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From chaos to clarity:

Transforming manual document workflows in Salesforce with automation

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Introduction

The roadblocks to effective CRM management

Maintaining CRM processes is important for your business success but can sometimes be overwhelming for an admin to control. Sending and receiving data from multiple sources, creating CRM contacts and leads, building reports, and managing dashboards — there is a lot to juggle. Unfortunately, these tasks often require repetitive, manual and tedious cut-copy-pasting both from you and your users, which can hurt data quality and significantly reduce overall business efficiency.

Implementing automation can take out the hassle by streamlining the flow of information, enabling data accuracy and safety, and keeping users productive and satisfied.

In the post below, discover how automation can revolutionize your Salesforce processes while empowering your users with seamless productivity and uncompromised data quality.

Behind the numbers: The impact of manual tasks on your processes

90% of employees get burned out by tedious and repetitive tasks. For example, HR departments are bogged down by lengthy onboarding processes, handling repetitive tasks like data collection and data entry. The support team has to reply to thousands of the same or similar questions every day, and so on. Educational institutions spend hours managing financial aid requests and approving class schedules.

Repetitive work is eating up employee time

According to Asana’s The Anatomy of Work Index, employees spend about 60% of their time at the workplace on “work about work” that involves:

  • Replying to emails or messages
  • Attending unnecessary or unexpected meetings
  • Waiting for feedback and approvals
  • Searching for files and documents
  • Duplicating work

In total, repetitive tasks cost businesses as much as 19 working days per year — and that’s for just one employee.

Perceived time spent on repetitive work across countries
🇦🇺 Australia & 🇳🇿 New Zealand
🇺🇸 US
🇬🇧 UK
🇩🇪 Germany
🇯🇵 Japan

Data silos: The time drain that’s growing

The statistics are impressive. Kiite’s Sales Productivity Survey from 2018 shows that sales team members waste about 52% of their time looking for information. The most relevant information is often scattered across multiple places, misplaced, outdated, stored inconsistently in one way or another, or simply incorrect.

Companies tend to use multiple document repositories, so the time it takes to locate the necessary information is constantly increasing. Additionally, employees can just share the necessary files via email or Slack when somebody needs them — this also leads to more time spent on data manipulation.

Nintex conducted a survey among 1,000 employees from the US across several industries and departments. They’ve shared their experience with data manipulation and highlighted the following problems:

  1. Locating documents — 49%
  2. Getting approval requests and shared documents — 43%
  3. Pulling and finding data on sales — 41%
Problems employees have with data manipulation
Locating documents
Getting approval requests and shared documents
Pulling and finding data on sales
Completing and filing new client paperwork
Document versioning
Getting sales contracts signed, negotiated, and approved
Communicating sales results to the company

The high cost of inaccurate data entry

Working in ERP systems, like Salesforce, generally simplifies the life and work of employees. However, it may also involve manual workflows that intimidate internal users. Creating complex contracts or forms and routing documents tends to be a time-consuming hassle that leads to human errors.

According to the rule of data entry, the cost of correcting one mistake in a record is $10, while uncorrected errors cost companies at least $100.

Let’s do some simple math. If a company has 500,000 records and there is a 30% rate of inaccuracy in its information, the company will need to spend $15 million to correct this information.

  • verification of data accuracy costs $1
  • cleaning up errors costs $10
  • uncorrected errors cost companies an additional $100
10 100 1 1-10-100 Rule

Declining team productivity

Routine, time-consuming tasks make employees feel bored and frustrated. In some cases, it can even lead to burnout. According to the latest research, one of the causes of burnout is boredom or chaos at work.

Employees tend to feel bored with everyday activities and start looking for ways to jazz up their routines. On the contrary, some workers have never had the chance to get bored since they have so much to do and control. Either way, on an ongoing basis, these situations lead to burnout.

Let’s face it — burnout never positively impacts your employees’ productivity. Additionally, workers who experience an increasing workload tend to leave their jobs

According to Gallup, disengaged and dissatisfied employees demonstrate:

  • 37% higher absenteeism
  • 18% lower productivity
  • 15% lower profitability

The ripple effect on user experience

Salespeople make up ⅛ of the entire American workforce. However, only 13% of customers believe a salesperson understands their needs.

Companies often do not realize that their employees ask customers for the same information two or even three times. This is for various reasons — from misplaced information to lacking a CRM system.

Additionally, according to a Shopify Study, 75% of consumers prefer brands with personalized messaging, offers, and experiences. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t looking to implement personalization, leaving customers frustrated with the actual interactions.

Expectations:
78%
“I expect consistent interactions across departments.”
72%
“I expect company reps to have consolidated info about me.”
Reality:
59%
“I don’t feel like I’m talking to one company, but rather separate departments.”
66%
“I often have to repeat the same information about me to different reps.”

Is automation the key to solving these issues?

Automation has become a crucial driver to achieving new levels of efficiency and profitability. Organizations across every industry are integrating it into their everyday business processes.
73%
of IT leaders say that thanks to automation, employees save 10 to 50% of the time they previously spent doing manual tasks.
42%
of business leaders agree that workflow automation speeds up completing repetitive tasks.
78%
of business leaders believe that automating organizational tasks increases productivity for everyone involved.
85%
of business leaders believe that automating different parts of a workload gives them and their employees more time to focus on the goals that truly matter to the company.

Businesses note that significant changes in their processes were achieved with the help of no-code Bots that automate various tasks, from document routing to integration with third-party services like Salesforce.

Automation delivers quantitative and qualitative benefits to businesses across industries.

Quantitative benefits
Reducing operating costs
With automation, businesses save on the costs associated with human interaction and hiring additional staff and reduce interest expenses on delayed payments.
Return on human capital
Employees can focus on more complex and high-value tasks. For example, instead of manually approving purchases, Sales teams can work on negotiating better vendor pricing.
Higher speed and velocity
Automation offers higher speed and faster results. Bots do the same work as humans, only 4x faster, and are operational 24×7.
Improved quality
Automated workflows demonstrate higher transaction accuracy, greater controls, and improved efficiency, while detailed analytics highlights opportunities for improvements.

Transforming CRM operations with document workflow automation

Fundamentally, automation refers to technology that businesses implement to handle repetitive processes that deliver and produce services formerly managed by individuals. An employee creates and sets up a document workflow so that the automation technology can take over the routine and time-consuming processes indefinitely.

Below are the key features found in automation software tools:

Low-code and no-code tools

The low-code and no-code software that is found in automation tools currently on the market is making automation increasingly accessible to companies and employees. These tools require little to no programming experience to set up and run, so specialists in any department can use them without support from IT staff. Drag-and-drop tools and pre-built templates allow any staff member to automate processes as a “citizen developer.”

Multiple integration options

Companies don’t use one platform or tech solution in their business processes, and the smartest automation tools know that. Integrations are a key feature of automation tools that deliver on their promise of streamlining business processes because they do not require employees to rebuild their workflows from scratch. These integrations allow users to automatically transport, merge, and collect data across various existing sources, like CRMs, Google Sheets, Excel, and a range of databases.

Robots

More and more document workflow automation tools now feature robotic process automation (RPA), a software robot that mimics human actions, e.g., sending offer letters to candidates, generating agreements, or updating spreadsheets with customer information. Recently usurping AI and chatbots in popularity, RPA has been recognized for its valuable automation tools that bear the brunt of responsibility for automating manual processes, reclaiming precious working hours for professionals.

Security

Any company’s department will have a range of security measures in place regarding their processes, particularly those dealing with sensitive or personal employee or customer data. That’s why automation tools must also consider potential security issues. Usually, automation tools include permission access to documents and information, password-protected data, and audit trails that record every action performed during an automated process. Managers can rest assured that these tools prioritize the privacy of their employees, companies and the safety of the data organized by and managed through them.

How document workflow automation drives business growth

Automation technologies help you optimize and grow businesses of any size. How? There are a number of significant benefits that document workflow automation delivers to your company — from minimizing errors to improving productivity and customer satisfaction.

#1. Reduced human error

Manual processes and data entry leave companies vulnerable to mistakes in key processes like invoicing, inventory management, contract creation, and other important data manipulations. These mistakes are usually inevitable, unpleasant, tedious at best, and costly at worst. This is where automation comes in to save the day.

Automation ensures greater accuracy in your business operations, eliminating the errors that come with manual processes, like copying and pasting or transferring data from a spreadsheet to a system of record or vice-versa. Minimizing human error is a cornerstone of automation and helps save your small business from wasted time, energy, and resources.

#2. Automated repetitive tasks

According to an analysis conducted by McKinsey, about 60% of recurring tasks could be automated by upwards of 30%. More often, automation opportunities lie in activities considered necessary and repetitive or recurring.

As a result of document workflow automation, employees can spend less time on tasks like invoicing, distributing time-off request forms, transferring files, scheduling meetings, and sending emails, and more time generating new sales and increasing the quality of your business’s services.

#3. Increased and streamlined collaboration

It can be a struggle to manage a project that involves different parties. Usually, these processes take months. With automation, these complex projects are easily simplified. These tools ensure information flows to the right people at the right time and monitor the responsibilities of each team member.

Automation allows every party to stay up-to-date on a project’s progress, keep up with what each team member is working on or has completed, ensure everyone has the most up-to-date information, and set and monitor deadlines. It really

#4. Compliance with industry‑specific requirements and regulations

Adhering to industry and government regulations can be stressful and costly for businesses. Healthcare organizations must comply with HIPAA requirements, while HR and Sales departments must consider GDPA regulations. In almost every industry — Healthcare, Finance, Education, or Law — compliance consumes hundreds of employee hours and company resources.

The good news is that implementing document workflow automation into your processes can make companies feel more confident since automation tools manage the process of complying with industry regulations and standards.

What’s stopping businesses from embracing automation?

51%
of business users are frustrated with the speed at which their organizations’ IT departments deliver digital projects
37%
of organizations say that technology implementation costs are a barrier to implementing automation
60%
of businesses admit that failure to overcome challenges associated with connecting IT systems, applications, and data will hinder automation initiatives
37%
of workers worry they’ll lose their job due to automation, and the number of people worried about losing their jobs due to automation is increasing

To put it simply, companies face two primary challenges — cost and people.

Cost

A common challenge among businesses is the cost of implementing automation. But while the upfront costs of automation can be significant, it’s important to remember that document workflow automation tends to provide a return on investment (ROI) in a relatively short period of time. Usually, the ROI of workflow automation is measurable after the first few months or even weeks.

Salesforce and Pulse conducted a survey that involved 100 IT and engineering leaders and found companies that used business automation obtained a positive ROI within 3 key areas:

  • 44% of employee working hours saved
  • 26% faster operations
  • 26% reduced costs
People

Shifting from traditional business processes to document workflow automation tends to frighten employees as with any major change to established processes. In addition, automation in the workplace can lead to unnecessary anxiety among your employees. The solution is quite simple — companies need to prepare workers for new automated processes beforehand.

Train employees across your entire organization to ensure the positive impacts of automation. Demonstrate how to solve business challenges faster while avoiding time-consuming, repetitive tasks.

  • Prepare resources for self‑education
  • Schedule meetings with experienced colleagues
  • Support non‑tech employees

Automating Salesforce document workflows with ready‑to‑use solutions

Automation is a business’ path to elevating CRM users to a more strategic position within the organization, ultimately benefiting the CRM admins, employees, customers, and the company’s bottom line.

This comes as no surprise when customizable solutions like airSlate can step in and automate how professionals create, send, collect, and file documents and their respective data.

airSlate is an all‑in‑one document workflow automation solution with everything you need to create, integrate, and automate any document workflow.

Document workflow automation made easy with airSlate
#1
A single no-code solution
100+
integration options
400+
templates
airSlate combines document generation, contract negotiation, PDF editing, eSignature, web forms, no-code Bots, and much more into a into a single, document workflow automation solution.

With airSlate you can automate, integrate, and launch document approval requests and eSignature workflows directly from your Salesforce account. airSlate also allows you to:

  • Generate documents and packages of documents in different formats ‒ PDF, DOCX, web forms, and Spreadsheets ‒pre-filled with data from Salesforce records.
  • Easily build eSignature or approval routing workflows that reach internal and external recipients.
  • Send batches of documents and save returned documents to Salesforce or an external storage service.
  • Create new and update existing records based on data entered in a document’s fillable fields.
  • Sync Salesforce data with NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and other systems of record.
“The ease of being able to create forms, PDFs, and other documents that link right into Salesforce has been instrumental in cutting down our processing times and increasing our customer satisfaction.”
Adam Beaty photo
Adam Beaty
Bullogic Wealth Management

Automate 40% of your work in Salesforce with airSlate

Connect automated document workflows to Salesforce to delight customers, improve employee satisfaction, save money, and increase revenue.

Challenges
What airSlate offers
Outcome
Creating complex contracts, order forms, and other documents takes time
Automatically generate documents using any data you have in Salesforce
Boost your employees’ efficiency by simplifying the creation of documents and document packages. Let your team concentrate on tasks that deliver greater value to your business
Routing documents is a time-consuming hassle
Process documents in your workflow based on the conditions you set
Automated document processing makes life easier for your employees by eliminating the need for them to chase documents
Manually updating customer data is an arrow-prone process
Update existing or create new records for each new piece of data received
Improved data quality and accuracy with minimum manual effort
Sending out multiple documents to a bunch of people is frustrating
Send documents to multiple recipients in one click
Eliminate routine work and improve your user experience with straightforward processes
  • Reclaim up to 40% of the time that used to be spent on manual tasks.
  • Unlock up to 3 hours of a workday and put it towards driving business growth.
  • Set up fully‑automated document workflows up to 10X faster.
“The Bots and workflow routing have been beneficial in allowing us to pull data from Salesforce, pre-fill documents, and then route those documents to various clients for signature.”
Jim Royster photo
Jim Royster
Cryo-Cell

airSlate + Salesforce: Automated document workflows for any industry, department, or working routine

Optimize onboarding processes for HR
  • Populate onboarding forms with employee information
  • Share documents via email or by publishing a link
  • Notify HRs once documents are completed
  • Export completed documents to Salesforce
Collect customer feedback for Marketing teams
  • Pre-fill feedback forms with personalized information
  • Send customized notifications and reminders
  • Create or update records in Salesforce
  • Manage access to your workflows and documents
Close deals and sign documents faster
  • Generate contracts using data from Salesforce
  • Send contracts or agreements via email or SMS
  • Notify parties once a document has been completed
  • Save signed documents to Salesforce
Delegate the routine work of Legal teams
  • Create reusable contracts, agreements, and NDAs
  • Designate required fields to each party involved
  • Set the signing order to meet your requirements
  • Protect your contracts from data leakage or misuse
Digitize time-consuming processes for Finance
  • Collect information from clients with dynamic web forms
  • Update Salesforce records with new data
  • Generate invoices, quotes, requests, and more
  • Sign documents in minutes using legally-binding eSignatures
Help your e-commerce business grow
  • Populate purchase orders with Salesforce data
  • Start vendor and supplier onboarding from your records
  • Automatically route forms and documents to required parties
  • Attach completed orders to corresponding Salesforce records
“I would highly recommend airSlate to any business leader who is looking to increase efficiency in their workforce. My team and I have gained precious minutes in our prospecting time.”
Guillermo Gameros photo
Guillermo Gameros
Advisor, Commercial Real Estate

Why Salesforce customers trust airSlate with their document workflows

With airSlate automation, you can significantly extend the value of Salesforce. By reducing manual tasks you can make CRM processes more efficient and build stronger relationships with leads and current customers.

Improve data quality

Ensure data quality and accuracy by automatically updating existing or creating new Salesforce records for each new piece of data received. Forget about lost, misplaced, or outdated information that took time and resources to locate or actualize.

Drive business efficiency

Improve efficiency and user experience with streamlined, stress- and error-free processes. Automatically create documents pre-filled with Salesforce data, route them to the right people, get them signed and completed all directly from the Salesforce account.

Expand automation to other systems

Choose from 100+ pre-built integrations to ensure seamless workflows across other systems. Populate documents with Salesforce data or other repositories. Use info from completed documents to automatically update information within Salesforce and other systems where you store relevant data.

Ensure data security and compliance

With airSlate, you can be sure that your Salesforce data is protected with industry-leading security practices and complies with global security standards. Keep track of the document changes and deal status with detailed Audit trail and instant notifications.

Set up automation with no coding

airSlate requires no code to implement and combines everything you need to automate document workflows with a single solution. And with ready-to-use Bots, you can expand airSlate automation to other CRMs and services without costly APIs or coding.

“airSlate has been a great addition to our business! It integrates well with Salesforce allowing our team to seamlessly get custom documents ready for signatures within our Salesforce record!”
Michael Moore photo
Michael Moore
Transition Insurance Agency

How a US university uses airSlate to eliminate paper-based workflows with automated adjunct contracting

airSlate users have already experienced the benefits of the Salesforce integration with automated routine business processes that freed up as much as 50% of their time for higher-value work.

Fresno Pacific University offers full-time courses in business, natural and social sciences, humanities, religion, pedagogics, and more. FPU employs a vast adjunct faculty throughout the state of California.

Each adjunct employment contract used to be prepared manually, then signed by multiple parties (professors, deans, then HR departments), and delivered by physical mail on both ends.

Thus, the entire workflow was subject to:
  • Manual errors in preparation
  • Delays in correspondence
  • Missed signatures
  • High costs of paper-based correspondence

airSlate + NetSuite automated workflow

airSlate helped FPU integrate document workflows with the university’s Salesforce account. airSlate’s built-in eSignatures and automated record updates allowed the administrative staff to accelerate their adjunct contract turnover and eliminate piles of paperwork — as well as the additional overhead it involved.

Right now, the entire process of adjunct contract signing is completely intuitive, even for a first-timer:

The contract is generated based on Salesforce records
Dean signs it
the adjunct signs it
the contract is delivered to HR
the adjuncts get paid.
Completed
Results
  • FPU minimized its document turnaround and reduced expenses (paper, printing, envelopes, and stamps)
  • The entire process is not only intuitive and paperless; it now only takes hours instead of days
  • With less time spent on paperwork, the administrative staff at Fresno Pacific University enjoys higher productivity and can now focus on more strategic tasks

Wrapping up

Manual processes can burden your CRM system, leading to decreased productivity and user frustration. Tasks such as document creation, data management, and approvals take up valuable time, hurt data quality, and increase data security risks, ultimately slowing business growth.

Ready to try it out? airSlate enables anyone to automate, integrate, and launch document workflows within their CRM account. With airSlate, you can achieve 100% data accuracy, reclaim up to 40% of your time, and reduce document creation cycles from hours to seconds.

See airSlate in action

Experience automated document workflows that integrate
with Salesforce.
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