’s more, it’s a versatile tool that can be applied to virtually any industry from education to marketing.
Workflow automation can release the pressure felt by entire departments by simply getting rid of manual processes.
This allows you and your team to concentrate on more valuable tasks, making work faster and more consistent.
For example, thanks to workflow automation, Marketing teams can:
HR departments can:
And for Sales teams, workflow automation can:
As you can see, automation is incredibly useful for all companies and can profoundly impact any team.
We’ve created a list of workflow automation stages to help you see what it takes to implement workflow automation (and it’s not as scary as it sounds!).
Repetitive and manual tasks are great examples. Things such as data entry or client and employee onboarding can easily be put into this category.
Try to prioritize tasks that are the least efficient and prone to human error, as well as those that need a lot of manual handling.
Make sure to have clear goals and an idea of how workflow automation can help you and your business.
Some of those could be:
You may choose one of the above, or all can be true. But by setting clear goals, you’ll be able to implement automations in a way most suited to your particular needs.
Choosing the right software is vital because it can either make you fall in love with automations or permanently ban the word from your dictionary. So choose wisely (we’ll give you some suggestions later on in this post).
Make sure your chosen software is full of features and functions that will benefit your situation. You’ll also want to consider the price point and whether it’s worth the hype (many are not).
Ensure that you and your employees know how to use the brand-new software.
If you pick the right company, they’ll be able to offer educational content such as walkthroughs, video tutorials, FAQs, and more.
So shop around to get the best bang for your buck.
Designing a workflow can seem intimidating, but it really isn’t. You certainly don’t need to be an expert to do it well.
In fact, here at Process Street, we make it super easy for our customers to learn how to create workflows. We believe that anyone can do it!
Our Customer Success team creates a highly personalized walkthrough for each new subscriber to ensure our customers are aware of all the cool features of Process Street.
They first ask in-depth questions about your needs, then hop on a call to show you everything you need to achieve your goals.
We also offer a help center full of useful articles to get started. And our team is always available to answer queries, and they do it fast!
You’ll soon be on your way to running your first workflow.
“So, with all the amazing things said so far, how many workflow automation benefits are there?” we hear you ask.
Well, plenty, actually!
But the most important ones are listed below for your convenience.
Your team will quickly feel the difference after you’ve introduced workflow automation.
Guaranteed! Their workday will simply become much more productive, which will also increase their overall productivity.
All the manual, repetitive tasks will now be automated, no more updating information in multiple tools. No more waiting for approvals to reach them when it’s too late.
Now, everyone can stay in the loop by being able to track approvals and tasks in the workflow system.
Humans are prone to errors. Fact.
Naturally, aiming for no mistakes, even with workflow automation software, is unattainable.
But automations will significantly reduce those errors so you can focus on more important things.
That’s because the system will pinpoint precisely where the issues lie and, over time, you’ll be able to determine why they happen and how to avoid them in the future.
Communicating effectively across departments or even teams can take time and effort.
Workflow automation improves communication by allowing you to see exactly where your colleagues are with their tasks. Have they done most of it already? Or are they well behind, so a quick nudge may be needed?
In any case, you won’t need to worry about sending numerous emails – just check the workflow system to track progress.
All your requests, approvals, onboarding tasks, and more will be accessible from a single place.
Now everything will be:
This will make it easier for you to juggle multiple tasks while not losing momentum.
No one likes micromanagement. We all come to work to do our jobs, and most of us want to perform well and be trusted to do so.
Workflow automation can increase that trust by making each task crystal clear and all goals precisely defined.
When everyone is assigned their tasks and knows what to do, you can concentrate on doing your job, too.
You also gain more control over your data, so only specific people can access certain files and documents. This means that sensitive information can be withheld while company-wide announcements quickly distributed.
With all the benefits, it’s easy to ignore workflow automation challenges, but they are there.
So here are the most common challenges that you may encounter:
If you don’t know what to look for, you may end up purchasing software unsuitable for your company and your needs.
Even the best software won’t be able to help if your employees are unwilling to learn how to use it. You should provide ample training and encourage your employees to explore the new tools.
Workflow automation makes it easy for everyone in the company to view and share tasks and documents. But if your chosen software doesn’t offer security and privacy features, you may have a big problem.
It’s worth noting that you can avoid most of the above challenges by careful planning and goal-setting.
You should address all your concerns with your workflow automation provider, and they should be able to help you fix any issues.
To bypass and prevent issues, we’ve created workflow automation best practices to help you get it right the first time around.
Have a workflow map – by having a written or drawn-out workflow map, you can keep your team ready for each step in the process so you know what to expect.
Plan for failures – always have a plan in case things go wrong.
Prioritize – organize your workflow so that the most important steps go first
Help out – don’t just assume that people won’t make mistakes because everything’s automated. Help a team member who seems to be behind with their tasks.
Look beyond the workflow – problems may arise that have nothing to do with your workflow automation. So don’t blame every little thing on the workflow. Assess the company instead. There may be some organizational problems within it.
Most importantly, remember to keep everything in perspective and have a plan in case the worst-case scenario happens.
Process Street is a simple yet powerful, no-code platform to run workflows, build processes, and move forward faster.
It allows you to manage all your internal processes effectively from day one.
By providing access to an extensive library of pre-made workflows, Process Street offers an unparalleled user experience.
Best for:
Features:
Pricing:
HubSpot is especially useful for Sales, Marketing, Service, and Operations departments.
It lets you connect with over 50 workflow integrations while offering a simple interface.
This is why we consider HubSpot a good choice for beginners.
Best for:
Features:
Pricing
Zapier is a platform that integrates with many third-party apps, but it’s not particularly great for beginners. We find it takes a while to get used to the product and figure out how to use its features.
Once you get the hang of it, it’s relatively easy to set up and offers pre-made lead generation workflows to use straight from the box.
Zapier allows you to build customized tasks that are highly personalized to your individual needs.
Best for:
Features:
Pricing
We’ve touched on this before, but we love to overcommunicate (it’s one of our company values), so we’ve compiled workflow automation examples and use cases.
Workflow automation reduces the burden of manual data inputting and improves quality-control errors. It also cuts down the budget and purchase approval cycle times. And let’s not forget about automating purchase requests and contract sending between companies and clients.
Automation supports greater accuracy and increases consistency in payments. It can also help with compliance requirements and approvals.
With workflow automation, ITaaS can manage the process of deploying and overseeing business networks more effectively. Automations are also useful for managing all their systems easier in real-time.
Incident reports can be easily automated and integrated with other security tools to allow IT to manage ecosystems better. Moreover, you can also use workflow automation to monitor cyber threats to increase security.
We are giving you free workflow automation templates so you can see what a well-structured workflow should look like.
These are templates for workflows that have been fully fleshed out and are ready to use. All you need to do is assign tasks and due dates, and you’re done.
Below are some examples to get you started:
And we have many more in our library, so check out our free demo here!
At Process Street, we believe that automation is the future and the key to a more productive workforce. And the future of automation is already here.
Businesses are using automation to improve productivity and job satisfaction and to create efficient and scalable systems.
In other words, workflow automation helps them grow their businesses by reducing human error and time-consuming tasks.
And most importantly, the shift to no-code solutions makes them more accessible to all. Now anyone from decision-makers to collaborators can create and deploy workflows.
This allows organizations to become more collaborative and move away from a micromanaging, top-down structure. All while increasing productivity and scaling the business more rapidly.