If your company struggles to accomplish goals and tasks effectively, you are not alone — organizations, on average, lose 20% to30 % of their revenue annually due to inefficient work processes.
Manual workflows have been the optimal solution for some time now. That’s because they help organize and standardize teams as they accomplish their tasks.
Many companies still use non-automated workflows and document their workflow operations through forms and papers. However, emerging technologies necessitate digital transformations and automated workflows to bridge the gap in business processes.
Digitizing your workflow is an excellent way to make your work simpler, secure, and, ultimately, more effective, saving you time, money, and effort.
A digital workflow process provides you with a centralized location for data storage, allowing you to complete tasks while automating and streamlining intricate work processes.
Here is a comprehensive guide to building a digital workflow and the best tools to leverage for digitization.
Table of Contents
What Is A Digital Workflow?
A digital workflow refers to a sequential and predictable combination of guidelines, tasks, and data that make up standard business processes.
Digital workflows also center on external users like vendors, customers, etc., which ensures the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. That way, you can create a better and more frictionless customer experience.
By defining your workflows digitally, you can instantly search for your crucial data, track and monitor tasks, streamline, and automate processes for optimal productivity.
All in all, a digital workflow automates the company’s internal operations and processes essential to get its business done. This advanced workflow system offers several benefits to help them take their businesses to the next level.
What Are The Benefits Of Digital Workflows?
As technology rapidly evolves, the benefits of digital workflows continue to help businesses in countless ways.
If you are considering digitizing your business processes and it is on your 2021 schedule, here are some of the advantages of doing so.
Improved Customer Experience
Customers expect exceptional service and seamless experiences. By digitizing your document workflows and processes, you can facilitate customers better with effective communication and procedures, streamlining and enhancing the customer journey for all the involved parties.
Higher Employee Productivity
It is imperative for your employees to be on the same page to collaborate and communicate effectively in meaningful discussions.
Workflow digitization makes it easier to automate documents and data sharing processes, helping teams share and exchange necessary information instantly, irrespective of geographical boundaries. As a result, it can significantly increase your business productivity.
Reduction In Overheads
Manual documentation is time consuming, costly, and extends the overall review process. Digital documentation, on the other hand, works out the necessary bits and automates those to eliminate the heavy paperwork.
Ultimately, this saves you redundant costs and allows employees to focus and invest more time on core functions. You get higher returns on your investment as a result.
Increased Data Security
Data automation and digitization allow you to secure and protect all the critical and sensitive information with strict audit trails and keep the back up at different secure locations. That way, you can retrieve the data even if you lose it from one place.
Furthermore, it can prevent unauthorized users from accessing the data without the approval of that specific piece of information.
How To Digitize Your Workflows?
Digitized workflows can help you increase productivity and efficiency in your business, but it is imperative to execute it correctly and with the right approach to help you with the workflow digitization execution. Here are four steps to effectively digitize your workflows.
Step 1: Carry Out A Workflow Audit Of The Existing Systems And Structures
The first step to begin with any digital transformation in your organization is to evaluate the existing manual systems and the ways you can improve them. Performing the workflow audit is the essence of digital transformation.
This audit enables you to gauge which of your present manual structures are the most inefficient and need an update. Workflow inspections also allow you to discover the areas for improvement that digitization can help optimize inefficient manual workflows.
Step 2: Start With One Digital Workflow
Once you decide and prioritize your workflows, consider those that can get the most out of this digital enhancement.
Communicate and collaborate with the people associated with the chosen systems to figure out how to go about its digitization. Usually, it is best to initially choose slightly less technical workflows to ensure a smooth process and review its implementation.
Remember to collect data related to the time, resources, or input, essentially required to complete the task, i.e., output. This will help you understand the impact of the new digitized workflow relative to manual systems.
Various digital workflows have in-built analytics, which better helps you compare how much more efficiently you were able to carry out a particular task.
Step 3: Integrate And Leverage Communication Tools
In order to successfully digitize a workflow, it is vital to keep your team on the same page through a cohesive approach – leverage effective communication and collaborative tools to get your teams aligned and avoid any misapprehensions.
Many communication tools support easy integrations and let your employees connect and interact with each other seamlessly. They can notify and alert other department members of the bugs or glitches along the way.
This will help all the involved parties in workflow digitization know the status and update others regarding their tasks and duties. Moreover, this ensures that everyone follows the roadmap and will keep the team accountable for their assigned tasks.
Step 4: Optimize, Automate And Expand Digital Workflows
The final step is to automate your workflow to help you reap the benefits of streamline and faster processes. During this step, you will simplify your business operations via digital workflows and eliminate redundant processes.
Start the automation process with iterative aspects of your workflow as it will demand relatively less technical proficiency. This way, you will be better able to optimize your workflows and gain optimal productivity.
Once you digitize your workflows, your work doesn’t end there. It is unequivocally essential to assess its effectiveness and impact in terms of teams’ tasks, responsibilities, and alignment. Additionally, continue to track and monitor its performance to understand and execute it better when you automate the next workflow and room for improvement.
Examples Of Digital Workflows And Automation Solutions
Here are some beautiful real-life examples of digital workflows and automation solutions to follow to successfully implement the digital workflows, streamline your business processes, and get the desired results.
Dotted Music – Transferring Typeform Customer Information To Separate Lists
The WeSpin project aims to teach people how to create their music online. Dotted Music wanted to connect to its customers at the launch, enabling them to add a personal touch to their responses.
They automated their processes for maximum impact.
When customers fill their WeSpin Typeform, their information is automatically transferred and stored to Podio and Mailchimp. Moreover, they have a separate list for their paid customers who receive an invite on LinkedIn from the founder.
Source: Dotted Music
Meldium – Automatic Hipchat Alerts On Industry News
Meldium used to invest their time, efforts, and resources almost every week to search for news stories about security and passwords. However, now all such news directly comes to them.
They connect a tailor-based RSS feed to their Hipchat network through Zapier, which allows Meldium to engage with their clients more and make a pitch to the appropriate reporters.
Source: Meldium
Buffer – Sending Hipchat Alerts For Comments, Blog Posts, And Github Notifications
Many big names such as Buffer also implement process automation for their business operations through Zapier.
Buffer makes sure that their Hipchat channel alerts them about the comments, new blog posts, and Github notifications. The company also tweets about books that their employees currently read by linking to Trello cards from their application.
Source: Buffer
Thoughtbot – Automating Social Media, Sales, And Support Requests
Thoughtbot is a development and design agency that automates its social media, sales, and support processes.
Their automation allows them to generate and assign a Trello card to a customer when they contact Thoughtbot. This means that they automatically promote relevant content to the contacts across their social media accounts.
Source: Thoughtbot
Webwax – Streamlining Project Management And Sales
Webwax has automated many processes across its departments, primarily to simplify their sales and project management rather than create new complex ones.
It saves them time, effort, and resources in their project management, sales, and customer communication operations through various linking apps such as Basecamp, Wufoo, and Mailchimp.
Automating project management and sales specify the particular responsibilities of every team member involved in the process and improve the overall effectiveness of the project.
Source: Webwax
Survata – Integrating New Leads To Their CRM System For Newsletters and Marketing Campaigns
Survata, now rebranded to Upwave, has the ideal setup for integrating their customer data to their CRM to add the new lead’s information. You can simplify the lead generation process and your sales prospecting efforts by automating your core sales functions.
This can significantly enhance your lead generation and digital marketing efforts as you’ll be able to collect new prospects’ data and connect with them instantly.
Source: Upwave
Best Digital Workflow Software Tools For Any Business
Here are some of the best digital workflow software tools that can help you with workflow digitization seamlessly and take your business to the next level.
Signaturely For Forms, Contracts And Documents Management
Signaturely is one of the robust yet straightforward online signature tools that can effectively help you with workflow digitization. Essentially, it’s an e-signature platform designed to help users with document management and signature collection digitally.
You can easily upload documents that need signatures as well as create forms on Signaturely through their in-built customizable free templates library for proposals and contracts.
With Signaturely, you can store your business documents, necessary paperwork, etc., in a centralized platform. That way, the teams can quickly locate and access relevant files within minutes.
All in all, it’s a useful tool to create, track, and store your documents and, at the same time, improves team communication and collaboration across the organization.
Source: Signaturely
Process Street For Digitizing Process Documentation
Process Street is a digital workflow tool that enables you to manage recurring checklists and workflows. It allows users to enhance their process management efforts by letting them automate and track the documentation.
With Process Street, you can effectively monitor your work processes through checklists and ensure minimal errors while saving you a lot of time. Moreover, your teams can collaborate seamlessly at all times.
Source: Process Street
ClickUp For Digitizing Your Collaboration
ClickUp is another digital workflow software tool that lets you easily customize your workflow view, which keeps you updated about your project’s status. Additionally, it provides the users with numerous functionalities and adapts to your team’s method seamlessly.
With ClickUp, you can easily foster collaboration across teams as it streamlines the project management process and achieves your business goals and objectives with this customizable and flexible tool.
Source: ClickUp
Messagely For Knowledge Documentation (Knowledge Base)
Messagely is a useful tool that helps you manage all of your customer-related communication, such as live chats.
You can integrate it with different platforms to manage social media communications, develop knowledge bases, and send out targeted messages to your customers to drive conversions.
Source: Messagely
ProProfs For Digitizing Your Employee Onboarding
ProProfs is one of the best tools to leverage for the automation of your employee onboarding processes. This platform allows you to develop a digital employee handbook to acquaint the new hires with your organization’s policies, work dynamics, mission, and vision.
Users can easily access the employee handbook on multiple devices. Additionally, ProProfs’search functionality, workflows, customization features, and more work cohesively and allows you to increase overall business efficiency.
All in all, leveraging this tool can help you enjoy a hassle-free and smooth employee onboarding experience.
Source: ProProfs
Wrapping Up
The bottom line is your workflow management systems need to be simple, smooth, and efficient. And digitizing your workflows provides you with a framework that helps you continually improve and make necessary digital enhancements to your processes through analytics, automation, and integrations.
And digital workflows help you keep your teams productive, aligned, and collaborative. You can also use a process map to help you migrate your business operations to digital systems seamlessly.
Once you understand the process of workflow digitization, it’ll be much easier to implement it in different departments, teams, and functions of your business.
Along with this, it is vital to make consistent efforts to enhance and optimize your business functions to make the most of the digitization process.
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