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What Is Workflow Automation?
Workflow automation can improve employee productivity and engagement while lowering staffing costs.
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Most business owners dream of eliminating the pinch points of daily operations. Less paperwork, better communication and fewer breakdowns help everything run more smoothly — and boost employee morale. Instead of entering data manually, consider automation to free your team from repetitive tasks. This speeds up workflows and gives employees more time to engage with customers, be creative and train for specialized roles.
Workflow automation tools can streamline follow-up calls, drip emails, finance approvals and other time-consuming tasks. We’ll explain how to use them in your business.
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation is a method for streamlining and automating tasks and manual processes to improve efficiency and reduce errors. It helps minimize busy work and frees employee time for more creative and lucrative pursuits.
Time savings are a big deal. According to Microsoft’s Work Trends Index, 64 percent of employees say they struggle to fit their work into the allotted time. Additionally, according to ProcessMaker, employees spend an average of 50 percent of their time on repetitive tasks, such as creating or updating PDFs, Word documents and spreadsheets. Another 10 percent is spent on manual data entry.
You can automate both simple and complex workflows. For instance, a human resources (HR) workflow might only involve one employee and the internal HR department, while a finance workflow could span several layers — from employee to chief financial officer.
Workflow automation lets you track each step in real time, improving reporting, testing accuracy and cross-department collaboration. You can tweak bottlenecks on the fly and automatically transfer data between tools like enterprise resource planning software or CRM systems for smooth, connected operations.
Kathryn Schwab, founder of health and wellness web design firm Make It Count Creative Solutions LLC, relies on workflow automation to save time, reduce mistakes and keep things running smoothly.
“It makes sure leads get followed up with, invoices go out on time and appointments are scheduled effortlessly — all while giving customers a better experience,” Schwab explained. “By taking repetitive tasks off your plate, automation lets you focus on growing your business and building real connections with your clients.”
Benefits of workflow automation
Workflow automation brings your business the following immediate and long-term benefits:
- Improved productivity: When some daily tasks are automated, employees are free to pursue other, more critical tasks. More work gets done in the same amount of time, helping to boost productivity.
- More employee engagement: Workplace automation frees team members to tackle challenging and rewarding projects, improving employee engagement levels.
- Lower staffing costs: If multiple employees handle repetitive tasks, switching to automated systems can lower payroll costs. Eliminating these tasks helps you save money on salaries, payroll taxes and employee benefits, boosting your bottom line. It can also free up capital to spend on marketing or other efforts to grow your company.
- Fewer bottlenecks: Manuj Aggarwal, founder and chief information officer of TetraNoodle Technologies, pointed out that implementing workflow automation can significantly reduce workplace process bottlenecks. “In most businesses, 80 percent of the results (revenue and profit) come from 20 percent of the work,” Aggarwal explained. “The rest is what I call the drudgery of work. Automation eliminates these bottlenecks and allows the business to scale.”
- Improved collaboration: With workflow automation systems, business users and team members can easily see what tasks their colleagues have completed and what remains to be done. Shared dashboards and employee collaboration tools eliminate wasted time and improve teamwork.
- Fewer errors: Workflow automation centralizes project communication, helping to reduce missed deadlines and misunderstandings.
- Higher customer satisfaction: Automated processes can boost customer satisfaction and help you earn repeat business.
- Empowered sales teams: An automated sales process that includes follow-up emails and reminders can help your sales team better manage deals at every stage of the sales funnel.
- Better data insights: Automation software can help you track how often your team hits key performance indicators before and after using automation tools and identify additional repetitive tasks to automate for even better results.
Ways to use workflow automation in your small business
Implementing workflow automation can improve business operations in all areas, streamlining critical processes and reducing the monotony of manual data entry. Here are some workflow automation examples to inspire your strategy:
Marketing and sales automations
Marketing and sales departments can put automations to use in the following ways:
- Marketing: Workflow automation can help automate repetitive tasks, assist with remote employee collaboration, streamline the lead conversion process and help you run multiple campaigns simultaneously from one dashboard.
- Sales: Workflow management systems streamline sales funnels, automating lead follow-up to ensure every lead gets the same treatment. You can also track customers, send drip and personalized emails to new prospects and send coupons to drive higher revenues from existing and potential clients.
Customer service automations
Here are ways automations can help you improve the customer experience:
- Customer service departments: Increase customer retention by creating a ticketing system to manage queries, send automated responses to frequently asked questions and route support requests to the right agent. Gather survey data to track how you’re doing as a business by sending a short questionnaire following each sale or contact.
- Dispatch and logistics teams: Connect your system to your courier or dispatch company’s platform to schedule shipments and send customers timely, automated notifications about expected delivery times. If you dispatch service technicians to visit clients, automation can help assign the right technician to each case based on their skill set.
Operations automations
Automation can improve day-to-day business operations across departments.
- Facilities departments: Workflow automation can streamline facilities operations by handling tasks like move requests, office relocations, logistics and access control. It can also simplify maintenance requests, manage complaint tracking and even help with submitting and reviewing new product ideas.
- Purchasing departments: Workflow automation makes it easier to manage vendors, track inventory pricing and streamline invoice and capital-approval processes.
Administrative automations
Automation can help your administrative processes run more smoothly:
- Accounting and finance: Workflow automation can free up accounting and finance teams by automating payroll management and integrating data with third-party apps. It can also help speed up approvals, set up auto-payments and streamline grants and expense tracking.
- HR departments: Automate and streamline workflows so your HR team can sift through resumes faster, update compliance policies, create faster onboarding processes and reduce paperwork. Automation can also simplify time clocks and time and attendance tracking.
Technical and legal automations
Even highly specialized departments can benefit from workflow automation.
- Information technology (IT) departments: Workflow automation helps IT teams delegate support tickets without risking duplication, confirm updates with stakeholders and track employee usage. It can also help manage shadow IT, strengthen cybersecurity and risk management efforts and improve fraud protection.
- Legal departments: Automation can simplify tasks like client intake forms and contract reviews. Legal teams can also automate supply chain compliance by checking for sanctions adherence, speeding up contract approvals and ensuring documentation accuracy.
How to create an automated workflow
Aggarwal advises breaking workflows into clear steps before building automations, especially when they involve different stakeholders and require multiple approvals.
“First, businesses map out the steps in their manual processes — identifying repetitive tasks like invoice approvals or customer follow-ups,” Aggarwal explained. “Next, automation tools [link] applications and replicate human actions. Finally, the workflow is coordinated in an automated fashion, sometimes with zero human intervention.”
The following is a simplified approach to designing an automated workflow:
- Choose a manual process to automate: Determine a process that delivers a high return on investment. “Devote ample time to strategizing your long-term automation roadmap,” Aggarwal advised. “Pick one friction point, like customer onboarding or invoice approvals and focus on scoring a tangible ROI [return on investment].”
- Identify why the process should be automated: Set an automation goal. Do you want to speed things up and make the process smoother? Do you want to increase efficiency? Your goal will help you focus on the task.
- Consult your team: Communicate goals and gather user feedback to refine your workflow design and ensure your employees are on board.
- Create the workflow automation: Use automated workflow software with a drag-and-drop interface to organize tasks visually. Seeing how tasks connect makes it easier to design a workflow that moves logically from point A to point B. Test and edit the static process before building the automated process.
- Test and tweak: Test the automated workflow to ensure it streamlines the process, saves time and improves ROI. If it does, continue using it to maximize efficiency. If it’s too complex or buggy — or team members don’t like it — brainstorm ways to improve it. “Apply the lessons learned from that success to your next project,” Aggarwal recommended. “This scaled approach helps you stay committed while benefiting from smaller, faster gains.”
The best software to help you automate your workflow
Dedicated workflow management tools make it easy to design workflows with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Most apps come with extensive integration capabilities, meaning you can connect them to your existing CRM, marketing and finance software for real-time data syncing. Some top options to consider include the following.
Nutrient (formerly Integrify)
Integrify rebranded itself as Nutrient and is a market leader in no-code and low-code workflow automations. Organizations can automate business processes across and between every part of their company using a mix of rules, task sequences, notifications and forms. The platform’s simple drag-and-drop interface is intuitive and suitable for most workflow automation needs.
The platform’s PDF software development kit makes it easy to incorporate PDF functionality — like editing, annotations and electronic signatures — into your existing software. There is excellent interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Nutrient’s application programming interface (API) backend is now more robust than ever, offering multiple ways to connect directly with other business apps.
Key customers include Microsoft, Honeywell, NASA, the UK’s National Health Service, Bloomberg and CoBank. Contact the company for pricing.
Kissflow
Kissflow includes over 50 ready-to-go workflow apps, from employee onboarding and retail store management to oil and gas safety management and outpatient management. It also includes a host of integrations with popular apps, including ActiveCampaign, DocuSign, Asana, Twilio and QuickBooks.
The system has an intuitive, user-friendly interface and an excellent no-code automated workflow builder. The app’s on-screen presentation is clean and neat. The platform also allows users to build apps, processes, forms, workflows and external portals. Kissflow has several handy templates for assigning tasks to admin, finance, procurement and HR teams.
Kissflow offers Basic and Enterprise plans, with pricing starting at $1,500 per month. A live demo is available.
Nintex
Nintex is a low-code, user-friendly business process automation solution that excels at process mapping, application development, document automation and robotic process automation (RPA).
The platform has an extensive gallery of prebuilt, editable processes, including connectors for integrating with third-party apps, cloud software and automated workflow templates.
Nintex connects to 20 different ecosystems for maximum interoperability, including Microsoft, SAP and Salesforce. Its workflow API also allows direct connections to many of your other business apps through Zapier-type integrations.
Famous clients include Bridgestone, Herman Miller, Microsoft and Zoom. Contact Nintex for a custom quote. The company offers a free demo and a 30-day trial.
ProcessMaker
ProcessMaker is open-source and offers API access for larger businesses’ advanced customization. To simplify the automation process, you can use prebuilt connectors and templates. You can also instantly connect to your Salesforce account to build automated workflows for your CRM. The platform integrates with Office 365, Google Workspace, LinkedIn and Slack.
ProcessMaker has three tiers — Platform, Pro and Enterprise — and you need to contact the company for a custom quote. Users can request a free demo and trial of its process documentation, invoice approval and expense report functions through an online request form.
Workflow automation advice and best practices
When rolling out workflow automations, consider the following tips and expert advice.
Treat automation as a major digital transformation.
Implementing automation can have a long-term impact on your business, so approach it with the seriousness it deserves.
“You should be sure of what you want to achieve, involve the right people and define what success means from the outset,” advised Phil Bridges, Managing Partner at Droidal, a Texas based AI and Automation firm.
Aggarwal agrees that involving the right stakeholders from the outset is essential. “Many companies hand off the task to a junior engineer without enough context, which can lead to short-term relief but bigger bottlenecks long term,” Aggarwal cautioned. “Give the jobs to the people who can cope with them.”
Work with quality data.
Melissa Ambers, chief transformation and strategy officer at Strategic Blueprint Consulting LLC, emphasized the importance of using consistent, current and correct data. Poor-quality data leads to time wasted fixing errors, inaccurate dashboards, misinformed staff and misleading insights that impact decision-making.
“Don’t cling to legacy processes and outdated systems because that’s how you’ve always done it,” Ambers warned. “Ignoring data quality when implementing workflow automation can lead to errors, inefficiencies and vulnerabilities that threaten the entire organization.”
Start with straightforward workflows.
Tackle simpler tasks like invoice approvals or basic data entry first. These can be launched quickly, build project momentum and help staff buy into the process.
“A common mistake that businesses make is that they try to automate the most complicated, tedious process so their staff won’t have to deal with it,” Bridges cautioned. “This mistake delays ROI and can ruin the business’s trust in the new technology.”
Aim for progress, not perfection.
Even with complex automations, try to simplify the process as much as possible. Start with a minimum viable automation, then refine it based on user feedback.
“Some teams chase the ‘perfect system’ for months, only for employees to ignore it,” Aggarwal warned. “Focus on quick wins and train your team well.”
Don’t automate what should stay human.
Schwab cautioned against automating tasks that require human judgment or a personal touch, like custom pricing discussions or complex client interactions.
“While automation is great for streamlining repetitive tasks, it shouldn’t replace meaningful conversations that build trust and relationships,” Schwab explained.
Measure your automation’s impact.
Charles Crouchman, chief product officer at Redwood Software, stressed the importance of tracking the results of the automations you implement.
“ROI is measured by comparing the number of tasks completed before and after automated tools are implemented,” Crouchman explained. “Keep a firm eye on these numbers to determine success and look for further improvements.”
Train your team on using the automations.
Crouchman emphasized that investing in employee training is essential for successful automation implementation.
“When introducing automation to the product cycle, companies need training for every individual (new hires as well as legacy employees) who touches that system to ensure a full understanding of new processes,” Crouchman explained. “Training can take anywhere from a few weeks up to six months, depending on the sophistication of the new technology.”
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in workflow automation software
The rapid developments in recent years in artificial intelligence will shape future workflow automation software in many ways. Here are some trends to watch for:
Agentic AI
Bridges believes the future of workflow automation software will be agentic AI — essentially, digital employees trained to work alongside humans. Unlike traditional bots, these agents can adapt to their environment, analyze patterns and make decisions that align with company goals.
Bridges noted that AI agents could automate up to 50 percent of administrative tasks across many industries, completing workflows up to 15 times faster than a skilled human — and with far fewer errors, thanks to precise programming based on company standard operating procedures.
The impact on hiring and growth strategies will be significant. As Bridges puts it, businesses will soon shift from asking, “How many people do we need to hire?” to “How much of this can we automate?” In this new model, automation leads and staffing follows, with expert employees brought in to manage and complement the systems already in place.
Anticipatory AI
Kerstin Woods, vice president of solutions and outbound marketing at Toshiba America Business Solutions, builds on the concept of agentic AI with what she calls anticipatory AI — automation that doesn’t just replace manual tasks but predicts what’s coming next.
With AI becoming more deeply embedded in business systems, Woods sees workflow automation evolving into a proactive tool that can anticipate and execute the next step in a process.
“[With] the incorporation of AI, workflow automation will evolve into what I term ‘anticipatory AI,’ Woods shared. “This advanced form of automation won’t merely eliminate repetitive tasks and redundancies; it will proactively anticipate and execute next steps, optimizing business processes in ways we haven’t yet imagined.”
Prompt-based, multiagent orchestration
Boris Lapouga, co-founder of workflow automation firm Primetime, envisions a future where workflows are driven by user prompts instead of predefined, step-by-step instructions.
Instead of setting up a predefined sequence, a user might simply say, “Here’s a new marketing job opening — post it on LinkedIn and Indeed, add it to our CRM, find candidates in our database and email me the top three.” From there, multiple AI agents would spring into action — each pulling from different APIs, verifying outputs and coordinating the next steps, all without human guidance.
Lapouga calls this shift “sometimes magical,” as it relies on GenAI’s ability to interpret high-level requests and delegate tasks among specialized agents. With the right understanding of a company’s tools and data, he says, these agents can decide how to execute each step on their own — unlocking what he describes as “near-limitless potential” for automating complex workflows from a single prompt.
Generative AI
Shoeb Javed, chief product officer at iGrafx, sees generative AI as the next major leap in workflow automation. Unlike traditional automations that follow fixed steps, generative AI can interpret unstructured data, anticipate roadblocks and propose entirely new approaches.
“This shift could mean businesses operate more efficiently, cutting costs while freeing employee time up to focus on strategy and creativity,” Javed predicted. “But with all this potential from AI comes the need for strong ethical frameworks because smarter automation also means greater responsibility in how we use it.”
Human in the loop (HITL)
Even as AI tools grow more powerful, Ambers emphasized that human involvement remains essential. AI isn’t meant to replace people but to work alongside them.
Ambers explained that AI still depends on human prompts, context and oversight to function effectively. Incorporating an HITL approach helps improve accuracy and ensures ethical considerations are built into the automation process.
Ambers compares generative AI to a well-stocked toolbox — a resource that frees people to focus on higher-value work. “It’s time to stop staring at the wall or a blank piece of paper,” Ambers asserted, “and start using AI as the valuable tool it is.”
Emotional AI and sentiment analysis
Schwab is enthusiastic about automation’s growing ability to detect and respond to human emotions through emotional AI and sentiment analysis.
“[This technology] allows AI-powered systems to detect customer emotions in emails, chats and calls,” Schwab explained. “For example, if a customer sounds frustrated in a message, automation can quickly spot the issue and escalate it to a human representative.”
This kind of emotional intelligence helps businesses respond faster and more empathetically, making customers feel heard and valued while still benefiting from automation’s efficiency.
Workflow automation FAQs
- Trigger: The trigger starts the workflow (for example, receiving a lead from a website form).
- Action: The action is the task itself, such as placing the lead in a rep's sales pipeline and sending out a thank-you email. A single trigger can initiate multiple workflows.
- Outcome: The outcome is the result of the process; in this case, your rep seeing the lead and the customer receiving the email.
- Follow-ups: Set an automation to send a follow-up email after a customer inquiry or trigger a reminder to a sales rep if a lead hasn't been contacted within a set time frame.
- Onboarding: HR can use onboarding automations to ensure new hire paperwork is complete and to prompt IT to create logins and system access.
- Payment processing: Set up a payment workflow to automatically route invoices for approval, such as having the head of finance review them before payment is issued.
Julie Thompson contributed to this article.
