Looking For Workflow Management Solutions? Here Are Few Tips To Help You Achieve An Efficient Workflow Process

Many companies face the positive problem of growing at a rate they cannot keep up with. You may be wondering, how can a problem be good? Well, let’s say, if your business is growing, then you are doing something right. If your business is growing faster than you can keep up with, then you are doing many things right. However, you'll need some help to manage and sustain that growth by utilizing workflow management software.

Workflow management software helps you ease your time spent on organizing everything and allocate more time to managing projects. Here are some important tips on how workflow management solutions can help your business grow.

Why Workflow Management Helps

Workflow management software can be lifesaving when either expanding your company or starting new business operations. It helps you allocate the right amount of time towards the most important tasks. A useful tool to help stay on top of things that helps differentiate between the most important tasks and less important ones. 

As the name suggests, workflows consist of a series of operations that are completed with a goal in mind. To achieve corporate goals, business processes need to be broken down into a series of actions or workflows. Hence, automating procedures eliminates all of the issues associated with a manual workflow system.

For example, in a company, the process of hiring new employees is a workflow process. From creating a job description to posting it on job boards continued by screening applicants and so on, is a workflow process. What is the goal here? It is to hire individuals based on the criteria of the management and team. 

Furthermore, it's beneficial for employees to visualize their schedules with the necessary duties mentioned. Workflow automation organizes and prioritizes a sequence of operations based on the feature of adding a priority level to determine what needs to be done first and what should wait. 

This helps organize your calendar and allocate your staff's abilities where they are needed most. The schedules allow you to review the amount of time spent on each task to understand what takes the longest for future reference.

So how can you create an efficient schedule using workflow management?

The very first step to creating an efficient schedule is to look over the list of tasks that need to be completed. Are there any tasks you forgot? Did you add any unnecessary tasks? 

No? 

Perfect!  

But what do you do after the task list is ready to go? 

You move on to the next step!

Clarify Task Details

The next step to creating an efficient schedule is to determine how each of these tasks must be completed.

Clarification for the employees who are taking on the task is essential to avoid conflict. The reason being that employees must understand exactly what you are looking for on each task, so they clearly understand what needs to be done and why it needs to be done a certain way.

You can effortlessly communicate these tasks with your employees by using workflow management software. Workflow automation tools contain a description box for you to include any ideas you already have, any suggestions, demands, or to give the employee a better understanding of the overall task. By clarifying the task with your employees, make sure that no time is wasted having to redo the tasks.

Once the task or project details have been clarified and explained in detail, you can move on to prioritizing the tasks!

Prioritize Each Task

Next, you need to prioritize each task by its level of importance. Some tasks have a noticeable level of importance such as whether a specific client or customer requires your services, ensuring that you have it completed around their schedule. These tasks may require a high-priority label as opposed to something minor.

Workflow management tools contain an effortless way to rank your tasks by importance. Mostly the software has a priority ranking of a high, medium, and low to ensure that employees understand which tasks must be completed first. This simple task priority function is essential to keep communication strong within your business. It also helps avoid confusion for employees on what their priorities are.

Remember that many tasks have different underlying purposes, so don't get the company's priorities mixed up. Before you assign priorities based on the task, stop and think about how this task will affect your company. This may cause a change of heart in how you prioritize specific tasks.

Do you have everything prioritized? 

Great! Let's move on!

Distribute Estimated Time Per Task

Once you have a list of tasks and they have an assigned priority, you must apply an estimated time of completion for each task.

It is quite simple to track and monitor the time spent on each task using a workflow management solution!

If you understand how much time is required for the completion of each task, it is easier to allocate the tasks around your workplace, so each staff member is given a fair workload. 

Workflow management software contains a time function so you can easily allocate a certain amount of time towards each task. It helps communicate with your employees the estimated amount of time you expect it takes to complete each task. Organizing these tasks to include time frames makes it easier to create a workday around the desired duties.

At this step, it is crucial to analyze your past data (If you have any) regarding the length of time taken to complete similar tasks. For example, if in the past, it took your administrative assistant 30 minutes to receive an order, make sure that they always have 30 minutes to receive the order unless there are special requirements such as a smaller or larger order than usual.

Once you have the time allocation figured out, you can move on to the next step.

Allocate Tasks for Maximum Efficiency

If you would like to create an efficient schedule, you must be sure that you allocate the workload in the most efficient areas. A workflow tracker helps you visualize the progress of each assigned task. 

Now you have the ability to study why in certain areas tasks are flowing smoothly! You’ll also be able to examine where progress is lacking to determine what things need to be changed up.

Workflow management software also allows you to track your employees’ progress without micromanaging them! 

Isn’t that a business dream?

So, once your business has an established team, it is easier to understand everyone's strong suits and weaknesses. Assign your employees the tasks you know they can complete in the most efficient manner while keeping in mind what they would like to be working on. A helpful tip: Don’t be afraid to ask them what they are comfortable with.

Regarding asking what your employees want, this goes hand-in-hand with the next tip, communication.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

You may have noticed that communication has been mentioned many times already. That's because it's very important! Strong communication within a company allows for more collaboration, feedback, and more brains working together!

Overall, communication improves the quality of work by ensuring that the image you have in mind, will easily be recreated by your team.

A great way to improve communication in the workplace is by using workflow management tools that promote efficient teamwork and collaboration. By using workflow software, it helps keep people on the same page about the business goals, and task expectations. Now you can always keep your employees in the loop!

Even with perfect communication within the workplace, problems can still arise. But it’s okay!

Always Remember

Sometimes things can go in the wrong direction and the schedule can go as you did not hope for. At times, it can look a lot like a client pushing up the deadlines and asking for more than they initially asked for or might be a task taking longer than expected

Do not sweat it. Things happen! 

That's where Toki can help you find a solution when external factors get in your way! It gets much easier to visualize a new plan with the assistance of Toki.

Workflow Management Tools for Teams

Whether you manage a team of 2 or 120, Toki can help you keep on top of all the important items from anywhere you have access to the internet. Assign tasks, send messages, track time and apply it to projects, manage finances, and more from one cloud-based application. Try Toki today!