Repetitive busywork is one of the more insidious problems in the modern workplace: it’s crushing for both staff and the wider business, and manual tasks are the worst of all. Previous research has suggested that UK businesses waste 7% of their working week on unnecessary admin, with 72% of staff highlighting manual systems as harming their productivity. 

Reducing repeat work and automating your workflow is one of the most rewarding changes you can make as a business leader: it improves efficiency, productivity and staff morale, and frees up yourself and your team to focus on more valuable work. Back-office tasks are the easiest target: research has suggested that accounting admin takes up 20% of all business admin time, meaning that efficiencies there can have an outside impact on your overall business.

Most importantly, the solution does not mean you need a root-and-branch rebuild of your internal processes. You can get big efficiency wins from streamlining rather than rebuilding - here’s a simple set of steps that you can use to create simple, repeatable strategies that reduce admin and save time.

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1. Start with your “north star” goal, and create specific targets

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We keep returning to this in this series, and with good reason - you can’t create a viable strategy without having a clear view on what you’re trying to deliver. We won’t go over that again, but you need to start with a defined set of objectives that you’re working towards, and from that you should draw a few more granular targets.

Setting clear metrics and goals - like “reducing the time from sales lead to sending the new engagement letter to one day”, or the “reducing time spent creating audit workpapers” each year - means you have a target to work towards and you’ll be able to know, and share, victories when they happen.

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2. Identify the repetitive processes, and pick the easiest wins

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This will depend on your industry and your team structure, but the prime targets for task automation are the same everywhere: the jobs that repeat themselves with every client, with the bare minimum of changes. Things like RFQ or RFI workflows, or copying purchase orders into your accounting system, or creating contracts for suppliers recur across multiple businesses and are ripe for workflow automation. 

Next, you need to evaluate each task and identify the ones where workflow automation will have the biggest impact. There are some simple questions to help filter this:

• How complex is it, and how often does it need to be completed? It’s invariably better to automate something small and regular than something big but rare
• Do you need to retain a step for insight or decision-making from your team? Even the best workflow automation will require human involvement; make sure there’s room to confirm things are being completed correctly
• Does it need to be recorded for compliance purposes? 
• Most importantly: what’s going to have the biggest impact on your key objectives? Not all routine work is high-impact; prioritise the tasks that will make the largest difference.

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Don’t overlook team morale in the final point, too - change management is all about bringing people along with you. Balance business productivity with making people’s jobs easier and you’ll find them more willing participants in the process.

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3. Define the workflow for each task, and capture it in a central location

For each task you need to create a defined, repeatable workflow and capture it in a way that can be followed each time. 

• Create templates for each main task, and standardise as much as possible - they need to be reused for different clients and projects, so if necessary limit the scope of each to make that happen. You can capture them in something as simple as a text document, but a dedicated tool is more effective. Workiro lets you create Task Templates for this purpose, so you only have to set things up once 
• Capture data using simple, repeatable forms. These can be easily created in NetSuite, and Workiro integrates directly with Netsuite to track completion and related tasks
• Minimise the number of different tools required, so people don’t waste time switching between apps. Using a tool like Workiro gives you a single view integrating Office 365, Hubspot and Salesforce into NetSuite with powerful time-saving integrations – for instance, you can turn an email into an assignable task with a couple of clicks
• Include a sensible monitoring system so that you can track completion of each step
• Group templates, forms and data together in one place that can be referred to in future, and which maintains an audit trail. Workiro’s Workspaces enable you to group different workflows together, so you have a suite of regular tasks ready to go.

This builds both not only efficiency but stability - by having repeat workflows ready to go in, you can add or replace team members without cumbersome handovers or dredging through long-neglected documentation.

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4. Assign clear responsibilities and goals to your team

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Once you’ve created the workflow, ensure your team knows who’s responsible for each step of the process, with clear goals that are known across all members. For a workflow to be effective, everybody needs to be bought in and using the tools - some may be entrenched in the old ways so you shouldn’t assume automatic buy-in. Make sure that everybody knows to use centralised templates and refer to central processes, and check on progress regularly.

Workiro makes it easy to monitor this by giving you a single view that integrates with NetSuite and Office365, so you can track things like contract signing all the way from the workflow to the document creation to the client signing it and back again, all within a single document management interface.

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5. Ensure clear communication and monitoring

Workflow automation needs to include clear communication all the way down the line, with you and your team able to monitor progress and avoid bottlenecks - poor communication ruins performance across almost every business metric. Again, you should keep this as centralised as possible, rather than having to check multiple dashboards. Workiro’s NetSuite integration integrates with Salesforce, Hubspot and Office365 so it’s a great way to surface information and track task completion. 

Many routine tasks can be completed and tracked within Workiro itself, like marking up PDFs or working on the same Office 365 document together, enabling rather than having different versions accumulate in people’s inboxes.

Don’t overlook audit communication, either - confirming that processes have been completed for compliance is an easy win for workflow automation. Workiro’s Writebacks feature syncs updates to ERP records automatically, which is a huge time-saver for RFQ and RFI processes.

Finally, there is the bonus sixth step: review it to make sure it’s working. Refer back to the success metrics you established in point 1 and monitor your progress towards them: once you’ve achieved that, you can start again and pick off some meatier challenges.

To find out how Workiro can automate your workflows and boost efficiencies in your business, join a group demo or set up a call with one of our specialists.