Business process automation has helped many businesses navigate through the challenges of the pandemic. #nocode #BPA #automation @airSlateAcademy
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The business process automation story would not be complete without mentioning robotic process automation (RPA) and workflow automation. RPA can be used to automate routine business processes and workflows using software bots. No-code bots are pre-programmed to mimic human behavior while performing monotonous, rule-based tasks. End-users don’t have to touch a single line of code to leverage these bots in a specific business process or workflow. This is why no-code RPA can fit into a vast variety of scenarios ranging from automatic email response generation to using a combination of bots for automating a particular workflow.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through airSlate’s RPA use cases for automating contract management, student registration, patient intake, employee onboarding, and other business workflows. For more use cases, enroll in the Automation in Action: Industry Use Cases course at the airSlate Academy and learn how to apply automation in your organization’s processes.

Document Workflow Automation for Operations Managers

• Onboarding
• Business process automation
• Workflow optimization

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Top 5 airSlate business process automation use cases

Still think of business automation as a sophisticated and frightening technology? Watch the video below to dispel the myth:

1. Contract management

Contract management can turn into a burdensome process, especially when it comes to handling paper-based contracts. A typical contract can take up to 30 hours to negotiate and modify. Still, even when digitized, contract management is often prone to bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Getting a contract approved and signed by multiple parties, implementing role-based access control, and distributing roles to each party requires a decent amount of time.

Apart from that, there are other risks associated with inefficient contract management such as loss of revenue, missed renewals, outdated information, compliance failure, etc. Leveraging automation technology can eliminate the risks mentioned above, thus making the contract management process more streamlined. According to ContractWorks, 70% of businesses are willing to adopt contract management software after the events of 2020, along with eSignature and collaboration tools.

airSlate Business Cloud solutions span PDF editing, eSignature workflows, and robotic and document process automation. airSlate’s automated workflows helped Claremont Graduate University speed up its adjunct contracting process and eliminate redundant physical paperwork and multiple digital backups. The deployment of eSignature allowed the institution to reduce document turnaround times from one and a half months to a few days.

Enroll in the free Automating Contract Management course at the airSlate Academy to learn how you can automate contract generation, route contracts between the parties involved, and track all the changes during the negotiation process.

2. Student registration

Registration is the process of collecting and storing required information about users in a database (register). The registration procedure is a typical requirement for most organizations that provide customers with a service. It allows customers to sign up for an account or service from a specific organization. Businesses utilize the data entered during the registration process to get a better understanding of customer needs, form proper offers, and as a result, build fruitful cooperation.

Leveraging airSlate’s no-code Bots helped when automating student registrations for IATDE (in at the deep end), a local swimming school. airSlate made IATDE’s reservation forms available using public links which eliminated the need for manual form completion, thus reducing document error. Now all customer information is captured and automatically updated in the school’s system once a form is submitted. Automating the registration process with airSlate also prevented documents from being misplaced, which made the overall service faster, and resulted in fewer customer churns.

If you want to learn how to automate student registration workflows in your organization, enroll in the free Automating Student Registration course at the airSlate Academy. This course shows you how airSlate automates the student registration process by collecting student information via digital forms, assigning roles to individuals in a workflow, and storing and processing the data collected.

3. Patient intake

The healthcare industry has seen a surge in the adoption of automation technology after the pandemic outbreak. According to Statista, in 2020, 90% of large healthcare organizations had an AI and/or automation strategy, while 34% of respondents had already adopted automation solutions. One of the areas where healthcare facilities struggle to be more efficient is patient intake. During the pandemic, many hospitals were overwhelmed with the need to gather and process patient information while ensuring complete security and compliance.

airSlate helped T2 Biosystems streamline, accelerate, and secure their patient intake procedure. Before airSlate, T2 had been using word processors for handling patient forms and sensitive information. Due to the compliance process for obtaining medical data, T2’s inability to revisit their forms and complete them at a later time without having to restart an entire workflow was causing delays. By integrating airSlate into their Salesforce processes, T2 Biosystems could easily share forms with end-users and secure partially completed information for future use.

To make your healthcare facility more efficient and less reliant on physical paperwork, enroll in the free Automating Patient Intake course. Learn how to improve the patient registration process by replacing paper-based forms with configurable web applications and reduce the time it takes to process them from hours to minutes.

4. Employee onboarding

Before the pandemic, many HR processes were predominantly paper-based — employee onboarding, record management, policies and procedures, administration, etc. This has changed over the course of the pandemic with business automation becoming more common in the HR industry. According to Gartner, 17% of organizations use some form of AI-based HR automation and another 30% will do so by 2022. In a recent study, Deloitte identified that over 50% of standard HR processes could be automated using RPA tools.

Deploying airSlate can help in automating industry-specific repetitive HR tasks, such as employee on/offboarding, attendance tracking, data management, HR analytics, and more. It takes only a few steps to configure your onboarding workflow in airSlate:

– add the job offer and other docs with all the necessary fillable fields to your flow;
– create roles for everyone involved in the Flow (the employee, responsible HR managers, IT specialists), set access permissions and assign the fields in the documents to the roles you’ve created;
– add Bots that would send email notifications and route documents from role to role based on the conditions you’ve set;
– share the Flow with recipients.

Alternatively, you can use a pre-configured Employee Onboarding Flow Template to automatically collect new employee information for future use.

To learn more about no-code HR automation, enroll in a free Employee Onboarding Course at the airSlate Academy. It will take only three hours to get certified in onboarding automation fundamentals! Here you will get detailed step-by-step instructions on how to automate the onboarding processes in your organization in the most efficient way possible.

5. Price quoting

According to McKinsey & Company, over 30% of sales activities are highly automatable with today’s technologies — these include sales strategy and planning, lead identification, configuration, price and quotation (CPQ), and many more. Overall, sales automation has proven to increase customer-facing time, customer satisfaction, and efficiency by 10% to 15%, and sales potential is uplifted by another 10%. Aberdeen’s study suggests that CPQ-enabled sales reps require 27% less time (3.6 hours) to produce a typical quote or proposal than those not using CPQ.

Owing to a vast selection of capabilities, airSlate can be used to automate sales workflows. Although airSlate is not strictly geared for sales automation, its configurable no-code Automation Bots allow for setting up a fully automated price quoting workflow tailored to the specific business process you have in mind. To master the different types of airSlate Bots developed for price quoting automation, enroll in the free automation courses listed below:

• Pre-fill from Google Sheets Bot (pre-populates a Slate document with data from a specific Google Sheet).
• Export to Salesforce Bot (uploads a completed Slate document to Salesforce records).
• Email upon Slate Opening Bot (sends automatic notifications each time someone has edited or completed a Slate).
• Remind Step to Complete Slate Bot (sends automatic reminder emails to all workflow participants about roles that need to be executed to complete a Slate).
• Save to Google Drive Bot (archives completed Slate documents to your Google Drive account).

If you still have questions or want to upgrade your sales automation skills, enroll in the free Automating Price Quoting course at the airSlate Academy. In this course, you will learn how to enhance your price quoting workflow, minimize manual data entry, improve collaboration between teams and departments, and reduce the time it takes to close sales deals.

The post How SMBs automate their business processes: the top 5 airSlate automation use cases appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

We talked to Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU, to learn how airSlate helps streamline their workflows.

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Company profile

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, research-intensive university dedicated to graduate-level education in Claremont, California, with around 2,300 students currently enrolled.

Interviewee’s name

Eric Werner

Academic Affairs Analyst

Location

Claremont, CA

The customer

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a higher educational institution known for its cross-disciplinary research methods. At CGU, students get a tailor-made learning experience with the ability to take courses outside their field and pursue advanced degrees by blending programs. On top of that, limited enrollment and a vast selection of resources available to students allow them to effectively collaborate, innovate, and stay current.

The problem

Claremont Graduate University was facing recurring issues within their analog contracting processes, which specifically affected adjunct faculty employment. Sending paper-based contracts and forms back and forth would often result in multiple errors and misplaced signatures, not to mention the additional time and costs needed to resolve the errors. On average, it would take anywhere from three weeks to one and a half months to get a signed employment contract returned.

For CGU staff, finding a flexible digital solution capable of collecting signed contracts faster with eSignature was a critical need. Eric Werner remarks:

“I just need[ed] something that would let me put digital signatures on contracts because if I can cut off those three weeks that it takes us to go from putting a contract in the mail to getting it executed, that would just make my job so much easier.“

– Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU

Another pressing issue came from the ever-expanding physical storage space that the actual paperwork was demanding. The persistent buildup of paper documents resulted in poor file maintenance, duplication, and failure to update records.

The answer

Adopting airSlate allowed for flexible no-code workflow automation, making the signature process easier and faster. Within Claremont Graduate University, airSlate is used to build workflows across multiple departments, including the registrar’s office, the provost office, HR, and others.

One of the most common use cases for airSlate is building a Flow for requesting access to university applications. When a new staff member is hired, the supervisor can request access for that staff member. Once they complete the request, it’s sent as an attachment right into Zendesk, CGU’s ticketing system. Werner says:

“The flexibility and customization that you can do with airSlate – that’s something that I didn’t really see with a lot of the other products that we were looking at.“

airSlate allowed Claremont Graduate University to go paperless, thus eliminating the need for storing physical copies and digital backups. Since March 2020, the institution has not added a single piece of paper to its document workflows. On top of that, their office supply expenditures have almost completely disappeared.

“I will say in my experience since we adopted [airSlate], it’s just reinforced how flexible a product it is and how adaptable it is. And for me, that’s just been a huge, huge boon.“

Implementing airSlate

airSlate helped automate CGU’s Request to Visit Campus Flow, which resulted in over 500 requests to visit the campus received and processed on a weekly basis from students, faculty, or staff members. airSlate’s auto-population feature made the process of filling out and submitting a request extremely intuitive and fast.

At the moment, Claremont Graduate University is using airSlate to automate their adjunct contracting process which has helped eliminate redundant work, allowing staff to focus on more high-priority tasks. Werner says:

“When I realized the power of the system, I sent 35 contracts for signature in one day. By next morning, we had half of them back signed. By the end of the week, we had 34 or 35 back signed.“

Going forward, CGU has the ambitious goal of streamlining the adjunct contract Flow per the needs of the different types of adjuncts already employed or hired by CGU. While the institution and the instructors are already in the system, integrating human resources and payroll remains a critical objective.

Conclusion

airSlate has helped Claremont Graduate University enhance the student, faculty, and staff experience with integrative technology. Leveraging airSlate across the institution is a work in progress, as some processes are still handled manually. Despite that, CGU has seen a surge in productivity across multiple departments. More and more staff are feeling empowered to build their own Flows or reach out to the support team for help with workflow automation.

“That’s the power of a tool like airSlate. You can have your staff focusing their creativity on bigger problems. Without having them caught up in process and procedure and the way you’ve always done things because once that ball gets rolling, it’s an invaluable tool. I can’t say enough about that.“

– Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU

The post How Claremont Graduate University uses airSlate workflows to automate its contracting process appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

65% of legal professionals identified time lost on administrative tasks as their biggest pain point.

All these factors have one thing in common: they begin and end with manual work. That’s why contract negotiation process automation has become such a powerful tool for staying ahead of all the back and forth.

What is the contract negotiation process?

The contract negotiation process involves a strategic discussion aimed at reaching an agreement between all parties involved in the transaction. During this procedure, each party tries to persuade the other to agree with some terms and conditions. It’s not arguing but compromising: each side gives up something in order to reach an agreement.

A contract negotiation process is a give-and-take procedure that is conducted according to the terms of business and law. It’s an integral part of most transactions and most deals. And it’s function is critical because it allows all parties to contend for what they expect to receive from a deal.

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• Price quotes
• Workflow optimization
• Business process automation

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Understanding contract negotiation processes

Let’s take a closer look at the contract negotiation process itself and what key factors come into play:

1. Everything starts with an objective for entering into a contract. All parties should have a clear idea of what they want to gain from this particular transaction. Terms and conditions grow from there. Some of them may be considered as those that may be compromised in advance.
   
2. Contract laws: Contracts are actually legally binding agreements. This means they may be regulated by the courts. Therefore, it’s always a good idea to get legal advice.
   
3. Negotiation, the central element of the contract negotiation process, assumes backups.
   
4. Goals and priorities.  Define exactly what you need out of the transaction and what your bottom line is.

Once the contract is signed, all parties are legally bound to the terms of the contract, and non-compliance entails legal liability.

What is the best strategy for contract negotiation processes?

From a formal point of view, contract negotiation is the process of discussing and compromising terms and conditions to reach a final agreement between parties involved in a transaction. In fact, if we were to depict the entire process in a few words, it’s all about risks and revenues.

To avoid leaving resources on the table, pay close attention to the asks of your partner. The major aim of negotiation is to make a deal that benefits both. If you get your partner to accept your view of the situation, then you can influence the amount of risk involved.

Another point is to improve the process itself: avoid time-consuming processes with a potential for the interruption. Meet your counterpart’s needs and desires by working on a contract, during your contract negotiation process, in real-time by omitting time, geographical, language, or cultural gaps.

So there are two basic rules: putting customers first and doing more with less.

How to reap the benefits of negotiation?

Get feedback

Feedback is when a client asks you to push back on certain terms. It may sound like “Sorry, we have to agree on that with our lawyer”, or “We need some time to consider the terms”. That time your customer takes to consider the terms is actually the time they’re preparing valuable feedback for you. So each time a point raises questions for your customers, it’s a good indication that something may need to change. But at the same time, any change can bear heavily on your business because the actual aim is to reach an agreement and receive the benefits of negotiation in as short a time as possible.

Make your contract data-driven

How to propose changes? Ask your partners what exactly isn’t working for them. Here are some common reasons for requested changes:

• Limits on obligations
• Possible risks
• Range of values
• Not understanding what that particular line means

Ask your partners about individual paragraphs and amendments. Ask why those terms or conditions are problematic. Their answers will help you see your weaknesses and how to turn them into strengths to reap the most benefits of your negotiation.

Pre-approve fall-back positions with legal

Once you identify a point that can be negotiated, estimate a counteroffer and your level of risk. By doing this, you can reconcile feedback without wasting time on legal advice for every particular case. Consider using simple wording to clarify complicated terms. Gather all facts, figures, financial statements, and documents as reinforcement for backing up your points of negotiation during the contract negotiation process.

Automate the process

Automated contractors already exist in everyday transactions such as your local supermarket, where negotiating is not possible. However, contract negotiation can be simplified for tasks such as data entry or managing reviews, using suitable workflow automation software. By implementing these types of solutions, the contract negotiation process can be completed online, faster, and more accurately.

Based on the average salaries of the parties involved, the IACCM estimates that the average cost of a simple contract is $6,900, and rises to more than $49,000 for more complex agreements.

Reducing the amount of time spent reviewing contracts and getting them signed off, through the use of a contract negotiation system, significantly reduces these associated costs and increases the benefits of this negotiation.

Watch the video below to learn how to use airSlate for your contract negotiation processes:

How do automated contract negotiation processes work?

To prove a point let’s move on from statistics to real contract negotiation automation steps.

Since airSlate is a great example of an all-in-one business automation platform, let’s see how to get all the benefits of negotiation in a single tab.

1. Use team workspace

With a safe business automation platform, you can add unlimited teammates and collaborate together in a single secure hub. It works better if you have the option to manage access permissions and protect your documents with a password.

2. Generate documents and assign responsibilities to recipients

Managing documents is an irreplaceable part of a contract negotiation process. Create documents with fillable fields and assign fields to particular recipients. airSlate allows you to pre-fill documents with data from CRM platforms, databases, or clouds.

3. Use No-code Bots

No-code Bots remind you when a contract has expired, needs to be re-negotiated, or renewed. Also, Bots populate documents with data or export data from your contacts to your CRM, such as Salesforce, or for example, to your Google spreadsheet.

4. Enjoy negotiating contracts in real-time

The ability to reach an agreement online boosts your productivity and expands the benefits of negotiation. Once your partners receive a contract, they can easily redline, add comments, or approve changes. You can track any action and get notified once your recipient opens a document.

5. Close your deal by eSigning the contract

Make sure that your business automation platform provides you with legally-binding eSignatures. Once the contract negotiation process is over, eSign the contract right away. With airSlate, you’re signing with a legally binding signature that is compliant with worldwide standards.

6. Automate sending invoices for signing when contracts are executed

At the end of the contract negotiation process, when all parties have executed a contract, automation Bots generate invoices and send them out to be eSigned and paid on time. You can set up automatic payments upon receipt and start calculating all the time you’re saving as a result of using Bots automation.

No human-factor errors, no delays, no wasted hours. Simple as that.

7. Evaluate the benefits of negotiation

Calculate how much time and money you’ve saved without unnecessary trips to and from a customer, use of postal services, or explanations for employees on how to reach an agreement more efficiently. Then, take a look at your deal results and figure out how much more profitable the contract negotiation process became.

And now the red line

Сontract negotiation is one of those things that requires time to learn. But how you approach it can make the process less painful. Knowing your worth helps to understand how much to ask for. And knowing the needs of your negotiating partner means knowing where to draw the line. Since most business processes can be automated, results will depend on the tools you use. By choosing the right automation platform for handling your contract negotiation processes, you can not only prevent common pitfalls but empower your best practices using digital methods.

Dive deeper into the automation of contract negotiation processes by checking out the airSlate Academy’s course on contract management. With the help of this course, you will become an expert in creating contracts, customizing them, and configuring automation with no-code Bots. The course is free, and once you successfully pass the exam at the end, you’ll receive a verified airSlate certificate. Enjoy developing new skills, implementing them into your business, and enjoying the benefits of negotiation.

The post Boost your ability to win more contracts: the benefits of contract negotiation automation appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

This blog will help you understand the anatomy of business processes and how to turn them into digital workflows without losses or breakdowns.

What is digital workflow?

Digital workflows are a part of everyday business processes that consist of sequential and predictable combinations of tasks and data. The term ‘digital’ here refers to streamlined operations. Digital workflows help users instantly look up critical data, keep track of processes and tasks, and automate them.

Let’s see how it works with real business cases.

One of our users —a recreational facility company — was dealing with a recurring problem when processing documents that required reviewing and signing by multiple parties. Although Microsoft Word and Office are industry standards, sharing documents via email and messenger caused confusion among updated versions, and considering mobile security concerns, using mobile was out of the question.

What’s wrong with sending documents via email?

1. Documents and tasks managed via emails can easily get lost in someone’s inbox.
   
2. Since documents can easily get lost and forgotten, deadlines are hard to track and enforce.
   
3. All notifications related to documents and tasks should be sent manually. If you forget to send an email or you send it to the wrong address, documents and tasks too easily get lost in the void of cyberspace.
   
4. And finally, there are far too many steps between you sending your email and your recipient receiving it.

Our user remarks:

“People couldn’t open up, edit, or complete things we needed when we needed them. OR if they were trying to do it on a computer, there were version issues we had problems with like ‘it doesn’t fit in the box’ etc. These were regularly ongoing issues.”

By implementing digital workflows, the recreational facility was able to eliminate most of the routine time-consuming aspects of their daily routine. For example, a birthday party reservation form is available to be filled in via public link. When a parent has filled and submitted the form, the information is automatically pushed into the Swimming Pool facility’s spreadsheet. Available time slots for arranging a party are also pre-filled in the same spreadsheet. Once reserved, a notification is sent to the Admin and the completed Slate is archived to the client’s Dropbox. All these steps are automated by airSlate Bots once a party reservation form is submitted.

And just like that, parents can celebrate their child’s birthday without ever having to use the phone, fill out and submit papers by hand, check back for availability, or resubmit a form from scratch if a slot is already taken.

Digital workflows are how the facility’s staff is able to control and monitor what is happening and when. This means they’re much more responsive to things as and when they occur and are able to stay on top of tasks as they come in, rather than at a later time.

The current state of digital business processes

According to recent statistics, 70% of companies either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are working on one. Nearly 77% of companies say their relationship with technology is average or above average. And 65% of companies are positive about their ability to adapt to technological disruption over the next three years (data from 2018).

At the same time, of the $1.3 trillion spent on digital transformation in 2018, an estimated $900 billion was wasted when initiatives didn’t meet their goals. Only 16% of employees in the survey said their company’s digital transformations had improved performance and were sustainable for the long term. According to Forrester Research, more than 50% of digital transformation efforts fizzled out completely in 2018.

Moreover, 87% of companies think digital transformation would be disruptful to their industry, but only 44% are prepared for a potential digital disruption.

Organizations say their biggest obstacles in achieving success with digital business initiatives include:

• Lack of sufficient budget
• Lack of staff
• Lack of correct skill sets
• The need to replace legacy systems
• Cultural issues

For many companies, becoming a digital business means enabling worker productivity through tools such as mobile, data access and AI-assisted processes, and the ability to better manage business performance through data availability and visibility. They also want to satisfy customer expectations, understand customer needs, and provide secure, optimized access to assets. And of course, companies want to achieve top-line growth through digital product enhancements.

All of these goals require a smart combination of technologies. But the problem is that there are too many technologies to choose from. These technologies are expensive, they require a lot of training, and many companies find themselves ill prepared for such changes.

The reality is that digital workflows are here to stay and are becoming more available and easier to implement so that every company will eventually be able to integrate them with their existing processes. Let’s figure out how to assess your business’s real needs and pain points to find the best solution for resolving these issues.

What main steps are involved in a typical business process?

Every business process consists of six stages:

• Initiation
• Generation
• Negotiation
• Approval
• Execution
• Archiving

1. So the first step is the initiation e.g., settling on an idea for the project. At this stage it is critical to do research to see if the idea is realistic, how it would be completed, etc. The initiation step involves consulting the head of the development team and shareholders. The key point during the initiation process is to examine your project for both its feasibility and value to the organization.
   
2. The second step is generation. At this stage you’ll begin to draw up a project plan, scope or charter, calculate a budget, the resources needed, and a schedule. All of these items may be changed during project planning. Pay attention to the flexibility of the teams working on the project. In case any delay occurs, you may need to divert resources in order to hit your deadline.
   
3. Negotiation is a process that involves consultations between the involved parties to reach a consensus on a particular process/deal. Negotiations can happen at any time within the project life cycle.
   
4. Now that the most painful processes are in the past, it’s time to come closer to the execution stage. The approval process means getting the final acceptance of the customer or contractee on the negotiated terms and conditions of the project.
   
5. The execution stage is when all of the parties agree on the deal, process, project, contract etc. It is critical to meet with the teams involved and distribute the necessary resources, tasks, timeline, responsibilities, and any other important information related to the project. It is also necessary to make sure that the team understands exactly what the project is and why they should both care and be enthusiastic about it. The execution part of the business process requires deep tracking of each participant’s actions.
   
6. The final process is the archiving stage. The project is finally closed. If all is completed to a satisfactory standard, then the process can be archived. This is when inactive information, in any format, is securely stored for long periods of time. Such information may be used again in the future to check previous projects, make sure everything has been done correctly or to find information for future projects.

Common problems when creating efficient digital workflows

In the paragraph about the current state of digital business processes, we saw that processes involving digital transformation are not as efficient as they are supposed to be. Let’s discuss the main pain points that prevent companies from achieving a successful digital transformation.

Expensive integrations

When businesses begin their digital transformation journey, they often begin by solving a simple problem that turns into an integration nightmare. This is because businesses iterate on implementing workflows gradually, they often find themselves stuck in a type of hostage situation where each part of their workflow is owned by a separate service vendor. They use DocuSign for e-signatures, Conga to generate documents, Salesforce to manage their leads and Box as their cloud storage. They try to integrate them and build an automated workflow solution using services like Zapier or Nintex, but couldn’t foresee the two roadblocks that accompany integration:

• It is very expensive. You’ll have to pay for a set of services, custom API integrations and the automation tool itself. Cost estimates will reach into the tens of thousands of dollars just for implementation.
• It lacks flexibility and scalability. Every time your workflow changes, you will have to go through the entire configuration process (including API coding) again. So yes, expect to spend thousands whenever your workflow changes.

No flexibility when you want to re-configure workflows

It’s impossible to predict what your workflow will be tomorrow, but it should be your ambition to digitize and accelerate your business in order to achieve growth. You may find that you are the hostage of an inflexible software that prevents your business from developing efficiently.

• You can’t quickly on-board new workflow participants
• You can’t think of other workflows you’d like to implement that could involve automation, conditional routing, web-forms, contract negotiation, etc.
• It takes too long to implement your new workflow or change it

Consider the future needs of your company as its workflow may change or become more complex.

No real automation

Most software providers mislead users by selling them automation tools that don’t possess the real power of automation. What does this amount to? A business pays an enormous amount of money to finally get rid of the need for manually tedious processes and repetitive tasks. And then that business realizes that it still has to do many things manually, and these things are pretty complicated.

For example, Nintex positions themselves as a ‘Workflow automation platform,’ yet it’s Adobe Sign that powers e-signatures for Nintex customers. Others such as DocuSign will provide you with e-signatures and CRM integrations, but they don’t have any automation options except for simple things like sending reminders.

What is even more unpleasant is that in order to build complex workflows and set integrations you have to learn coding skills. Well, this is not what you expected when deciding to streamline business processes. Your company will need to hire more developers and pay them for their work.

So when choosing a platform to create digital workflows, make sure it provides you with Bots. Bot automation is the process of automating repetitive tasks such as data entry. With the help of properly configured software robots, these Bots can complete any task for you without further action on your part.

There are usually two types of Bots:

The main benefit of Bots is that you can easily set certain conditions for them and they will perform tasks on their own based on these conditions. No programming or coding skills are required.

Now that we’ve identified the main pain points of digital workflows, we are getting closer to solving the problems of implementation. However, in order to implement digital workflows that will truly assist in the growth of your business, we should first understand the main components of a digital workflow.

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Digital workflow: Overview of components

Document generation

Document Generation is the process of automatically creating documents based on certain rules.

Document Generation Software is useful when multiple documents need to be generated and each document contains a combination of:

• Static content — the parts that remain the same in each document.
• Dynamic content — content that is customized for the audience or recipient of a generated document.

Why should businesses automate document generation?

Every day, more and more data is generated, stored, and reused. It isn’t a question of how to control it. It’s a question of how to stay ahead of it. An organization of any scale in any industry is dependent on accurate data representation and efficient document workflows. When workflows are transparent, projects get done promptly, often resulting in profits. Companies waste massive amounts of cash to automate document workflow. This software segment will reach an impressive $11 billion within the next decade.

At the same time, purchasing yet another expensive tool may not solve your business’s pain points.

Using document generation software with systems of record such as CRMs or custom databases

Your document generation software should allow you to connect your document to a data source so that you can map document template fields to CRM records, SQL databases or an Excel spreadsheet. By following this method, you’ll never have to re-enter repetitive data.

Transferring large amounts of data and documents between company departments or branches that have more than one physical location can be extremely complicated and time-consuming.

In cases like this, a document flow usually includes multiple workflows — requiring an organization to share, track, store, synchronize, and approve documents across teams and users working through a variety of apps, cloud services or CRM systems. As projects increase in size, more and more people get involved, and more documents get passed back and forth, creating a dilemma.

Even the most popular platforms for document generation only provide document routing between individuals. Not only do you have to organize data transfers between a sender and a recipient, but also ‘system to recipient’ and ‘system to system.’

How does automated document generation work?

Let’s say a company is negotiating a contract with a customer outside their organization’s workspace. Usually, this process would take days to accomplish and go something like this:

1. The manager shares a contract containing the organization’s terms and provisions.
   
2. The customer reviews the contract, adds their edits and sends the edited contract back to the manager who receives it the next day.
   
3. The manager sends the contract with the customer’s proposed changes for review to upper management, losing yet another day to reviewing the edits.

With the right business process automation platform, the entire contract negotiation phase can be completely automated for everyone. When the platform has been set up correctly, both parties are able to redline the contract as the edits that are made will trigger Bots to notify the right people.

This way, all the necessary steps, including edits, approvals and signatures, are processed within the Flow, showing the changes in real-time:

1. The organization’s representative creates a contract template and modifies it for a specific customer, adds fillable fields, signature fields and checkboxes.
   
2. The representative adds roles and assigns fields and checkboxes to this role. All of them have to be checked by the customer, signifying their agreement.
   
3. After that, the representative sends the contract out to be reviewed and e-signed by the customer.

How much does document generation software cost?

The pricing structure for document generation software varies based on the number of users, forms, integrations, and access to advanced features. Some vendors offer basic document generation features for as low as $20 per user per month while high end solutions can run as much as $750 per month.

The average business should expect to pay in the range of $200 per month.

Contract management

Contract management is the process of managing contract creation, execution, and analysis. It aims to maximize operational and financial performance in an organization while reducing financial risk. Even though the aim is to save money and reduce risk, the process proves to be a very time and cost-consuming element for a business. Let’s find out how contract management should be automated. But first, we need to identify the main points.

Nine stages of a contract management process

1. Contract preparation means identifying needs, establishing goals, setting expectations, and defining risks.
   
2. Authoring contracts involves consulting an attorney or in-house counsel to draft a contract.
   
3. Contract negotiation requires both parties to view and work on a document together in real-time.
   
4. Getting approval means reaching an agreement on the contract’s terms.
   
5. Execution of the contract is when all parties agree and sign the contract.
   
6. Contract obligations management ensures that the contracting parties fulfill the obligations laid out in the agreement.
   
7. Amendments and revisions are about adding edits and changes to the contract.
   
8. Auditing and reporting are a part of ensuring that all the obligations are met.
   
9. Contract renewal is when the contract is scheduled to expire. The parties may renew their contract based on current terms, or renegotiate them and enter a new contract.

How does contract management work with digital workflows?

An automated contract management cycle should cover the entire process from creation to execution.

Digital workflows help you focus on primary issues without having to waste hours or days on repetitive, organizational tasks.

Digital contract security and compliance requirements

Contract compliance is designed to accommodate the rules or guidelines regarding and related to equal opportunity policies and regulations. For example, equal opportunity for employment without regard to age, gender, religion, disability, or national origin.

However, when you decide to use contract management automation systems you should also pay attention to the platform’s compliance measures.

You should be able to ensure contract compliance by archiving and locating all of your contracts in a single, secure place while protecting your contract’s information with HIPAA and GDPR compliant platforms.

Check whether the platform you use or plan to use takes security seriously. Platforms like airSlate encrypt user communications with the NSA developed SHA-256 encryption algorithm which protects data transfers between users, or user and server, against external access. User documents are stored on Amazon S3 data centers located in the US.

Contract negotiation

Contract negotiation is the process of discussing and reviewing the terms of a contract. Doing so is a necessary part of reaching a final agreement between two or more parties involved in a deal.

What are the advantages of automating contract negotiations?

When redlining contracts online, you’ll need to use a contract negotiation platform. This way, both parties can view and work on a document together in real-time without having to send and resend documents multiple times.

With a proper contract negotiation platform you get everything you need for efficient contract review and approval:

1. The ability to redline contracts in real time. You can share a contract with business partners and let them easily comment and redline it.
   
2. Always on the same page with partners. You may set Bots to automatically send reminders and notifications to all negotiators.
   
3. Keep contract information up-to-date by automating contract updates and approvals. This way you can reduce errors and track compliance.

A contract negotiation solution allows you to build compliant contracts with real-time negotiations and easy updates. What’s most important is that by replacing the human factor with automated performance, your organization can save a tremendous amount of time and money.

How much does contract management automation cost?

The market for contract management software is reaching a peak in its development with dozens of different solutions available. Analyzing the pricing of the market leaders carefully is critical for making the right decision.

• Nintex’s standard edition will cost your company $950 per month.
• Conga’s pricing for contract management starts at $55 per user per month.
• airSlate will cost you an average of $30 per month. However, you can use it for free. The only difference is that with this plan, full access to each Slate will be limited after the first 30 days of creation.
• Qwilr starts at $66 per month (3 users).
• ContractWorks starts at $600 per month and includes unlimited users (but only 2500 documents). The plan with unlimited numbers of documents will end up costing your company $1000.

This overview could be extended as the list of contract management software is growing every day.

As you can see, pricing varies. So before choosing a contract management solution, you’ll need answers to the following questions:

Do they offer a free trial? How long is it? Is the pricing policy transparent and publicly available to all interested parties? How big is the price difference between a basic package and an advanced one?

It’s important to remind yourself that your team will grow, so finding a solution that scales with your growth is important.

And this brings us to our main point — the need of a scalable, end-to-end workflow solution.

What is an end-to-end workflow solution?

An end-to-end workflow is a process that delivers a full document and data lifecycle while supplying all the necessary components along the way.

An end-to-end workflow platform should include things like:

CRM and cloud integrations out of the box

An online document editor and HTML form builder

E-signature solution

Filled-in data collection

No-code workflow routing and automation

Document generation

Contract management and contract negotiation

 

Note: It’s the user who can adjust everything, without any engineering support required.

What are the real benefits of an end-to-end workflow solution?

Let us help you understand the specifics of an end-to-end workflow solution based on the airSlate experience:

1. First of all — this is a single platform. You get everything you need to quickly configure any business process. And there is no need to pay for or manage multiple vendors.
   
2. It’s ten times faster to deploy. An end-to-end solution decreases the costs of configuration and time to deployment by up to 10 times.
   
3. You can create a team workspace — add unlimited teammates, manage their access permissions, and collaborate on workflows in a single secure hub.
   
4. Using such an advanced solution empowers your employees. They get the tools they need to focus on what’s most important for their business.
   
5. You get access to advanced analytics that display your business data in real-time, as it happens.
   
6. Of course — no-code configuration and automation. You can configure, automate and integrate business processes without the need to code APIs.
   
7. airSlate is natively multi-cloud. This is the only platform that is natively multi-cloud, ensuring your workflows function across all your cloud applications at the same time.
   
8. Your data is accurate, secure and compliant. airSlate is HIPAA, SOC II Type 2, CCPA and GDPR compliant. These requirements are built into every airSlate process. Two-factor recipient
   
9. You can use airSlate for free. airSlate premium features are available the moment you create a new Workspace, regardless of the subscription plan you’ve chosen. The only difference is that the free plan has a time-based retention limit (30 days) for the document Slates you and your teammates create in your Workspace.

airSlate democratizes business automation: for the first time, deploying, automating and sharing workflows is available to everyone in your organization. You and your employees can focus on what’s important: customers, career and business success.

You don’t have to choose between multiple vendors claiming to provide you with an ‘advanced workflow automation solution.’ With airSlate you can just try and see for yourself.

We hope that after using an end-to-end workflow solution, you’ll be able to create efficient digital workflows without wasting enormous amounts of time and money. Find the solution that will not only correspond to your current business needs but one that can scale with your business’s growth and development.

The post The ultimate guide to digital workflows: configuration, deployment, and pricing appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.