Nearly 70 percent of workers reveal the biggest opportunity of automation lies in reducing time wasted on repetitive work, according to Smartsheet.
At Perkuto, we are all-in on the automation movement. In 2021, we announced the expansion of our services to include Workato, the leading enterprise automation platform. This addition to our services not only benefited our clients, but also improved our own internal processes.
We believe the automation movement is here — a movement that will fundamentally change how we share information across teams, simplify our workflows, eliminate redundancies, and save hundreds of unproductive hours. Alexandre Pelletier, CEO and Founder of Perkuto
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Our consulting team consistently has their hands full with client requests — that’s why we rely on automation tools like Workato to cut down on manual tasks, improve outdated processes, and eliminate redundancies.
Unfamiliar with Workato? Workato is a single platform for integration and workflow automation across your organization.
- Workato enables business and IT teams to integrate their apps and automate business workflows without compromising security and governance, according to Workato. This platform has the power, flexibility, and ease of use to create just about any workflow you can imagine.
Eliminate Manual Work through a Workato Task Creation Recipe
As a Marketo consultant, I watch for opportunities to improve efficiencies and eliminate manual, redundant processes. A perfect example of this type of work was our process around task creation, which was not only eating away at our time, but also opened up the risk for human error.
Previously, when new tasks were requested by our clients, the process looked a little something like this:
- Client requests new project via intake form
- Marketo team manually reviews new project: Does it have all the information needed, such as deadline, a description of the request, and project ID?
- Marketo team creates a new project in the project management platform like Asana, JIRA, or Monday for example
- The Marketo consultant adds the new project to our internal project management tool and assigns the owner.
Enter Workato
The solution consisted of building a task creation recipe in Workato. This recipe would automatically create a task in our internal project management system every time a client requests a new task in our shared project tracker.
Below, you’ll find an example of the recipe in Workato.
As you can see, a trigger was set up to search SmartSheet every hour, Monday through Friday, for new projects. We then compare this to a Google sheet that contains all tasks that have been created by Workato already and filter these out.
Once we have all of the new tasks, we evaluate further to determine if it’s ready for us to work on, which consultant gets the task, what the task name should be, and how much time the task should take.
Our goal with this recipe is to:
- Save our project managers time spent searching through a spreadsheet for new tasks
- Reduce the risk of not adding a new task to our system on time
- Ensure all tasks have the necessary details for consultants to begin their work
Now, our process is a lot cleaner and more straightforward – cutting down on both time and errors.
💡 Workato Pro Tip: Platform limitations should always be considered when architecting your approach; for example API call or task creation volume. In this case, our goal was to reduce the number of API calls performed and minimize task usage.
Transform Project Management Processes through Automation
The recipe shown above is just one example of how automation can simplify project management processes. Now, let’s get into why automation is a critical part of project management.
A survey by Monday.com found that repetitive tasks are eating away at project managers’ productivity levels. Why is this? 54 percent of workers spend five or more hours per week on tedious tasks that require little or no creativity.
The survey also revealed that project managers are being asked to not only launch innovative products, but also take responsibility for updating internal processes.
How can project managers reduce repetitive tasks and get back to high-level work that meets business objectives? You guessed it – automation.
We know it can be tricky knowing where to start – that’s why we developed a framework solely dedicated to automating processes. Our CRISP framework is intended to help marketing operations teams:
- Improve workflows
- Identify inefficiencies
- Automate tedious and manual tasks
- Do more with less
💡 View the on-demand webinar, Automating the Work out of Marketing Operations, for more insight on how to bring the CRISP Framework to life at your organization.
You’ll begin the process by first getting your team on board with change. From here, you’ll have an open conversation with your team, asking questions like:
- Where are you spending the majority of your time?
- What are your pain points?
- When did you last think to yourself, ‘if we only had X, then we could do Y?”
This will set the stage for the next step, Integrate, where you’ll select which tasks are good candidates for automation. Hint: tasks that are highly-rules based or have highly defined processes are always good candidates for automation.
Curious to gain more insight on how to effectively audit, identify, prioritize, and build processes that don’t just check the box, but push the needle? Download our CRISP Process Automation Worksheet, so you can start automating your biggest process pain points today.
Unlock the Power of Automation
Automation isn’t just for marketing teams; it now extends across the enterprise including the project management function.
The power of automation goes beyond productivity levels and simplified processes. It has a human impact; 91 percent believe automation solutions save them time and offer better work-life balance, according to a survey conducted by Salesforce.
There’s never been a better time to go all-in on automation.
💡 Looking for inspiration on how enterprise-level companies utilize Workato? Learn how Perkuto helped Newsela leverage Workato to automate daily product emails.
