How to Streamline Workflows to Skyrocket Conversions without Working Longer Hours?

Imagine you have a great idea and a fantastic team to execute it. You are working hard to get returns for all your efforts, but that’s not working. Don’t worry! Just read along to wake up to your dream goal, streamline your workflows, and skyrocket conversions without working longer hours. Let’s go!

Streamline Workflows to Skyrocket Conversions

1. Analyze Your Current Workflow

Efficiency, time management, to-do lists, and motivation are just a few terms that you must have come across regularly while trying to execute your strategic plans for your brand/company.

There are so many nifty terms out there. And various suggestions people give while you are trying to make both ends meet for your company. It’s hard to figure out which way to go, right?

Introspection. That is the way to go!

To achieve an efficient workflow you need to assess existing processes. Clearly, the current work process isn’t working, the solution to your problem is within the current workflow. 

You just need to focus on looking for the loopholes in the current work processes. And take the first step to improve efficiency. 

This part is crucial for improving the workflow of your company. If you miss out on the cracks in this step, you might jeopardize the efforts that you have been putting in to improve your workflow. 

Key Steps to Focus On:

• Be familiar with how each department of your company operates 
• Talk to your employees for feedback on each process or workflow of their respective departments
• Analyze what you gather and document all of it for referencing later

2. Identify the Key Areas and Core Activities

In this step, you go through the documentation that you prepared in the previous step. 

The key areas to improve on will be reflected in this step. Check for:

• Dwindling motivation
• Unclear instructions
• Inefficient managers
• Break in the communication flow
• Lack of regular feedback from your employees
• Unnecessary steps
• Time-consuming tasks

These are the probable areas where you may find cracks in the workflow that affects your team’s productivity. Remember to give thorough time to each area, unattended loopholes can have direct implications on your business growth.

3. Eliminate Inefficiencies

Now that you know what is causing you the trouble, go ahead and remove them from your workflow. 

Only that it isn’t as simple as it sounds. You need to break up your existing work process into smaller chunks. In this segment of workflow management, you need to also take care of yourself!

Workflow processes can be extremely overwhelming. Going through them to figure out the flaws in the workflow is an extra task hence, take one step at a time. You might run at a risk of giving up too soon or simply skimming through the chunky bits to get done with it, which ultimately doesn’t yield you the fruits of success. 

Just like smaller pieces of edibles are easier to chew and digest better compared to a mouthful, breaking down your workflow into smaller more manageable pieces will help you identify and rectify the flaws better. In addition to it, the use of well proven workforce analytics resources will be a great assistant to you in a detailed analysis of the workflows.

Once you have more digestible bits to work with, you now need to rank tasks within your workflow based on their importance and priority. For example, you may rank your workflow processes on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the process task of the highest importance and 1 being the lowest. 

This will make sure that your workflow process is efficient and maybe help you eliminate the processes that rank lower and are almost redundant. With this step you will get closer to curating a fool-proof streamlined workflow.  

Quick tip, document everything! 

No doubt you have a great memory and rely on it heavily for getting your business done. However, you can help yourself work even more efficiently, assist your brain, and lighten your workload by documenting everything. 

Create a habit of regular data entry and documenting each process in a timely manner or use task management software, these are a major must for eliminating any inefficiencies in the workflow. 

4. Introduce Automation to Save Time

Streamlining workflows is definitely a complex process but technology has a solution to every problem and workflow automation is the solution that you are looking for. 

Why engage human resources to streamline the work process when you can make bots work for you? Technology can make business processes and project management a cakewalk. 

The added advantage of process automation is the elimination of any mistakes that humans are prone to make and it also improves efficiency. 

Many processes require lengthy hours, and time is a resource that we never have in abundance. Technology can help you achieve the same tasks in a much shorter time span and without engaging any of your team members. 

Management software will make your life simple and the advanced features will make business processes efficient. 

New software technologies and automation tools like Zapier help you to streamline your workflow and automate processes for a much more efficient project management. 

The good news is that there are many modern workflow software solutions that help with streamlining business processes and workflows. They are also referred to as business process management software. 

All of the business management process software have their own unique features, multiple benefits and cater to different needs according to the different businesses and their work processes. 

However, overall most of the software automates data collection in a single location, automatically sends data about new hires to one central place, automate steps in business workflow, and generates better visibility with graphs, charts, and reports.  

Workflow management has never been easier before so go ahead and automate your workflow to kickstart profitable returns from your business. 

The productivity of your company will skyrocket once you incorporate software to manage your streamlined workflows.

5. Use Time Tracking to Monitor Progress

Time is an expensive resource, one that you cannot buy. Neglecting the time factor when tracking management efficiency can cost your organization a fortune. 

Time is a sneaky factor that is invisible in data, out of sight hence, out of mind. However, time tracking cannot be ignored when you are trying to streamline your workflow to create an efficient business strategy. If you’re an e-commerce business, you can use various email marketing apps to better manage marketing team workflow.

Time management is a skill that we are all struggling with. However, with the help of the right strategies to manage time, and by keeping tabs on the time we spend on different work processes, we can create a healthy and efficient workflow. 

One of the best ways to improve workflow and manage time is by placing a huge visible clock in front of the working space to inculcate a sense of urgency and actionability in the workflow. 

Another great way to go about tracking time is, of course, the use of software and apps. Especially, time tracking is a crucial factor to keep in mind while trying to create a workflow for your freelance business. 

Time tracking is a must for the gig economy because they have high personal costs involved in the business and poor time tracking and management can really throw off their business. 

6. Upgrade Your Processes with the Right Platforms

Please don’t stress yourself and end up compromising on your health while trying to streamline your workflow. Our fast-paced lifestyle and work culture hardly leave us any time for ourselves. 

Working longer hours to get things done will only wear you out. Let technology do the honor to get you out of this pickle. 

Inventory Management

Stacks and stacks of paperwork is what comes to mind when you think of inventory management but with the help of the right platforms, you can do it all with much higher efficiency than when done manually. 

Optimizing your inventory process management with an automated approval processes system means fewer mistakes, streamlined intake and delivery, and automatic stock take. 

Logistics

Next is streamlining logistical workflow. Logistics is all about the timings, if anything interrupts your logistical flow you might fail to meet the deadlines and lose customers.

One wrong manual entry and your entire schedule can get disrupted.

Long story short, logistical work can be extremely cumbersome and messy if you try to sort it all out yourself on a spreadsheet. We suggest that you automate your logistical workflow by seeking help from apps that would optimize your workflow reducing the chances of mistakes when done manually. 

HR Onboarding

Another space where optimization comes in handy is for speeding up the HR onboarding processes. It is a prime area for workflow optimization. 

The reason is exactly the same as above, to improve efficiency, to speed up the documentation and data collection process, and to save your human capital for something skill-based and technical than the mundane jobs of data management. 

Finance

Keeping a track of the transactions and finance can also be an equally clumsy and overwhelming task if done manually. Paper invoices, cash, and cheques are now outdated, not to forget, are prone to fraud. 

A digital financial system in place can help you streamline your workflows with better efficiency. 

Hybrid Work Cultures

Post pandemic, the work cultures have drastically shifted. Employees prefer working from the comfort of their homes, but some also prefer in-office working hours. 

This poses a major dilemma for the managers to keep up with the hybrid format. Softwares that help you streamline your workflows for the hybrid work cultures are a major life and time saver in such cases. 

7. Ask for Feedback from Key Players

Customer feedback tells you how good your business process works, but the key players who will help you with improving your workflow are definitely your own team. 

Your company might be segregated into multiple departments, and you probably are not thoroughly aware of the issues that each segment of your company is facing. This is exactly why you need detailed and holistic feedback from your co-workers, employees, and colleagues. 

Don’t make the mistake of relying solely on the feedback from the head of the different departments but also the teammates working within each department. Few times if the lag or loopholes lie with the head of the department, you might get an untrue or skewed version of the problems faced in that department. 

Make it a point to connect with your employees from the ground level to connect better and also ensure team collaboration, where the opinions of each one of them matter. 

Many times these individuals might have better ideas for improvement in the workflow since they concentrate on one single department, hence a good feedback system in survey formats or in-person meetings can be quite fruitful in improving workflows. 

A quick tip: If your time permits and workload allows, try to hold meetings for feedback instead of surveys. Surveys, most of the time feel cold and lack the human essence hence are observed as just another task. Basically, we are reiterating to automate your workflow so that you have time for things that primarily require human presence. 

8. Implement and Continuously Refine

The last key element to keep in mind while improving workflow is to keep refining your strategies to streamline your workflow. 

One single strategy will never be universal nor will it be evergreen. With time and the constant changes in lifestyle and cultures, your workflows should also keep evolving. 

It’s not just about getting better with each refinement, but also making sure that it fits the present life culture balance too. 

Be patient, refinement takes time. You need to wait for the feedback of the customer experience as well as from your employees. 

Another interesting bit to consider while you are refining your workflow is by using project management templates that help to make the workflow interactive and much more efficient with some interactive roadmaps and help create a well-organized workflow. 

It’s Time to Skyrocket Conversions!

Yes, that is right! You now have all that you needed to streamline many processes in one single cohesive workflow. 

Of course, implementing all that you have gathered so far from this post will take time and effort, but the good news is that you have already begun. 

You know what you need to do and now can build better workflows for smooth-sailing future business.

About the author:

Mark Quadros is a SaaS content marketer that helps brands create and distribute rad content.  On a similar note, Mark loves content and contributes to several authoritative blogs like HubSpot, CoSchedule, Foundr, etc. Connect with him via LinkedIN or twitter.

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