Organizations have increasingly realized that digital transformation is the key to meeting the challenges of the current environment. Companies that embrace this transformation head-on find they are met with a significant competitive advantage. Workflow automation is a proven cornerstone of this transformation, providing you with the flexibility to enable rapid response and agility.

Almost everything we do during the day is part of a process, whether we realize it or not, whether it is sanctioned or not, whether it is useful or not. One thing we learned during the pandemic was that some of these processes ought to be automated and some not: we struggled with automated schooling and asynchronous learning, but discovered the benefits of grocery delivery – between the first and fourth quarter of 2020, there was a 9% increase in seniors using Instacart.

Understanding when process is process

Automation can be ambiguous: there is value in the “weak ties” that we build when we buy a cup of coffee in person instead of through an app. Not all processes must be automated in order to work best.

But processes in the workplace are different. And the ones we don’t realize are processes end up taking longer, exposing more risk, and, at the end of the day, making our lives a little bit worse.

Every signed document, for example, is part of a larger story: approvals are almost always involved, and before approvals discussion, and before collaboration someone’s request. Often, these processes don’t feel like larger stories because we just see ourselves touch one part of them, usually through our email inbox.

The same is true for spreadsheets: what may seem like a single location where information is stored is more often a place where the information drifts up — ad hoc requests, shared ownership, and non-required fields make spreadsheets a huge source of error. The way to improve on a spreadsheet is to remember that, like a contract, it is the end of the process, not the process itself.