How to Streamline Your Business Data More Efficiently

Business workflows are the way people get work done, and can be illustrated as series of steps that need to be completed sequentially in a diagram or checklist. When it comes to business data, however, there tends to be many components that comprise the whole. Some examples of business data include: leads and opportunities, customer details, transactions, employee information, social media data, etc. Business data is defined as being data that is captured and stored by a business as a digital asset that may support strategy, decision making and operations.

Streamlining this data and these processes are essential for success. So, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can streamline important business data and workflows.

Automate Business Workflow

In his article, James Grills argues that one of the most popular tools used for streamlining data more efficiently are spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are used the world over by businesses big and small to help them track all of their data and compile it into a user-friendly format. Today, however, we’ve evolved past them. With the rapid advancement of automation comes a number of new workflow management solutions that can help with business process management (BPM). Workflow management software is designed to quickly collect data and organize it in a way that’s beneficial to your business and allows you to coordinate certain repetitive tasks and procedures to save time and do the work more effectively.

Workflow automation is best for organizing people and documents, helping your employees do their jobs better and more efficiently. If you are looking to automate certain steps of a process, then workflow management software might be the solution for you. It’s great for coordinating the work of one of two departments and setting clear instructions as to who does what, and at what time.

Break Down Your Processes

Keeping a list of all the processes and workflows you deal with within the business is a good practice to keep. You can then rank each process in order of priority and importance. You may find this more difficult than you think, as you’ll find value in each process. “You’ll even start to realize that you can’t execute one data process without another. However, the better you’ve got your processes in order, the easier you’ll find it to streamline them,” adds Grills. Once that’s done, you’ll have a better idea of how each process works when its streamlining business data.

Final Step: Optimize & Refine

With modern automation capabilities available, you’ll find the business of streamlining your data a lot easier and more efficient. However, even tools like this need monitoring and updating in order to keep up with your business sharp. This is where BPM software comes into play. BPM is a more complex approach to handling your processes and workflows. It coordinates the entire organization and focuses on its processes themselves to improve their efficiency.

Keep in mind, BPM is not merely automation of business processes, but also each process’s continuous improvement. If your company is relatively large, and looking for ways to implement a company strategy, coordinate interaction across all departments through the organization (as well as external systems), and implement continuous flow of improvement and change, then a BPM software solution is what you are looking for.  BPM systems enable integration across different platforms and can connect Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and many other applications.

We encourage you to read Grills article in full for more tips on streamlining business data.

Looking for more? Download our Business Process Management Buyer’s Guide for free to compare the top-24 products available on the market with full page vendor profiles. The guide includes four key capabilities to look for in a BPM platform, plus questions to ask before purchasing. It’s truly the perfect resource for anyone looking to find the right BPM for their business/organization, or those looking to replace an existing one.

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