Ashish Deshpande has worked in the process automation space for over 20 years. He has been instrumental in successfully deploying frevvo’s software at hundreds of organizations such as HBO, New York University, and Boston Public Schools. Ashish has contributed to leading publications such as Forbes, business.com and readwrite.com. Ashish received a PhD in Computer Science from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India.
Most businesses could stand to improve their processes.
It’s not that businesses are purposely choosing to run ineffectively, they just don’t realize where they could boost efficiency.
For example, most organizations don’t realize that at least a third of activities for 60% of jobs could be automated. Just imagine what your company could achieve with all that extra time.
To understand where you could streamline operations, you need to dig into the different processes at play within your firm.
Organizations heavily depend on processes to get work done. Standard processes ensure that tasks like employee onboarding and procurement are completed in an efficient manner.
But among the more time-consuming are document approvals. Certain documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, must flow through a series of steps to ensure compliance and standardization.
Doing things manually or not having a formal approval process in place at all will cost your business over the long-term.
So, how do you create a document approval workflow? What tools are available that can automate the approval process?
Every organization has its own set of workflows for everyday tasks. These workflows used to rely on paper forms, ledgers, and inter-office memos.
Most teams have now “progressed” to using Excel and email. While it’s better than physical paper, email-based workflows are still manual and inefficient.
The good news is that modern, cloud-based software is putting the power of automated, digital workflows in the hands of non-technical business users.
Employees that take vacations are more motivated and produce better quality work. It seems smart, then, to encourage your team to take days off to recuperate.
However, 6 out of 10 workers don’t feel like their employer encourages them to take time off.
While there are multiple reasons staff feel discouraged, a big problem lies in how vacation request processes are set up.
Think about the accounts payable (AP) invoice process in a typical business.
Often, invoices go to multiple people in the organization rather than being centralized. A recipient manually forwards the invoice to the accounts payable department for coding and review – usually by email. Someone manually enters invoice data into an internal system, the invoices are paid, and filed away – often in a folder.
Manual processing is incredibly wasteful and expensive.
It’s incredibly wasteful, error-prone, and costly. According to the Institute of Finance and Management accounts payable professionals spend a mind-boggling 84% of their time trapped in an endless cycle of manual and semi-automated AP processes, including data capture.
With a modern AP automation solution, your employees can stop wasting time on data capture and manual processes and can instead spend it on work that really matters.
An employee puts in a purchase order, only to find that nothing gets delivered and they don’t have the tools they need for the job.
The paperwork is buried in the purchasing manager’s inbox, waiting for an approval that never comes. The busy purchase manager has forgotten to sign off.
When you’re using manual purchasing processes, this is bound to happen. Purchase requests get filled out wrong, lost, or forgotten, and delays ensue.
This doesn’t have to be the way. Automatic approval software can remedy the ills of manual processing, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
Businesses today have to do more than build great products. They have to refine their workflows and make their operations more efficient to stay competitive.
Much of what gets done in any organization depends on workflows — approving purchase orders, onboarding new hires, processing expense claims, and more. Effective workflow management improves overall productivity and boosts your bottom line.
But with dozens or even hundreds of workflows, how do you manage all of them?
Workflows play a critical role for every organization. They ensure that processes like onboarding new employees and sending purchase orders follow the same steps every time.
Making a single change to a workflow–removing an unnecessary task, automating a step, digitizing a form–can have a meaningful positive impact on how (and how quickly) work gets done.
But how exactly do you create more efficient workflows? And what tools are available that can help with this process?
In this article, we’ll explain what workflow efficiency is and how it’s measured. We’ll also look at how you can build more efficient workflows.