Competitive Advantage through Workflow Automation

By Manas Kumar, CEO Genesis Interactive

If you have ever lead a dedicated, professional sales team then you’ll know that sales people are focused predominately on one thing… Sales! You’ll also know that as hunters, sales professionals can leave behind a lot of collateral damage in their wake and are notorious for not completing paperwork or sales processes.

But, you’ve employed them to do what they do best and that is to sell and often when you look at your process you have to ask the question is all that paperwork necessary? In some cases yes and in others the answer could be, well maybe not… One thing that does make sense is to look at your sales process, in fact; look at all of your processes and ask yourself the question. How much of this can be automated?

You may have heard me say before that in today’s business environment it is no longer a question of big vs small, but of fast vs slow. Workflow automation linked to a CRM system can greatly increase productivity and efficiency within your organisation. A direct spin off of this level of automation is that it also provides the business with a KPI measurement tool.

Workflow automation is the breaking down your internal processes (a typical road to sale) into their major components and sub-components along with their assigned areas of responsibilities. Including any way-points, bench-marks or tasks that are mandatory before progressing to the next step. A simple example for a telesales operator would be:

Step 1 - Read and understand sales brief for current call assignment

Step 2 - Capture leads from database and load into CRM

Step 3 - Make X number of calls per hour noting call detail

Obviously an over simplified example but I’m sure you get the point. Within each step could be a number of sub-steps or check points. This teaches users to go with the process and because workflow automation is a push button type system it also means less chasing up for paperwork etc because if done well the CRM will automatically load the next step for the user. You can use a workflow to produce a check list of items, a stepped “road to sale” workflow, a task driven process (e.g. engineering or manufacturing process) and much more.

By automating the workflow process, training cycles become shorter, the learning curve is generally not as steep and staff become more productive. Did you realise that staff on average work at less than 50% of their productivity potential… Actually it’s way less than 50% but I really don’t want to give you an aneurism when you work out what that would equate to in lost earnings.

Workflow automation when integrated with a CRM has many benefits for both the business and its staff. A well designed workflow increases productivity, reduces time wastage and increases profit potential.

About the Author
Manas Kumar is the founder and CEO of Genesis Interactive, the parent company behind Live CRM and several other SaaS initiatives.

Tags: CRM, Workflow Automation