25 Workflow Automation Examples Every Company Needs

Every employee can relate to the feeling of being overwhelmed by their workload. Tasks pile up, deadlines loom, and instead of making progress, you feel stuck. Workflow automation can help. By automating repetitive tasks, AI workflow automation reduces the number of activities that require manual input. This lightens your load and helps you get organized. As you automate workflows, you can focus on the work that truly matters, improving productivity and enhancing job satisfaction. You'll learn how different businesses use automation to tackle common challenges and improve productivity. 

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Table of Contents

• Importance of Workflow Automation

• How to Get Started With Workflow Automation

• 25 Workflow Automation Examples Every Company Needs

• Supercharge Your Researching Ability With Otio — Try Otio for Free Today

Importance of Workflow Automation

Workflow automation tackles the flow of: 

• Tasks

• Documents

• Information 

They can perform independently without human interaction, according to defined business rules. Once implemented, this type of automation should run like clockwork, executing regularly to improve everyday productivity. Workflow is a series of activities needed to complete a task. Workflow automation shifts the performance of those activities from humans to a software program. 

Key Steps to Automating a Workflow: From Task Identification to Implementation

To automate a workflow: 

• An organization first identifies the tasks that make up the job.

• It creates the rules and logic that govern how those tasks should be done. 

• It programs the software with predefined business rules and logic. 

The rules and logic are often a series of if-then statements that act like instructions telling the program what actions to take and how to move from one task to the next. The software uses those rules and logic to perform the series of functions from start to finish so that humans no longer have to handle the job.

Workflow Automation Boosts Business Productivity

Workflows should be automated whenever possible for numerous reasons, including to achieve faster operations and to increase the efficiency and accuracy of automated tasks. 

Workflow Automation Frees Up Human Workers for Higher Value Tasks

By relieving workers of mundane, low-value tasks, automation frees them to work on higher-value, nonautomated functions that only humans can handle. 

Workflow Automation Saves Businesses Money

Increased productivity generates cost savings. 

Workflow Automation Improves Business Processes and Communication

The workflow mapping used to program automation software creates visibility into automated processes. This gives an organization a top-down view of its workflows, which can help it remove outdated or redundant tasks that drain time and resources. 

Increased visibility can, in turn, improve employee and interdepartmental communication and coordination, further enhancing efficiency and eliminating bottlenecks. 

Workflow Automation Improves Customer Service

Organizations can improve customer service and satisfaction by automating responses to customer inquiries. Of the nearly 300 executives surveyed for the 2021 Global Customer Success Survey from software maker SmartKarrot, 84% said automation is important or extremely important for customer service operations. 

Workflow Automation Improves Product Quality

With human error eliminated, overall product quality improves. 

Workflow Automation Allows for Performance Tracking

By digitalizing the tasks within a workflow, automation can track the workflow’s performance from start to finish. This enables an organization to review how well its business operates easily.

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How to Get Started With Workflow Automation

1. Harness Otio to Kickstart Your Workflow Automation Journey

Today, knowledge workers, researchers, and students suffer from content overload and are left to deal with it using fragmented, complex, and manual tooling. Too many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows. 

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2. Clearly Outline Your Workflow

Before automating your workflows, you must understand their starting and stopping points.

• What initiates the workflow? 

• At what point is the workflow complete? 

Your workflow should produce a discrete, countable output.

3. Identify All Participants in the Workflow

Once the start and end points are identified, you must connect the dots between them. Who is involved in the workflow? Anyone who possesses the work must be accounted for, even if it’s just to review it or pass it along.

4. Catalog All Relevant Systems, Applications, and Tools

In addition to the people involved in the workflow, you must highlight the systems, tools, and apps that impact the work. For example, collaboration apps, shared inboxes, databases, or legacy components such as: 

• An ERP

• CRM

• HRIS

If your team uses a system of engagement like low-code automation, ensure you account for its role in the workflow. Low-code software with a visual interface makes automating workflows easy and intuitive.

5. Note All the Input Avenues

Workflow management may depend on information or data from various sources. These may include forms that capture requests, emails, bots, messages, or data from an app or system.

6. Pay Attention to All Handoffs

The instances in which a workflow item or information changes hands are familiar sources of problems. These may create bottlenecks, or there may be occasions where follow-ups fail, or items stall because it’s unclear who should handle the item next.

7. Create an Automation Wishlist

Now that you have a complete blueprint for your workflow, it’s time to build a list of all the tasks and activities you would like to automate.

8. Build the To-Be Version of the Workflow

You can create a new workflow version using your chosen automation tool. If you’re using a low-code tool, you can build the workflow and set up your automations using an intuitive visual interface.

9. Test the To-Be Version

Before you can introduce the new workflow to your team, make sure to test it to make sure the output meets its target and that there are no issues such as bottlenecks, silos, or data leaks.

10. Teach Your Users

If the workflow software you’re using is new to your team, you must prepare them to use the new tool. If they are already familiar with your system, you’ll want to ensure they understand the steps of the optimized workflow and feel confident executing it.

11. Deploy, Monitor, and Optimize

After you give your team the green light to deploy the newly automated workflow, you begin the ongoing work of monitoring and occasionally optimizing the workflow to ensure its: 

• Accuracy

• Efficiency

• Productivity

25 Workflow Automation Examples Every Company Needs

1. Streamlining Employee Onboarding and Offboarding 

Welcoming new employees aboard your vessel is a multifaceted endeavor. 

• You must gather all the relevant information about the new hire and their role. 

• You'll need to share this data with several departments, including: 

• Human resources

• Payroll

• IT

Workflow automation can help with this tedious process by allowing new employees to complete their onboarding paperwork. Instead of sifting through all the forms to find the information needed for their department, your HR team can open the automated files and see the data required to start onboarding tasks. 

Streamlining Employee Offboarding with Workflow Automation for Security and Continuity

Offboarding processes can also be streamlined with automation. This time, the goal is to ensure business continuity and security. When employees leave an organization, critical information is often stored on their devices and in company applications. Workflow automation can help organizations quickly transition this information to other employees and ensure the departing employee leaves no security gaps. 

2. Simplifying Employee Expense Reimbursements

Consider all the steps involved in reimbursing employees for expenses: The employee emails an expense report to a manager, who manually approves it and then forwards it to the finance department. Someone then has to manually key in the information from the report before cutting a check to the employee. 

Streamlining Expense Reimbursement with Workflow Automation

Workflow automation can simplify the process. Employees can complete a form online and submit it to their manager for review and approval. The report can then move on to the finance department, where the information automatically flows into the system, and the reimbursement amount is added to the employee’s next paycheck. 

To speed this along even more, you can set up rules to automatically approve recurring expenses, such as an employee’s mobile phone bill. 

3. Vacation Request Approvals

Vacation requests are a reasonably easy place if you’re just starting with workflow automation. Rather than an employee emailing their request to their manager to approve and forward it to payroll and HR, they can request vacation in the automated system. 

When the manager approves the request, the information is already populated into the HR and payroll systems, so no one has to enter it manually. The system will note when the employee is on vacation to ensure other employees don’t take the same days off and leave you shorthanded. 

4. Automating Payroll Change Approvals

Your HR team deals with enough while calculating payroll changes—they shouldn’t have to manage the approval process as well. Automating payroll approvals helps to move payroll changes into their respective categories by matching them with preset requirements that align with your company policies. This automation allows your team to track, file, and approve these changes in a fraction of the time. 

5. Improving Performance Management

Traditional performance management takes excessive time and effort for your HR team to deliver insights only once or twice a year. Employees will benefit from an automated performance management system through real-time insights, instant feedback, and better alignment with company goals. This automation also removes the need for managers to take days out of their schedule to meet directly with employees. 

6. Automating Training Requests

Employees who submit training requests often need to learn the information or skills they’d get from the training sooner rather than later. These requests can get stuck in HR purgatory and buried by other vital requests. 

Through workflow automation, your team won’t have to worry about tracking and approving every training request. You can automatically set approval criteria and track requests to reduce your HR team’s headaches. 

7. Change of Status Notifications

When an employee leaves your company, one of the biggest headaches for HR is going through every system and labeling them as deactivated. This is also true for employees who change positions through promotions and departmental changes. Workflow automations can make system-wide changes when your HR team updates information in your database. 

8. Automating Employee Referrals

An employee referral program is beneficial for acquiring and retaining new talent. This process requires oversight that takes up your HR department’s precious time. Your team will automate this process with the right employee referral software—from sending out referral links to approving and processing employee incentives. 

9. Automating Product Lifecycle Workflows

A product’s lifecycle is the journey it takes from inception to obsolescence. This journey typically involves four stages: 

• Introduction

• Growth

• Maturity

• Decline

Automation, performing tasks with minimal human intervention, can significantly streamline these stages. Automation can expedite testing when a new product is released, ensuring its functionality and compatibility. It can also efficiently manage orders, inventory, and customer inquiries as demand grows. 

10. Customer Support Workflow Automation

The benefits of workflow automation are most evident in customer support. Businesses can swiftly address customer issues and free up staff for more complex problems by automating tasks like: 

• Ticket routing

• Resolution tracking

• Response generation

You can create an automated ticketing system. When a customer submits a query, it’s instantly transformed into a digital ticket, assigned to the right agent, and even sends an automatic acknowledgment to the customer. This speeds up response times and ensures no issue is unresolved. 

11. Accounts Payable Workflow Automation 

Accounts Payable is the department responsible for managing a company’s outgoing payments. This involves: 

• Receiving invoices

• Verifying their accuracy

• Getting approvals

• Paying suppliers

Traditionally, these processes are paper-based, error-prone manual processes, leading to delays and frustration. With automation, it’s scanned, transformed into digital data, and automatically compared to the original purchase order. If everything matches, the system routes it for approval. Once approved, the payment is generated and sent electronically, eliminating the need for manual checks and envelopes. 

12. Expense Approval Automation 

Combining an expense report has traditionally been time-consuming and highly subject to human error. It often involves manual data entry and paper-based workflows, which: 

• Burden finance teams

• Delay reimbursements

• Hinder financial visibility

Organizations can significantly enhance efficiency and accuracy with an automated expense approval workflow. For instance, implementing automation rules such as ‘automatically approve expenses below $50, route expenses between $50 and $200 to team leads, and require manager approval for amounts exceeding $200’ can streamline the process. This frees finance teams to focus on higher-value tasks and ensures timely employee reimbursements. 

13. Lead Management Workflow Automation

Lead Management involves capturing, scoring, and nurturing leads from the initial point of contact to conversion. Manual lead management can take time, hindering efficiency and potentially preventing valuable opportunities. 

Automation enhances this process by handling repetitive and effort-intensive manual tasks. Did you know companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost? 

How Workflow Automation Enhances Lead Generation and Sales in SaaS Companies

Let’s take an example of a SaaS company that sells project management software. This company can use automation to streamline its lead generation process. For example, when someone downloads its free process mapping template, their information is automatically captured and added to their CRM system. Based on the type of template downloaded, the lead might be assigned a specific score indicating their potential interest. 

If their score is high, they’re immediately routed to a sales rep for follow-up and conversion. This saves time, ensures no leads slip through the cracks, and helps sales focus on converting leads and engaging with the most promising prospects. 

14. Workflow for Segmenting Subscribers

Marketing can use automation to categorize their audience into groups according to interests, preferences, or behaviors. This personalized tactic ensures that your messages reach the individuals at the moment, enhancing their significance and effectiveness. For example, a skincare brand may categorize its subscribers by skin type. 

Individuals with oily skin would receive emails featuring products tailored to control oiliness, while those with dry skin would be recommended hydrating moisturizers. Automation simplifies this process by allocating subscribers to the relevant category based on their information, such as skin type or past purchases. By doing this, the company can deliver targeted emails without bombarding everyone with irrelevant promotions. 

15. Sales Pipeline Workflow Automation 

Keeping the sales pipeline up-to-date and accurate is crucial for sales reps to focus on the right deals at the right time. Manually tracking and updating the pipeline can be a drag; like herding cats, losing track of things is easy. An automated workflow can turn this chaotic process into a well-oiled machine. 

For example, imagine a sales rep closes a deal. Instead of manually updating the deal stage fields in their CRM, the system can automatically move the deal to the ‘closed-won’ category once the contract is signed electronically. This ensures accuracy, saves time, and prevents crucial information from slipping through the cracks. 

16. Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) Workflow

CLM is about understanding a customer’s journey, from discovering your brand to becoming a loyal advocate. CLM helps you map out this journey by dividing it into stages like awareness, learning about your product, making a purchase, enjoying what they bought, and finally, recommending you to others. To make this easier, you can use automation. 

For example, if someone reads your blog and signs up for your newsletter, automation can label them ‘new learners.’ If they later buy something, it can move them to the ‘customer’ stage. By tracking these steps, you can tailor your messages and offers to each customer, building stronger relationships and turning them into raving fans. 

17. Ticket Management 

Organize incoming service requests by setting up a form and letting the system automatically convert them into IT board tasks. monday.com enables teams to collect information through customizable forms. 

It also allows the creation of a workflow automation rule that will notify someone whenever a new item is created. This functionality makes tracking incoming IT tickets easier and prompts team members to act appropriately. 

18. Asset Management 

When an employee joins or leaves the company, the IT team is actively involved in onboarding and offboarding, mainly distributing and returning hardware. By implementing online forms, you can easily monitor which employees have received or returned the required devices. 

With workflow automation, the system will notify key IT team members to take action on an asset that needs to be deployed or received. 

19. Compliance 

Software solutions used in the company must adhere to regulatory and data protection standards. The IT team must conduct regular inspections to ensure no data security protocols are bypassed. By using automated forms, you’ll quickly build a master list of team members who finished the compliance testing and those who haven’t gone through it yet. 

20. Expense Approvals 

Expense reports require your finance team to comb over every entry to confirm and approve them one at a time. This laborious process is a prime candidate for automation. Adding workflow automation lets your team set the criteria and rules required for approval, making the process faster and diverting responsibility from your employees. 

21. Invoices 

Generating invoices can be monotonous for your accounts receivable staff, especially if you bill a client for the same amount every month. An automated workflow can create and send those invoices on a set schedule, freeing staff for tasks that require higher-level skills. 

22. Inventory Workflow Process 

The inventory workflow process involves multiple tasks that can benefit from automation. From inventory tracking to replenishment reminders, workflow automation can streamline some inventory workflow processes that require a less hands-on approach. By eliminating the smaller, tedious tasks, your team can focus on the big-picture items that keep your inventory current. 

23. Follow-Ups 

Efficiently following up on sales leads is an essential but time-consuming task that you can automate to allow your sales team to focus on the later stages of the sales funnel. An automated workflow system can: 

• Sift customer inquiries from your website

• Populate your CRM system with the relevant information

• Then route the lead to your sales team for follow-up

The workflow automation system can continue to assist your team with automated follow-up emails. This helps the sales team move the lead through the sales funnel until they’re ready to buy. 

24. Procurement 

The procurement process requires extensive oversight to ensure success. It also offers several opportunities for automation. From invoice management to contract approval, your team will benefit from streamlining these processes so they can focus on purchasing. 

25. Output Approval 

All marketing collaterals must go through the review and approval process. With workflow automation, asking for feedback becomes more manageable and quicker for team members. Simply configure the automation settings to notify a team leader or a supervisor when a task is moved to a specific stage, for example, when it reaches the Done or Ready for Approval column. 

Enhancing Project Management with Workflow Automation

The easy-to-use project management solution Trello integrates with an approval tool that automatically moves cards to specific sections based on the approval status. Create an automation rule that notifies a manager or supervisor when a card moves to a particular column.  

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