Automation Is the Best Practice to Process Data in Workflow
Automation is a new normal in this digital era.
Be it a drone technology or smart IoT devices, automation is everywhere making you aware of digital transformation.
The outbreak of pandemic has made businesses realized that automation can save their lifeline.
So! Do you have automated workflows?
If you don’t have, you miss something that can save time and maintain consistency in your work processes. There are a series of actions that frequently happen inside of your company, such as approvals from multiple stakeholders, pitching calls auditing, task alignment, hosting events and meetings and many more tasks. Either you need to hire a virtual assistant for data entry services of the workflow, or need to do by self.
Assume how many precious hours you dedicate to do them manually.
Certainly, they are many if you count. Unfortunately, you don’t get better results. But, automated data processing can make it happen. It can help in achieving breakthroughs that you hardly expect in a fast turnaround time.
Start With Automating Workflow
Certainly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. You need to create a blueprint to do so. First, create a checklist of all business activities that need to be automated.
It would be a tedious job. But once you get it done, you win half the battle. Start with the department-wise listing of tasks that need alerts and reminders. This is where you need to work on. Create auto-alerts and reminders regardless of your sharing permissions level.
To make it on-permission accessible, you must define the admin-level sharing permission on the system. The data management executive and programmer can make it happen in the real time.
Incorporate Needs
Once you have a blueprint, get all tasks registered in an order. This step is compulsory before you more to view and monitoring, as you would require looking up at the jobs done or incomplete. It will help you in getting inputs from the department or team in the workflow.
However, there are many way to do it. The easiest of all is to create a form layout that every stakeholder can fill out to request steps or provide inputs. Later, you can add them to the drop down menu button for automating their views.
Set Up KPIs
Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are what provide a concrete structure to the entire workflow. These are what define success of any goal. So, you need to identify and establish relevant automation KPIs. Later,measure them to map the success. For this, you should assess and collect what kind of performance you want to put there on automation.
You can present them in these ways:
· The percentage of processes for completion
· The average time for processing
· The error rate of a process
View and Manage
Defining the workflow & setting KPIs is not enough. Its viability needs monitoring. So, you need to view and manage all systems that have been defined and executed.
As aforesaid, you can start with auto-alerts and reminders.For monitoring, put filter on the column where names are defined. Place them in an order to view the last edited date and creation date of every record.
For automating managerial data entry, you need to have options-Edit,Enable/Disable, Duplicate, Unsubscribe/Subscribe, Delete, and View Properties.Make all these options available on-clicks.
Testing To Prevent Errors
Testing is the best way to identify and correct errors in the automated system. For this, you can specify the error to display in a unique font colour like red or blue. Make it flashed like a prompt to be addressed with a menu button to edit.
Optimise editor window in such way that it will automatically scroll you to the errors like invalid trigger, condition or action. Avail the explanation as to why the error is appearing and also,display instructions to address the issue.
Define Control on Workflows
This is an effective way to control how your workflows are organized. You can create a sorting option, stating the name of the workflow,date of when it was last edited and the date when it was created.
But first, you need to have the names that you are going to provide authority with. Align them corresponding to their department and designation.
Subsequently, make all workflows sorted by name. If you change the sort order, make sure that it will reflect on all administrative sheets and other ones attached to it. If you want, you can sort them on the basis of preferences of stakeholders.
