It’s easy to miss the signs that your business is suffering from process issues. 

Most of the time, you don’t know you have a problem until someone points it out.  

Maybe they’ve been waiting on an approval for weeks or can’t find an important email lost in hundreds of threads in their inbox.  

Maybe they can’t see what stage a task is at, delaying projects across multiple departments. 

Or maybe they skip a step in a crucial process, requiring a start from scratch. 

Businesses will often brush off these issues as ‘one-offs’ and not worth fixing (especially if it requires IT resource). But the truth is, a poorly designed process is a breeding ground for future problems, especially as businesses scale. 

So how do you know when your business might be in need of some help in the process department? 

Luckily for you, we’ve identified some key warning signs you should be looking out for. 

Maybe Jen didn’t correctly fill out the form with the right info. Or maybe she didn’t attach the PDF to her email. Maybe her manager has 1,000 other emails to check before getting to hers.  

Meanwhile, there is no actual system pushing the workflow forward, just a whole bunch of people you hope will follow the process and do their part. 

In the smaller scheme of things this isn’t a big issue. A few delayed approvals here and there. But as your organisation grows and employee expectations increase, paper and email-based processes can start to crumble.  

2. Processes are documented but tasks  are still being skipped  

You’ve spent a bunch of time creating the best process map of all time.  

Now you have the ultimate work of business process art. And nobody follows it.

If people are skipping steps in a process or completely ignoring a process altogether, you’ve got a process issue. 

We love process mapping, in fact, it’s a big part of our platform. However, just because a process is mapped doesn’t mean the process is being followed. 

Automation can help you identify the underlying issues and bottlenecks in your processes. What if the process is too complicated? What if a step is being skipped because the process involves someone or something completely irrelevant?  

Automating the process helps you see exactly where your processes are going wrong – allowing you to rapidly iterate and improve both your workflows and your employee experiences. 

Could you report on compliance without spending days collating stacks of paper or sifting through email threads? Would you be able to identify where a CAPEX request is at without following up with a bunch of different people?  

Add a remote working element to it and many businesses are essentially running around with their eyes closed. 

If the only person across a process is the person currently dealing with it – you’ll benefit from a workflow automation solution. 

4. Your team are spending way too much time on manual tasks

I know what you might be thinking – if we automate manual tasks, we’ll be taking jobs away from our people.

Or we’ll be replacing our people with robots! Not exactly. 

For many businesses automation is the difference between your people doing more and doing less, not doing something and doing nothing. 

If a customer sends in a refund request, automation could be the difference between getting a refund in a few hours vs. a few weeks. 

With paper and email-based processes your team could be spending hours and hours searching email threads, matching up data and delivering paper approvals to their managers.  

Not a great experience for customers. And all that admin drives your employees up the wall. 

With automation you can free up your employees to work on the things that matter. 

This allows them to give back to the business, focusing their time on improvements rather than BAU. 

So, if you’re waiting on approvals, skipping steps in processes or unsure where they’re sitting, or if your team are just bogged down day in and day out with unnecessary manual tasks, you’ll benefit from process automation. 

The power of process automation allows you to fix all these problems (and identify other process issues you didn’t even know you had), but it can also be a costly and IT-intensive undertaking. 

With Flowingly, you can accomplish this without the need for developers, empowering your non-technical teams to automate their very own processes, which they know inside out and run every day. 

Don’t just take our word for it either. 

At Todd Energy, they have automated 13 processes in just 6 months, turning processes like onboarding, which were run out of Excel spreadsheets, into streamlined digital experiences. 

Glenelg Shire Council are saving 80+ weeks of admin every year, with some processes dropping from an hour to 10 minutes’ worth of admin. 

Flowingly gives your employees the tools they need to improve the way they work and create real, significant change within the organisation. 

Before Steph, Digital Improvement Lead at Todd Energy, automated their staff and contractor onboarding process, it would take 6+ hours to complete.

Now, it only takes 2, no longer relying on spreadsheets, back & forth emails and individuals’ memory.

See how Steph this and what the feedback has been like in the organisation in the snippet below.

Transcript

I guess a great example of that is the staffing contractor onboarding flow.

And you have touched on that already a little bit, Sean.

But prior to us automating this process it would take upwards of six hours on and off for us to onboard a new staff or contractor, and I guess it was run out of an Excel workbook.

If I’m completely honest with you, It had some templated emails in it, but there was lots of backwards and force and a huge reliance on individuals to remember what was going on and to keep that process ticking.

Honestly it took me about 20 hours to build that process. It’s quite a meaty one.

And it was probably our first more high complex process that we built.

We had some pretty amazing engagement and ownership with the lovely ladies that run that process.

And I asked them post go-live, ‘just gut feel how much time is this saving you now?’ And they estimate between three and four hours.

So three and four hours per new start is a pretty decent saving I think.

And the feedback from them was along the lines of ‘I don’t need to remember where the process is at and the system just keeps it on track and I get the notifications when I need to do something’, which I guess in turn allows them to provide more value add to the business.

So yeah, each team has got a bit of a mix of simple and complex processes that I guess keeps us working in the trees.

We’ve spoken about working in the weeds a little bit.

But I guess continuing to push and improve once those processes are in and rolled out to, and tying back to that first statement, making a plan and a roadmap, socializing it and holding yourselves to account, that’s really key.

1. Don’t attack your biggest process first (even if it’s your most broken)

You’re hosting a dinner party. You’ve got a recipe you’ve cooked a thousand times before that you could make with your eyes closed and a recipe you’ve made once that you weren’t 100% confident with.

You need to cook both, but which do you start with?

A lot of people come to us with a specific process in mind they want mapped and automated. Usually, this process is the most inefficient within the organization, is difficult to automate and includes a truck load of people.

Similar to the dinner party scenario, would we recommend you automate with the process you know inside out or the process causing you the most problems? Definitely the first.

This might look like tackling your shorter, simple leave request workflow before attempting employee onboarding. This will help you (1) gain experience in building out processes (2) get employees engaged with workflow faster and (3) help your organization build momentum.

Once you’ve mastered a few simple workflows and got company buy in, you’ll be in a much better position to tackle that complex, highly-political process.

2. Not starting with the process first

If a process isn’t good to start with, how will automating it improve it?

Time and time again businesses come to us saying their processes aren’t working. Compliance is shoddy, deadlines are being missed and their teams are stressed.

While workflow automation has a part to play in helping businesses improve compliance and productivity, it isn’t the only part.

Like polishing a turd, automating a poor process will only highlight the flaws in a process, not hide them.

Having great businesses processes is the key to true process excellence for us, that’s why every Flowingly customer gets a customer success manager. The goal shouldn’t be automating processes, the goal should be achieving process excellence and creating better workflow builders.

Our friends at rhipe discussed how they approach this, from process to automation to integration, at our latest webinar which you can find here.

3. Not providing additional context and information to processes

Sometimes people don’t follow a process because it doesn’t exist. Sometimes people just don’t follow a process because it isn’t engaging or easy to follow.

Let’s say you have an incident report/harassment process mapped out within your organization.

Can your employees quickly get access to your policies around harassment? What if someone brushes off an incident because they aren’t sure it constitutes harassment within the business?

When it comes to an incident workflow adding things like a list of company values, links to bullying policies and assurances of confidentiality can quickly improve the employee experience. Ensuring your process isn’t just mapped, but clear and easy for any employee to follow is crucial, whether they’ve been at the company a day or a year.

4. Having a set and forget attitude

Process improvement doesn’t stop with automation. It’s a never-ending process, not something you can set up once and then forget about.

Some companies make the mistake of taking a mapped process, automating it and then never re-evaluating it again. Continuously evaluating and searching for better ways to optimize your workflows is the key to creating true process excellence.

Just because a process has been mapped and automated doesn’t make it perfect. With automation reporting you can identify in real-time where your process bottlenecks are.

Kristen at Upper Hutt City Council outlined their continuous improvement approach in a recent webinar you can check out here.

When talking about workflow iterations she said “we started off simple with a form with 3 short fields but as I learned more about how things worked and talked to other people in other departments…I was able to expand on what we already have. And make it better. Now we just use a single table.”

Key to iterating on your workflows is having a platform that supports ongoing improvement. If small changes take you hours or days to deploy, you won’t do them. Make sure you choose a platform where workflow tweaks can be made in minutes (like Flowingly).

5. Sending irrelevant, excessive notifications

Notifications are an excellent way to help team members complete steps in a process, but they need to contain all the necessary information and be sent at the right time.

Receiving a notification that doesn’t tell you how to complete a step – bad for user experience. Being sent an approval notification after the deadline – bad for productivity.

Sending out too many unnecessary reminders (especially irrelevant ones) about due dates and approvals will have the opposite effect when it comes to productivity. In fact, notification overload will make your users more likely to ignore or mute notifications – not only harming productivity but also harming the future adoption of digital technologies.

Save the reminders for when you need something actioned or when someone needs to oversee part of the process.

A lot of businesses approach us with a single platform requirement.

Maybe they’re looking for process mapping software because don’t have clear or well documented processes in place. Or maybe they’re looking for automation because they’re having problems with delays, productivity and compliance.

Typically, they aren’t looking for a solution that does both.

One of the reasons for this is that it’s rare that a platform offers both – Flowingly does because we have seen first-hand the impact strong processes can have on the success of workflow automation and the power workflow automation can bring to mapped processes.

Okay, so maybe you’re thinking process mapping makes sense but automation seems intensive or time-consuming.

The combination of workflow automation and process mapping provides organizations with a greater level of insight into not just their processes, but how their processes are running.

Just because a process is mapped doesn’t mean it’s being followed. With automation, you can ensure it is and if it isn’t, you can understand why.

Process maps help show the relationship between different tasks and help communicate the steps required in each process, who is responsible for what and the requirements of the tasks. Workflow automation comes in and helps ensure that each task is completed on time and accurately.

The combination of these two tools is the key to process excellence for many organizations and can help significantly improve process efficiency without dramatically increasing costs or resource.

Alright, so why Flowingly?

There are great process mapping platforms. There are also great workflow automation platforms. There aren’t many platforms that do both.

This means you might find an incredible tool where your business teams build processes but when it comes to automating them you’ve got to basically hand them over to your developers to translate and build them all over again in a different tool. Or maybe you’ve found an incredible workflow tool but have no idea where to start when it comes to mapping out your processes.

An automated workflow is only as strong as the process it’s built against.

With Flowingly you’ve got both tools built-in, meaning you can rapidly map out a process right off the bat and automate it with a click. Just like that. No developers, no platform switching.

While many of those businesses who approach us come to us in need of either a process mapping or workflow automation tool, more often than not they’re really looking for both.

True digital transformation comes when process improvement and process excellence is felt organization-wide, with businesses actively caring about the experience of their staff and customers.