What is Workflow Automation?

Let’s face it: Repetitive work is a drag. Manually entering data into business software, generating invoices, onboarding employees, monitoring inventory levels, and answering customer queries — these are the types of monotonous tasks that can eat up an employee’s workday, leaving little time, motivation, and brainpower for more value-added, revenue-generating work.

That’s where workflow automation can help. By employing software to complete a wide range of predictable tasks, companies save time and money while relieving skilled employees of mind-numbing, albeit necessary, work. Staff members can instead focus on more complex, creative, and satisfying tasks, such as strategic planning and cultivating loyal client relationships.

Workflow Automation explained

Workflow automation streamlines routine and repetitive organizational processes and procedures by leveraging software to perform specific functions, such as data entry and document delivery. Among its main benefits, workflow automation reduces the need for manual work and increases accuracy, which ultimately means tasks are completed more quickly. In addition, organizations are able to realize significant savings in time and money, boost productivity and comply with predetermined rules and regulations.

How to Automate a Workflow in 12 Steps

Automating a workflow takes careful planning, but for many businesses, it’s a worthwhile investment of their time. Business leaders and managers can follow these 12 steps to successfully automate their workflow processes.

1. Identify Repetitive Tasks

Start by thinking about all the time-consuming tasks that bog down an employee’s workday and document those that could be accomplished more efficiently by a machine. For example, let’s say the sales and support staff at a car dealership are eager to automate the customer onboarding process because they are spending too much time entering information about potential buyers into the CRM system. Managers would begin the process by identifying repetitive tasks, such as gathering customers’ contact information, scheduling test drives, and sending follow-up emails to gauge consumer interest in particular cars.

2. Define Your Goals

Once repetitive tasks are identified, business leaders and managers should ask themselves: What do I hope to achieve by automating this process? For example, perhaps sales managers at the car dealership want customers to be able to book test-drive appointments online to reduce the number of phoned-in requests. The dealership’s corresponding goal would be to roll out an automated workflow that responds more quickly to customer requests, improves the customer experience by reducing wait times, and decreases the need for more time-intensive phone interactions.

3. Assess Your Capabilities

Now, determine whether your company has the technical skills, resources, and bandwidth needed to execute automated workflows. Can the IT team implement online scheduling software in-house? Oftentimes, a cloud-based, vendor-hosted automation tool is the better option. It alleviates the need to purchase and maintain hardware, software, and other types of infrastructure, and it provides the reassurance that the vendor possesses the necessary expertise.

4. Gather Input

Seek feedback from those currently involved in onboarding customers, including sales representatives and support staff, to understand their workflow and get a handle on any pain points that would need to be addressed in the automation process. In the car dealership example, perhaps gaining quick access to the dealership’s inventory system to locate available vehicles for test drives is problematic. How can automation fix that issue and save everyone time and effort?

5. Map Out the Process

Consider creating a flowchart that details each step of the current customer onboarding process. In the case of the car dealership, that could include capturing customer information in the system, scheduling test drives, and following up with additional information about available cars via a phone call or email after a sales representative meets with a customer.

6. Select Automation Tools

Research the software that aligns with your needs, making sure to choose flexible, scalable tools that can handle critical tasks. High on the car dealership’s list would be capturing customer data and scheduling test drives, then integrating those capabilities with other existing technology, such as software that manages the dealership’s vehicle inventory and financing systems.

7. Design the Workflow

Sketch out the automated workflow, outlining rules, and developing triggers for automated responses. For example, when a customer requests a test drive, a workflow could be triggered to suggest convenient times to take cars for a spin, followed by a confirmation email and appointment reminders. Internally, the system could also match the customers with a sales representative and trigger alerts to support staff to pull requested cars from the lot and get them ready in advance of test-drive appointments.

8. Train the Team

Give your staff plenty of advance notice about your workflow automation plans and provide reassurance that although their roles may change, you’ll be bringing them up to speed with the new technology and helping them feel comfortable with it. After all, the goal of automation is to make their jobs easier. Provide hands-on training that shows the team exactly how to manage and monitor the automated workflow, for example, by staying on top of alerts about online test-drive signups.

Change can be hard, so you might experience some resistance, but communicating a clear path from the current manual process to the new automated system and providing step-by-step training should help ease the transition. And don’t forget to let people know who to contact to ask questions about the new system or troubleshooting technical issues.

9. Implement the Workflow

It’s almost go time. Just before going live, test drive the workflow and iron out any bugs. Workflow deployment ideally should be integrated with the company’s other business systems, eliminating the need to manually transfer reams of data.

10. Monitor and Adjust

In the case of the car dealership, once the automated workflow is live, the company should monitor customer interactions, looking for hiccups in the system or signs that customers may be confused or frustrated with certain aspects of the online test-drive form. By using dashboards that track key metrics, like completion rates, processing times, and customer satisfaction scores, the business can identify any bottlenecks and make adjustments to improve the customer experience.

11. Measure KPIs and ROI

Along those same lines, businesses should identify the key performance indicators (KPI) that will determine whether the automated workflow is a success, including the time spent on customer onboarding, lead conversion rates, and customer satisfaction scores. When calculating return on investment (ROI), the car dealership should consider the cost of implementing and maintaining the automation system, measuring that against the labor-and-cost savings from the reduced manual effort, as well as any revenue increases that might result from faster onboarding.

12. Scale and Optimize

It’s important to choose an automation platform that can scale up as your company grows and your customer base expands, allowing your business to collect and analyze increasing volumes of data. By keeping a close eye on how the system is performing, business leaders can look for ways to refine and optimize their workflows on an ongoing basis.

You can learn more about creating workflows at an upcoming webinar, listed below, or by contacting our team at Zastro team for assistance.

Creating NetSuite Workflows

Join this webinar with NetSuite experts to understand the key capabilities and best practices of SuiteFlow. You’ll learn to optimize workflows through topics including workflow foundations to support unique business needs; an overview of workflow manager; workflow components; and modular workflow design.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PST