Introduction
Most workflows include at least a few tedious tasks that slow down business processes. Automating manual work data entry, report generation and code audits can optimize a workflow significantly, leading to more productivity and fewer errors.
Read on to learn how workflow automation streamlines operations and preserves your team’s time and labor output.
What’s Workflow Automation?
Workflow automation involves leveraging automation software to streamline repetitive tasks that don’t require human involvement, such as assigning tickets and creating expense reports. To automate a workflow, you establish triggers, actions and rules. When your workflow automation software detects a relevant trigger, it performs the appropriate actions automatically and follows the rules to ensure the process runs smoothly.
Workflow Automation Examples
Any tasks that don’t explicitly require human attention make good candidates for workflow automation. Here are some examples of business processes that workflow management software can optimize:
- Collecting invoice signatures by uploading a document and recipient list to an automation solution and having it send emails and collect digital signatures.
- Responding to customer requests via an automation solution that detects new inquiries, sends an automatic response and creates a customer support case.
- Creating weekly reports with an analytics tool that captures relevant data points and collates them into documents like expense reports and invoices.
- Auditing codebases with code validators that run regular checks on source code, reducing human error.
- Onboarding clients with a customer relationship manager (CRM) that creates new customer profiles and assigns them to relevant categories.
- Filing HR reports by letting an automation solution categorize cases, assign them to human resources representatives and attach the relevant paperwork.
Benefits of Workflow Automation
Workflow automation can optimize your organization's productivity and business processes with the following benefits:
- Increased accuracy: With proper configuration, an automated workflow completes tasks the same way every time, reducing mistakes.
- Better efficiency: Automating repetitive tasks removes them from human employees' workflows, letting people focus on important manual work.
- Faster response times: After a triggering event, workflow software performs actions almost instantly, leading to significantly faster turnaround times.
- More visibility: The best automated workflow tools offer email alerts and dashboards displaying essential stats, such as how frequently an automated workflow process was triggered and completed.
How To Automate Workflows: 8 Steps
The way you’ll automate your workflows depends on the types of tasks and software involved. But you can follow this general process to implement an automation system into your operations.
1. Select a Workflow
Choose a workflow you want to automate. Good candidates are those that require repetitive tasks that slow down employee productivity, such as data entry or sending emails. For your first workflow automation project, pick something simple so it’s easier to identify the triggers, rules and actions you need to configure.
2. Define the Workflow
You may already have standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the workflow you want to automate. If not, start automating right away with Scribe, which will generate SOPs for you. Simply download the plugin, enable it and perform the tasks yourself. Our tool will automatically track your steps and create a detailed set of SOPs you can use in the next step.
3. Identify the Systems, Apps and Tools Needed
Highlight all the tools, resources and systems employees will interact with as they go through the workflow. Look for redundancies, like spreadsheets that track tickets when your CRM already does this. Refine the workflow and ensure you rely on the fewest tools and resources necessary.
4. Select a Workflow Automation Solution
Many tools you might already use, such as Jira or HubSpot, have some automation features. Research them to determine if they’re compatible with the workflow you selected. If not, find a dedicated workflow management tool like Monday.com or Kissflow that can automate a wide range of operations.
5. Look for Automation Opportunities
Now that you have a streamlined workflow and a tool to automate it, search for opportunities to implement process automation. Look for manual tasks that don’t strictly require human interaction. “Busy work” tasks — or anything that follows simple, consistent logic — can likely be automated.
6. Set Up Automation
Using your chosen automation tool, establish triggers, actions and rules for individual tasks within the workflow. For example, if you’re automating a data entry, you might define these as:
- Trigger: A new report is uploaded.
- Action: Merge the relevant data points into the database.
- Rules: Match field names exactly. Add or subtract figures for A, B and C, and overwrite figures for X, Y and Z.
Every automation tool handles this configuration differently. Some rely on visual diagrams, while others use executable scripts in a command-line interface. Learn how your chosen automation solution works and experiment to see how much of the workflow it can handle.
7. Configure Integrations
Now that you’ve automated individual tasks, look for opportunities to link them together. You’ll need integrations for this, which are plugins that allow tools to communicate with one another in real time. For example, you can integrate your email service with your CRM so it detects when you send an automated email to a customer.
Integrations can reveal new areas for workflow automation, like granting approvals and scheduling meetings. Take advantage of these opportunities and automate everything possible.
8. Create New SOPs
Walk through the newly automated workflows and update your SOPs accordingly. Pay close attention to any manual actions employees will need to perform. If they have to enable a plugin or configure automation rules, include those instructions in your guides.
What To Look for in a Workflow Automation Software
There are several workflow automation solutions on the market, so it can be challenging to identify what’s best. Here are key features to look for when selecting the ideal automation tool for your needs.
Low-Code
Low or zero-code automation tools offer an intuitive UI that simplifies configuring triggers, actions and events. Most use natural language processing, so they can parse instructions you write in plain language. If your workflow requires some coding, ensure your tool uses the same programming or markup schema so employees don’t need to learn a new language to automate workflows.
Several Integrations
Workflow automation solutions typically need to interact with many other tools, so make sure that whichever one you select supports integrations with your existing collaboration, task tracking and email services. If your chosen software doesn’t allow an integration you need, email the manufacturer’s sales team to request it.
Customizable Forms and Portals
The best automation tools offer customizable forms that help employees initiate automated tasks accurately. These forms include drop-down menus or fields for configuring a process before it begins. Good tools also provide dashboards and portals that display running or completed tasks. These features help employees optimize automated tasks and provide valuable visibility for troubleshooting issues.
Thorough Training Support
Understanding everything your automation tools can do takes time, and you might have more than one solution to learn. Choose software with extensive tutorials and troubleshooting guides for a smoother learning curve. That way, you avoid making a workflow worse by inserting broken, unwieldy automation.
Conditional Logic
Conditional logic can help you automate more complex tasks, such as filing HR cases and requesting approvals. This logic uses "if...then" statements that dynamically alter an automated process while running. Look for tools that offer conditional logic and ways to test scenarios with sample workflows.
Enjoy Straightforward Documentation Automation With Scribe
While the goal is to simplify your operations, actually implementing workflow automation can get complex. Using Scribe makes the process easier and saves you valuable time.
Our powerful automation tool comes with numerous applications, but it’s easy to learn and use. Scribe can automatically generate anything from process instructions and tutorials to templates and meeting agendas. Try the workflow generator tool for free and learn how Scribe can help you create high-quality documents in seconds.
