Ready to Automate Productivity? Start with Workflow Management

Managing team and individual workflows can feel a lot like unpacking after a move. Just when you get through one box and put everything in its place, there’s another box waiting for you. Making your way through a sea of emails, tasks, and deadlines can feel daunting and never-ending. But with better workflow management tools and strategies in place, you can streamline your everyday tasks, freeing up space in your day for more creative and productive projects.

A structured workflow approach can reduce redundancies and eliminate confusion, which helps everyone on your team to have a clearer understanding of the job at hand. Here’s how workflow management can boost productivity at your business.

What is workflow management?

Workflow management refers to streamlining your day-to-day tasks by creating, executing, documenting, and tracking processes to achieve specific goals. Structured formats help to optimize business processes for accurate, more consistent results. Workflow management provides continued productivity and increased efficiency for your whole team in the long term.

Workflow management systems include these actions:

• Map the process. Start by visualizing your workflow, linking related tasks and assigning the right people or teams to each one.
• Automate workflows. Look for tasks that are high-volume, error-prone, or repetitive, and set them up to run automatically through workflow automation software.
• Assign tasks. Delegate activities to team members based on their roles and responsibilities to ensure everyone knows what they need to do.
• Monitor the flow. Keep an eye on activity logs and performance metrics to spot any issues, bottlenecks, or areas for improvement.
• Adjust and optimize. Continuously refine your methods to remove redundancies and inefficiencies, add automations, or realign with new goals.

 

What role does workflow management play in project management?

Workflow management provides a clear and structured framework to ensure that projects are executed efficiently. A uniform approach and integrated workflow management tools can transform how teams work by freeing up time for more complex tasks.

Project leads might use a workflow management system to eliminate the need for endless emails and follow-ups when trying to update a project’s status. Instead, they can automate this process and save time with Workflow Builder. Scheduled reminders prompt members to submit updates, and automation can even share summaries right to the project channel. 

What’s more, Agentforce 2.0 in Slack can help streamline your tasks, provide timely information, and enhance collaboration, making digital teammates the key to doing more with less. Agentforce in Slack helps you boost productivity, reduce workload, and focus on what truly matters. 

Differences between project management and workflow management

Both project and workflow management involve organizing tasks and resources, but their priorities are different.

• Workflow management is continuous and focuses on activities within a larger process. It prioritizes metrics like improving productivity and efficiency while decreasing errors.
• Project management typically has clear start and end dates, with managers who oversee the project’s lifecycle. Priorities include hitting milestones, providing deliverables, and satisfying clients.

Project management tools for workflow creation

Project management software is useful for mapping your business processes. Most software offers visualization tools, templates, and basic automation features for more efficient workflows. Look for project management software that integrates with Slack, the AI-powered work operating system, or your preferred work OS, to coordinate tasks and teams in one place. Integration helps you maximize efficiency by eliminating the need to juggle between several open tabs.

Some popular project management tools include:

• Trello, which uses virtual boards with lists for different stages and cards for each step.
• Smartsheet, which uses customizable templates for documenting your organization’s various processes. Plan, track, automate, and report on work to execute ideas faster.
• Jira Cloud gives teams powerful workflow and project tracking features with customizable notifications. For example, once you’ve connected a project to a channel, it will automatically preview Jira issues when @jira is mentioned.
• Asana lets teams turn Slack conversations and ideas into actionable tasks and projects. Slack notifications let you see and change task details, complete tasks, or open them in Asana.

Best practices for combining workflow and project management

Since elements of these systems overlap, following best practices can help you avoid duplication or errors. Standardizing workflows not only minimizes redundancies and reduces confusion, but it also saves teams time and makes it easier to collaborate on critical project details. Consider these guidelines for merging project and workflow management:

• Integrate your software. Reduce context switching by integrating all your productivity tools. For example, Slack’s Workflow Builder enhances efficiency by connecting to popular project management apps your team already uses so your workers don’t have to switch between tabs or programs. In addition, Workflow Builder connects to calendars, video-conferencing platforms, CRMs, and help desk software.
• Standardize recurring tasks. If you always kick off new projects with a video meeting or require weekly status updates from your teams, map the process once, then automate these workflows. Automating all recurring tasks helps ensure consistency and reduce confusion.
• Schedule reviews. Assess team feedback and activity logs to contextualize performance metrics and project progress reports. Publish changes or workflow optimizations in shared project channels.

 

How to optimize workflows for increased productivity

Process automation and standardization help teams accomplish more work in less time. But you can’t improve what you don’t track. Let’s explore ways to automate productivity with business workflow management software.

Using templates to create workflows

Templates provide consistency while allowing for customization. You might use a planning template to visualize project phases and deadlines. Templates often include budgeting formulas and color themes to highlight priorities or match your brand.

Another way to automate workflows is with Slack’s Workflow Builder templates. Each automation template gives you customizable inputs to tailor the flow for your project or business process. Advanced templates let you reorder steps or insert additional ones for easy changes or updates.

Monitoring and measuring workflow efficiency

Tracking and evaluating efficiency can take up a lot of time if you’re not using project management tools and workflow automation. By pulling data from your work operating system, you can easily analyze key insights. Slack’s workflow management software helps streamline data synchronization and collection, making the process much quicker and more efficient.

Here’s how it works:

• Automate productivity updates from Asana, Jira, or Trello, and view them in your Slack channel. These could include time spent on activities or task completion rates.
• Gather feedback using Slack polls or feedback forms to gauge your team’s experiences. Increased efficiency is often linked to employee satisfaction, but since your team’s needs will ebb and flow, it’s important to collect this data regularly to assess what’s working and what could be improved.
• Identify trends by analyzing channel activity and messages with Slack’s AI-powered searchable archive. Then, review up to 90 days of Workflow Builder logs. Patterns can reveal inefficiencies, roadblocks, and communication gaps — and become opportunities to address recurring questions, improve response times, and adjust workflows.

 

How to choose the best workflow management software

When you’re focused on boosting efficiency and productivity, it’s important to choose solutions that easily integrate with your current software and offer plenty of automation options. The ideal workflow management platform should be simple to use, giving your team the flexibility to optimize any business process as needed.

Key features to look for in workflow management tools

While every organization has specific software requirements, certain functions and capabilities are crucial regardless of industry or application. Start your search by identifying solutions with essential workflow tools. Then, narrow your list to those that meet your distinct needs.

Top workflow management software features include:

• Administrative controls: Besides editing a workflow or adjusting permissions, your workflow management solution should allow managers to view activity logs. Slack Workflow Builder lets you view any errors and see actions by date, status, or person.
• No-code workflow automation tools: Ensure teams can create and adjust flows regardless of their technical experience by choosing software with drag-and-drop tools that don’t require users to manage scripts.
• Project management integration: Your workflow management tool must integrate with your organization’s existing project management tools. Workflow Builder lets you connect to popular apps like ClickUp, Basecamp, and Monday so you always have what you need right in front of you.
• Built-in collaboration: The best workflow management software supports cross-functional collaboration for efficient communication. When you bring teams together in Slack, they can access resources, view real-time updates, and troubleshoot on shared channels.

 

Best practices and common challenges in workflow automation

Standardizing your processes using automation and identifying bottlenecks are just a couple of ways you can save time and reduce inefficiencies quickly. Here are a few best practices to consider when implementing workflow automation at your organization.

Steps to automate effective workflows

Before you can automate a workflow, you should map out the process. Here’s a brief look at how to do this:

1. Identify time-consuming, repetitive tasks that require minimal human input.
2. Determine the workflow automation goal, such as saving time or reducing errors.
3. Decide how you will measure success and establish metrics.
4. Select one business process or task to automate.
5. Define the triggers (events that start the automation), actions (what happens as a result of the triggers), and conditions (rules for when the action occurs).
6. Initiate the flow using a template or Slack Workflow Builder.
7. Test the automation, collect feedback, and begin staff training.
8. Continually monitor, optimize, and manage workflows.

How to streamline business processes with automation

Integrating a workflow management platform and applying best practices is the best approach for improving operational efficiency. Although back-end systems have automatic features, piecemeal methods require teams to log in to different apps, reducing productivity and fragmenting data.

Your company can save dozens, even hundreds, of hours yearly with one solution to automate workflows for almost any administrative task, business process, or project. For example, teams across Capital One rely on Slack for no-code workflows and integrations.

Capital One uses Slack’s API to improve data security through Workflow Builder customization. A workflow script automatically disconnects inactive user accounts when employees leave the company. Any returning employee can submit a reactivation request and have access within minutes. Built-in safeguards allow Capital One to ensure data security while enhancing efficiency. By eliminating manual steps, IT and support staff get the information they need quickly and efficiently.

How to implement a workflow management system on your team

With careful planning, you can deploy business workflow management software that your team is excited to use. A successful transition should meet milestones without skipping steps. Here’s how to ensure a smooth transition during your system implementation.

1. Create an implementation plan. Identify goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), stakeholders, timelines, milestones, and integrations to use.
2. Select and test workflows. Start with a few essential workflows and task-specific integrations.
3. Offer training sessions. Develop resources and interactive sessions to meet individual and team needs.
4. Assess feedback. Explore pain points or concerns about integrations and workflow automation before adjusting methods.
5. Launch the software. Communicate the companywide rollout for your chosen workflows and highlight support resources.
6. Track performance. Refer to your KPIs, usage metrics, and team feedback to monitor workflow effectiveness and measure success.

 

Automate productivity across your organization

Manual project management and task coordination can often invite inefficiencies and errors into common business processes. But with the right workflow management tools, practices, and feedback, you can optimize and automate workflows for increased efficiency. For the best results, integrate an automated workflow solution into your existing AI-powered work operating system, like Slack, to support your goals, boost productivity, and strengthen collaboration between teams.