Have you ever considered the ways that could have made the tasks, processes, and flows of your business more productive? Do you know how efficient your workflows are? Do you have a system to coordinate your business’ daily, monthly and yearly processes, at least regular ones?
How much time and effort are you spending to manage your business? How much time do you spend between spreadsheets? Do you know how much is to ensure that everything is running smoothly even when you are not present by creating a completely integrated digital process?
Let’s start with the basics. Workflow occurs from a group of processes, and processes occur from a group of tasks. A workflow simply could be defined as a series of actions that should be taken by a business to accomplish a goal.
When you define workflow like this, it shows you the importance of KPIs and goals. These processes can be about your orders, production, sales, logistics, after-sales operations, etc.
Maybe the first step to creating a digital workflow for your business is to determine these desired objectives. When your organizational goals are smart enough, it’s not that hard to discover your tasks and processes for different teams.
When you analyze your objectives, it will most likely reveal which part of your business is in need of digitalization or/and optimization. Digital solutions are mandatory for a well-organized business. In today’s world, there is no other way to create an efficient, logical, productive, and trackable workflow other than creating a digital workflow.
In this article, we will explain what a digital workflow offers to you and where to begin. Of course, creating a digital workflow is not that simple. But it’s obvious that to increase your productivity and efficiency, you should optimize your digital workflow as soon as possible.
Since going paperless or buying software is not the same as having a proper digital workflow, you should determine your business’ repeatable tasks and select automatable ones from them. Then, your smooth and quick transition will begin. At the end of this article, you’ll find a to-do list for the beginning.
What is a digital workflow?
At its most basic level, a workflow is a process of setting out the stages required to complete a task or achieve a business goal, and a digital workflow takes this one step further by digitizing and automating these procedures. A digital workflow is the automation of tasks and processes with technology-based, reasonable digital solutions.
Workflows aim to make work more productive, effective, and sustainable. The workflow itself doesn’t have to be complex, hard, or time-consuming every time; yet creating an ideal digital workflow can be tricky sometimes. . And regardless of the hardness of creating it, it aims to make your flows organized and productive.
So you should keep in mind that once you have accomplished, it will make your job organized and productive regardless of the challenges you encountered on the way.
The important point is making sure of the automatization of any repeatable tasks for every part of the process. You should use the right tools, software, and services for doing it. Only an expert would know if it fits your unique conditions or not.
Why should you have a digital workflow?
It’s possible to achieve these goals by creating a fully digital workflow.
The right digital workflow will:
✔️ Save you time.
✔️ Make your business more productive and effective.
✔️ Make processes seen by stakeholders by making it possible to overview anytime.
✔️ Centralize information.
✔️ Make you proactive when it comes to a crisis.
✔️ Make crucial information about your business more clear and understandable.
✔️ Create routines to make tasks easy to follow.
✔️ Minimize human errors.
✔️ Make values and successes measurable.
✔️ Make remote work possible.
✔️ Make it easy to focus on meaningful tasks.
✔️ Increase accountability of any responsible team or individual.
To summarize, we can say that digital workflows can help you to accomplish things that you cannot reach with human force. What we’re trying to say here is automation. If you can automate a task, then you don’t have to do it again manually. Also, when you automate a task, it means you made it human mistake-proof. By digitizing everyday work, you can make crucial data clear, and make routine jobs more productive.
However, having software is not the magic here, profound digitalization of your workflow is. Software or other technology-related components are just tools to use for this purpose. They are not the goal here. Digitalization can also help you to build a transparent and well-documented work environment that can last without any specific person. It will make productive remote work possible too.
Also, when you create a digital workflow, it means you can measure any output and input of your business. When your data is easy-to-read, you can make your business decisions better.
Where to start creating your own digital workflow automation?
✔️ To create your own digital workflow automation, first analyze the present tasks in your organization. What are the things that are done by whom and at what proposed time? What are the inputs and outputs of the system? What are your expectations?
✔️ Expand on your expectations, make them SMART, and turn them into objectives. What is the primary goal of your company? What additional small projects will probably be sufficient?
✔️ Define people’s and tools’ roles. The more detailed you are, the higher overall productivity will be.
✔️ Set up communication hubs. Create opportunities to communicate more and more. When there is less of a need to communicate.
✔️ Make sure everyone is on the same page by adding common bullets to your digital workflow.
✔️ Create your digital workflow by adopting the right tools for your business!
✔️ Make necessary tools accessible to everyone and train your team to apply them correctly.
✔️ Test, monitor, and improve your digital workflow.
Never afraid to ask for help. You can always reach us for any questions about digital workflows.
