How to Maximize a Workflow Management System for Efficiency

Adding the right tools to your team’s workflow management system can boost productivity, save time, and free up your team members for more important work, like building relationships or brainstorming. Automated workflow tools handle repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on the essential parts of their jobs. The result: work becomes less tedious, and your team becomes more efficient.

That said, the best workflow systems for teams do more than automate. They help you document and update processes, ensuring teams have the most recent iteration. 

Let’s explore how to get the most out of your workflow management system.

What is a workflow management system?

Workflow management involves mapping and improving how teams complete daily tasks. A workflow management system is software that helps teams organize, automate, and track tasks from start to finish. 

Before you can streamline your team’s projects with a digital workflow system like Slack’s workflow automation tools, you need to understand the basics of workflow management. Managing a workflow entails optimizing the tasks involved in a process to reach a specific outcome.

Let’s take the process of making breakfast as an example. The required steps are:

• Wash and cut fruit.
• Brew coffee.
• Toast bread.
• Cook eggs.

How can you complete these steps to get to your desired outcome — breakfast — as efficiently as possible? How about:

• Start the coffee.
• Put your bread in the toaster.
• While the bread is toasting, crack the eggs into a bowl and pour them into a pan.
• While the eggs cook, wash and cut the fruit.
• By the time your fruit is cut, the coffee, toast, and eggs should be ready.

You completed those steps in a logical, effective order, which let you prep breakfast quickly before any ingredients could get cold. So there you go: you just managed a workflow.

Workflow management vs. project management

Workflow management optimizes the distinct steps involved within a broader project, or “how” work gets done. Project management provides a big-picture view of the entire project, or “when” and “what” gets done. Both boost efficiency through business workflow automation but serve different purposes. 

Let’s break down the differences between managing workflows, projects, and business processes: 

• Workflow management centers on how daily tasks move forward. It streamlines specific steps within processes. Teams use cloud-based workflow tools to automate approvals, handoffs, and updates. 
• Project management focuses on one-time initiatives, like launching a new product. It coordinates multiple workflows toward a single goal. Workflow integration with apps, tools, and project management templates helps manage timelines and milestones. 
• Business process management — or organizing and optimizing tasks related to growing a business — adds another layer. It involves continuously reviewing and refining processes across an organization. For example, order fulfillment teams could use a business process automation system with workflow tracking tools to monitor and streamline order fulfillment.

Benefits of using a workflow management system 

The right workflow system software can simplify your processes, reduce errors, and give your team more time to focus on its most important tasks. The benefits of using a workflow management system include:

• Streamlined operations. Work operating systems with automation hubs like Slack can automate tasks for maximum efficiency — directly in the intelligent productivity platform your team already knows and loves.
• Enhanced collaboration. A good workflow management system facilitates collaborative task lists and file sharing. It also provides real-time updates on your team’s workflows to ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Adapting to scale. As your company grows and adds more employees, your processes will need to adapt. Choose a workflow management program that’s compatible with a growing team.

Types of workflow management systems

Given all of the options available on the market, how do you pick the best workflow software for your team? The right solution for you depends on your industry, company, and projects. 

Your workflow management system should integrate with your team’s communication platform to support collaboration every step of the way. 

Consider these popular apps for workflow management:

• Slack. The work OS that centralizes communication, offering async and real-time collaboration tools. A no-code workflow builder cuts out busywork while Agentforce AI agents turn next steps into actions. With over 2,600 Slack app integrations, teams can automate CRM updates and gain cross-app visibility from one workspace. 
• Slack Sales Elevate. Integrate Salesforce Sales Cloud with Slack, empowering sales teams to simplify tasks and centralize processes right in the Slack platform.
• Asana. A visual project management program that makes it easy to coordinate and manage workflows.
• Trello. A list-making application that keeps track of daily to-dos as you manage larger projects.
• Zapier. An online platform that connects your apps and services to automate repetitive tasks in a user-friendly interface.

How to use Slack for workflow systems

How can a business messaging platform help with workflow management? Well, Slack is an AI-powered work operating system that goes beyond your basic team chat app. It becomes your company’s automation hub, where team members browse, build, and optimize workflows. 

Slack as a digital HQ isn’t just where teams collaborate; it’s where workflows live and evolve. Let’s take a look.

Slack’s Workflow Builder

You can build custom workflows in Workflow Builder to automate routine tasks and processes, like those involved in kicking off a project or onboarding a new hire.

Some repetitive tasks can become tedious and time-consuming when done manually — think: drawing up contracts, contacting project owners, and creating meeting schedules. Workflow Builder saves you time by taking care of those to-do items automatically.

Here’s a Workflow Builder overview of what you can do:

• Create team collaboration channels.
• Invite the right people to the channel.
• Start a new project in Asana to track tasks and project milestones.
• Schedule a call on Zoom for the kickoff meeting.

Also, once you publish a workflow, others in your company’s Slack workspace can use it, too. This helps standardize unstructured processes across your organization to boost productivity and keep everyone in sync.

Use cases: automating processes with Slack

Don’t take our word for it. Some of Slack’s biggest customers, like DocuSign, Noom, and Verizon, have benefited from Slack’s automation tools.

• DocuSign. As DocuSign’s workforce grew, the company needed to expedite its onboarding process. The IT team made it happen by consolidating all onboarding documentation into a single space and using Workflow Builder to set up a two-step onboarding workflow:
  • When new hires are set up with Slack accounts, they are automatically invited to join a set of main channels. Slackbot automatically sends them critical information, including the purpose of each main channel and where new employees can locate important documents.
  • Upon joining their team channel, each new hire is automatically prompted to complete a workflow that includes a form requesting details on their role, who they report to, and a fun personal fact. Their responses are automatically sent to the team channel as an intro message, allowing other members to welcome their new teammates.
• Noom. Noom’s manual onboarding process was time-consuming and became unsustainable as the company onboarded up to 100 new coaches at a time. Noom used Workflow Builder to implement a three-step onboarding workflow. The shift ultimately shaved 30 minutes off new-hire orientation and saved the coaching operations team around two hours per month.
  • A week before their scheduled start date, the new hires are automatically added as single-channel guests to the #pre-start-noombies channel in the company’s workspace. They receive a tour of the workspace and set up their calendars.
  • When a member joins the pre-start channel, an automatic workflow is triggered, providing each new hire with onboarding content, including tutorials, a tour of resources, and a request for a bio and photo.
  • On their start date, new employees automatically become full members of Noom’s Slack workspace and are added to their respective cohort-specific channels for new hires.
• Verizon. Russell Leader, a director of planning and engineering at Verizon, encourages employees across the organization to use Workflow Builder to speed up lengthy processes and alleviate pain points. Each department at Verizon determines how to apply Slack’s workflow management solutions to its team’s unique roadblocks. “Employees outside of IT know their own problems and can leverage the capabilities of Slack to build their own workflows,” Leader says. “It’s not just IT bringing a tool, but a platform that other people can build upon for their own departmental needs.”

Tips for designing your workflow management system

A well-designed workflow management system clarifies how teams progress and complete tasks. Use these best practices to create a digital workflow system that is clear, adaptable, and easy to maintain:

• Map steps visually. Diagram how tasks flow from one stage to the next in your digital HQ’s virtual canvas. Teams can collaborate on workflow design decisions and spot redundancies or potential bottlenecks early.
• Test workflows with a small group. Start small by testing a process with a few teammates to see how it runs. Use huddles for real-time collaboration to discuss steps, gather feedback, and identify confusing actions or decision points.
• Review and refine as you go. Workflows change with your team’s goals, tools, and habits. The flexibility built into modern workflow builder software makes iteration easy.
• Automate where it helps. Flag repetitive actions that can be automated without losing oversight. Basic examples of workflow automation include auto-assigning tasks after a form submission or sending reminders as due dates near.
• Add workflow integration with apps. Choose workflow builder software that integrates with hybrid meeting, project management, and customer support tools. Connect systems to centralize data and automate steps across different cloud-based services.
• Monitor key metrics. Track a few KPIs like turnaround time or task completion rates to measure how workflow efficiency improves over time. These metrics and workflow tracking tools help you understand how well your system performs. Larger organizations can consider Slack for enterprises to analyze and scale workflow insights across teams.

Go forth and automate

A modern workflow management system helps teams efficiently complete tasks. It enforces rules or triggers and automates repetitive actions. Fewer tedious activities allow employees to focus on problem-solving or deep work. The best workflow systems for teams also ensure that anyone can create effective automations and integrate workflows with apps. 

With Slack as your digital HQ and automation hub, teams can automate recurring workflows and visualize tasks, project timelines, and progress in one place. As projects or work evolve, Slack’s workflow management features and flexible collaboration spaces enable employees to adapt and scale workflows quickly.

Workflow management system FAQs