Let’s face it – everyone working in the corporate world has spent valuable time on mundane tasks they’d rather not perform. Whether it’s manually entering data at the end of a long day, or checking your email constantly to make sure you haven’t missed a message in an important thread, we’ve all been there.
It’s clear that automating important processes across your business can save you and your team hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and millions of hairs from being torn out.
But what about streamlining those not-so-obvious processes that often slip through the cracks in the digital transformation journey?
To make your life – and work – easier, consider using workflow software to automate the following business processes:
1. Document reviews
Dynamically generate, edit and approve contracts and any other documents your company produces regularly. Various language, formatting and even geo-specific content can be set automatically using document generation.
Workflow automation allows meta-approval of data at any stage of the process. This means approved team members can make real-time changes and track updates without the need for manual notification, and without pushing back on a deadline or increasing the risk of publishing an unpolished document.
2. SMS notifications
Most business processes use email to administer notifications, but SMS click rates are much higher than email click rates. Meaning, employees will be more likely to quickly read and respond to a text rather than an email.
This increases response rates and reduces the time it takes to complete a request. Project managers can use workflow automation to integrate SMS notifications into a business process and get their team working together more easily and conveniently.
Take it one step further by consolidating notifications from multiple lines of communication (phone, email, SMS) so that employees spend less time going through messages or notifications and more time actually doing the work.
3. Budget approvals
Everyone is familiar with budgeting and allocating funds to make the most of your money. But what if your manual process is leaving money on the table?
Unallocated funds are difficult to identify when there are multiple stakeholders in your department. Advanced workflow capabilities can identify and follow up on unallocated funds, improving collaboration and giving you more visibility into your spending.
4. Media submissions
To manage media pitches or content proposals, most production teams have to upload submissions manually. Commissioners then have to review submissions and re-upload them into a database.
These manual processes are time-consuming, irritating and error-prone. And neither party has a way to track submissions through a multi-step approval process. An automated workflow stores this information, sends it to the correct people at the correct stage, and keeps the work, well, flowing.
5. Risk mitigation
Workflow automation can reduce the number of forms you need to fill in manually and can sure all data entered complies with necessary regulations within that contract and in your industry.
You can set up a workflow to alert your team members of issues upon data entry. You can also set up self-service alerts for individual employees to catch errors early on to help them stay within standards before submitting a form.
Here’s how different industries can mitigate risks:
- In the construction industry, automation can be mobile-enabled to meet industry standards and needs of employees in the field.
- In financial industries, automation reduces fraud by creating a full audit trail for approvals and comments.
6. Customer case studies
Case studies are a good way to explain the value of a business solution to a customer. (We think so, at least!).
Automatically filling a customers’ information into a pre-defined template for case studies can dramatically decrease the amount of time spent in production, meaning your marketing department can tell more customer success stories and secure more business opportunities.
7. Helpdesk support
Let your IT department get to the problem faster. Eliminate lost tickets and repeated work to speed up help desk processes.
When an employee submits a ticket, an automated workflow can automatically assign an owner and a due date and prioritize or escalate overdue tickets. Plus, integrating knowledge bases allows your team to provide faster and more accurate responses, and integration with ITIL/IT service management systems ensures IT policy compliance.
8. Product launches
Many businesses still use Excel sheets, emails, and in-person meetings to manage and track a new product’s launch.
There’s a better way to get your product to market quicker and beat out the competition. By automating the process, you can schedule and coordinate the tasks related launches automatically—saving weeks or months per new product
Automation allows you to understand your go-to-market strategy and optimize process behind it, thus helping you expose and resolve problems going forward.
9. Employee status changes
With the Nintex Platform, organizations can regularly schedule employee performance reviews and help HR departments capture and archive the feedback that is vital to promoting a healthy workplace – all with a full audit trail, including document versions and approval history.
Automatically schedule workflows to set reminders and expedite reviews, easily report on each review, and integrate your workflow with HRIS and payroll systems to automate compensation adjustments and bonus distribution.
Automating the employee review process promotes a positive work culture and helps your HR department to improve the way your business is run.
10. Stacking multiple processes
With Nintex Workflow Cloud, you can build a connector between multiple business applications, cloud services or content repositories – without using code. When applications talk to each other, it gives team members, both internal and external, the ability to truly collaborate and streamline their work, no matter where their content lives.
For example, native Salesforce users can collaborate with people who are not in Salesforce.
Business can also stack many applications to create one well-oiled process.
- Utilize email, Slack, Salesforce and SMS tasks all in one workflow as a communication mechanism.
- Utilize document generation, an on/off platform for approvals, e-signature and archival as an approval mechanism.
Interested in trying the Nintex Platform for yourself? Get your free 30-day trial here.
