Ashish Deshpande, Author at frevvo Blog

How to Create an Automated Workflow Without Coding

Posted on July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

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 now putting the power of automated, digital workflows in the hands of non-technical business users.

In this piece, we’ll look at exactly how to create a workflow without any coding or I.T.

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Forms Automation

How to Convert Any PDF to a Fillable Form

Posted on July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

On-line processes are designed to reduce paper and make everyday tasks more efficient – but some processes require a specific document format and tend to make things more complicated.

For example, if you’ve ever run a new hire onboarding process, you’re probably familiar with the Federal W-4 or I-9 forms. These PDF documents are often fillable, but:

they’re hard to complete on mobile devices,
there’s often duplicate information resulting in unnecessary data entry, and
they don’t integrate with your backend systems for filing and reporting.

What good is an online form if your staff has to spend extra time manually transferring the submitted data to another format?

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Building a Better Customer Onboarding Workflow: How to Hook Customers from the First Interaction

Workflow Automation

Workflow vs Process: Understanding the Difference (+Examples)

Posted on June 17, 2020June 22, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Workflow and process are common words in business process management (BPM). They’re similar enough that they’re often used interchangeably, which creates quite a bit of confusion — even among experts in the field.

Nevertheless, there are subtle yet significant differences between the two. So let’s define “workflow” and “process” in a way that’ll help you precisely and clearly communicate your ideas around BPM at work.

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Procurement Automation

Four Procurement Processes Every Business Should Automate

Posted on February 24, 2020July 3, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Procurement is a core activity for many businesses. After all, businesses use materials and services in order to create and deliver their own products and services.

Yet, in spite of the fact that it’s such an integral operations process, procurement is persistently one of the most disorganized activities for many organizations including institutions of higher education. Often, this is because procurement’s top priorities haven’t evolved to align with the priorities of a modern business.

It’s hard to blame the procurement department. In many organizations, they’re still stuck using Excel spreadsheets and email for routine processes. Without automation, employees in charge of procurement are still spending a lot of time on paperwork, and simply don’t have the time to think bigger picture. Concerns such as Corporate Social Responsibility or reducing everyday risks to the business unfortunately take a back seat to simply getting through all the routine tasks.

Whatever the size of your business, process automation helps increase agility and sets your business up for success in the 21st century.

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Digital Transformation

Automation and Digital Transformation: The Key to Unlocking Business Growth

Posted on February 17, 2020July 6, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Doubtless, by now, you’ve seen and heard people frothing at the mouth in their fervor for digital transformation. If it’s not the buzzword of the decade, it’s certainly in the top ten. Automation is another contender for the top spot. But if both revolve around making business operations more efficient, what’s the difference, exactly?

Let’s dive in.

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Forms Automation

Create Dynamic Forms: The No-Code Guide to Smarter Data Collection

Posted on January 10, 2020April 14, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Dynamic forms are the lifeblood of most automated business processes.

From HR paperwork to automating accounting processes, most of the common ways that our customers use frevvo to save time and money in their business rely on smart forms that are able to do more than just collect text in a box, but perform actions based on those specific inputs.

This functionality allows businesses to create forms that perform calculations, automatically fill in information, or customize workflows based on the user’s inputs.

While most users would likely love this functionality, few have the resources at their disposal to achieve a truly seamless experience.

Instead, most businesses capture inputs through forms where users have to type data and read instructions and then still manually process those inputs with human time and energy. Why? Because building dynamic forms can be an enormous expense and investment that many businesses can’t make.

For most companies, rolling your own dynamic forms and creating custom workflows can drain hundreds of hours of IT time and other resources cost thousands of dollars to implement.

This is why frevvo’s forms automation software includes a Visual Rule Builder (VRB) to allow business users to create dynamic forms without coding. Using the VRB engine with our dynamic form builder, non-technical users can easily define custom rules and logic that control how a form functions while it’s being completed, once it’s been submitted, and when it’s being processed.

All of the custom functionality that would require manual coding and huge investment to build and maintain can be created with just a few clicks.

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Education Automation

Workflow Automation for Higher Ed: The 2020 Guide

Posted on January 1, 2020June 4, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Higher education has made great strides in embracing digital transformation, yet, much time is still wasted due to administrative inefficiencies. Workflow automation offers the opportunity to eliminate inefficiencies and save time and money by automating tedious manual administrative processes.

What is Workflow Automation in Higher Education?

Simply put, workflow automation is the process of automating the sequence or chain of events that need to take place in order for a process to be completed. For instance, automating the admissions workflow might streamline the process by electronically routing documents to the right people at the right time without manual email or phone calls. Additionally, the process of notifying students of changes to their application status – as well as other communications – might be automated.

Workflow automation in higher education not only reduces time-consuming busywork, freeing staff up for more important tasks – it also reduces the margin of human error, which has real world consequences for both students and administrators. Critical decisions like admissions and financial aid often hinge on these central processes.

Staff may struggle to juggle admin with the rest of their workload, resulting in students becoming frustrated by long waiting periods for simple requests that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to process and provide feedback.

In fact, fifty-five percent of education managers spend an average of a full workday on “manual, repetitive tasks” per week, according to a 2018 report.

Moreover, when academic staff are preoccupied with administrative tasks, their research and teaching suffers. As such, workflow automation that reduces the administrative burden academics face can be an effective way to attract top talent.

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Finance Automation

Accounting Automation: Building Scalable Financial Ops

Posted on December 18, 2019April 16, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Many companies are stuck with old processes when it comes to accounting.

They rely on Excel spreadsheets, sending them from employee to employee to make updates and circulate those changes. They hold steadfast to manual approvals, which can take days, weeks, or months for a simple sign-off from busy executives. And they hold their breath waiting for the inevitable human error to create an accounting minefield.

Needless to say, all of this can hinder growth for companies.

But accounting automation can open the door to a better reality.

Automating a variety of accounting and financial operations tasks will lead to smoother operations, saved time, and a better bottom line. In this article, we’ll break down the basics of accounting and financial automation, show which tasks should be automated immediately, and illustrate how to use frevvo to build a scalable financial operation for your growing business.

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Procurement Automation

Purchase Order Automation: The Definitive Guide

Posted on December 11, 2019March 11, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

A purchase order is one of the necessary types of paperwork that many business owners dread. The purchase order process is often long and complex and requires large amounts of back and forth communication. Too often, information gets lost in this type of disorganized communication – and even when it doesn’t get lost, it’s difficult to keep track of everything.

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Digital Transformation

6 Keys to Digital Transformation for Small Businesses

Posted on September 27, 2019April 17, 2020 by Ashish Deshpande

Digital transformation is essential for businesses of any size to stay relevant and competitive in today’s market. Yet for a small business with a limited budget, it could sound like an intimidating undertaking.

However, you simply can’t ignore the benefits of using the right technologies in your business. It’ll help you improve efficiency, lower costs, increase productivity, improve customer experience, and ultimately, boost profits.

In fact, 42% of SMBs now consider digital transformation a core component of their organizational strategy. Digital leaders are doubling the performance of digital laggards.

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