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Automating business process workflows can save you hundreds of precious hours, reduce strain on administrative staff, and free up key players in your organization so that they can focus on more important tasks such as making strategic decisions and closing deals. While there are many platforms and digital tools that can help propel automation in your organization, we think one of the very best ones out there is Salesforce. Salesforce is the number 1 CRM in the world and provides the richest source of customer data that we have. Using Salesforce, you can automate any number of business processes such as following up on important leads, sending satisfaction surveys to customers, and emailing personalized thank-you messages to crucial donors. What’s more, if you use custom development to extend Salesforce, or invest in a trusted Salesforce third-party app, you can automate almost any workflow system you can imagine from generating documents to managing contracts, from signing important deals to escalating support cases: everything is possible. Join us as we take you through almost everything you need to know to automate your workflow process management with Salesforce.
What is Workflow Management?
Workflow management is quite simply the process of streamlining and ordering your workflows. This can take place across any industry you can think of. To take the example of Human Resources, it is standard to set up workflows for when employees leave or join your organization. For example, you can establish a process management workflow whereby a new employee first meets with HR and receives equipment, then next meets their manager, and later joins a meeting with their wider team before commencing on a learning journey based on your product. Similarly, you can configure efficient workflows for your invoices to make sure they are sent to the right party for approval and then paid and processed on time. These are just a few examples of workflow management, let’s dive into how Salesforce can help you with these processes below.
Salesforce Workflow Processes: Common Use Cases
You can automate almost any workflow process with Salesforce, which gives you a more personalized view of customers, employees, and partners, as well as providing powerful automation capabilities. So let’s examine some of the most common use cases.
Effectively Manage Leads
Converting leads is a key part of growing your organization and driving growth for your company. But unfortunately, manually managing leads and trying to qualify them based on relevant criteria can be extremely time-consuming. By the time you are finished with all the paperwork, you will likely be ready to tear your hair out, and what’s more, you will have lost the opportunity to strike while the iron is hot and convert leads into big deals on the spot. Salesforce solved a lot of these problems because you can use web-to-lead functionalities to embed forms on your website, and once they are filled in, all data is fed back to Salesforce where it is automatically converted into a lead. Furthermore, all leads are fully analyzed and qualified so that you have a crystal clear understanding of a lead’s preferences, demographics, and business needs. Take the strain off your salespeople and empower them to swoop in quickly to secure big clients using personalized information.
Stay Ahead of Tasks and Targets
Managing calendars and making sure you stay ahead of targets at work is essential in almost every job function, no matter your level, and in any industry. Using the power of Salesforce, you can set up automatic emails and alerts to remind you of when to complete tasks and to prompt you to get cracking on important goals at work. This can be useful to those manning your customer support, for example, because they can be reminded of when to follow up on unresolved cases and also the most high-priority issues can automatically be escalated to the professional most skilled in handling that particular query. The result is that you can likely close support tickets in half the time while boosting customer satisfaction and taking the heat off busy workers.
Managing Contracts and Deals
It’s always great to secure new business, but you don’t want to be so busy focusing on this that you forget to nurture and maintain your most loyal client base. The good news is that you can use Salesforce to schedule regular check-ins and surveys of your existing clients. You can also set up automated contract renewals and reminders on when to follow up with clients on whether they want to upgrade their services with you. Don’t lose the personal touch and make sure to draw on the power of the Salesforce CRM to message clients on their birthdays or big occasions. This is a great way to make customers feel valued and build relationships that last.
Approve Routine Processes
You can approve routine processes in the blink of an eye if you set up process workflows in your business using Salesforce. Set up your workflow systems so that HR runs more smoothly. For example, you can set up a flow so that any leave or absence requests are sent directly to the relevant manager for immediate approval. Similarly, if an employee needs to purchase office equipment and later apply for a refund from the company, this can be easy to do via a simple workflow management process that sends the request directly to the finance department or CFO for ultimate approval. Automated approval processes can also be helpful when managing budgets. You can set up a fully vetted and aligned approval flow so that any new budget proposal passes through the relevant financial directors and managers before being approved.
Should you go for Workflow Development with Salesforce?
Salesforce is a powerful tool for helping you organize workflows and smoothen even the most complex of business processes. Unfortunately, the #1 CRM does not easily adapt to niche and custom use cases without coding and development. Engaging in custom development for your Salesforce workflows makes a lot of sense if you have the in-house technical expertise as well as money and time to burn. But if you don’t, we suggest using a no-code tool, like Titan for Salesforce to more easily adapt to bespoke use cases. You can find tools like this on the AppExchange, which speed up time to market and save you the hassle of having to develop complicated workflows yourself.
