Infographic: What Actual Users Wanted (and Got) From Process Automation
A good product does an excellent job of solving a customer’s needs. A great, transformative product illuminates and solves a need a customer might have realized it even had. That’s uniquely true when it comes to a process automation solution.
Or as Seth Godin put it, “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” The best, most truly transformative products were developed around a deep understanding of their users. Henry Ford knew consumers would embrace an affordable automobile that would be as useful and durable on rural byways as it was in the city. Steve Jobs knew people wanted the intellectual and creative products of computing, not the rigors of computing.
Putting value first on the checklist
Legal Operations and compliance professionals who are considering a workflow or process automation solution need to assemble a checklist of needs and wants that will ensure the final product they invest in delivers value for a long time to come. Not only because that maximizes the product’s own ROI. The right product will also elevate the capabilities of other products, even extending the lifetime and expanding the deliverables of veteran legacy platforms.
If a process automation solution is designed around how actual customers apply that solution, it ought to be able to meet or exceed even the most stringent criteria. But beyond that, it should empower them to use it in new ways, so it creates value on multiple new fronts. That’s why solutions like TAP Workflow Automation are successful: In TAP’s case, it was built to both satisfy the present needs of its users and provide a high level of customization and adaptability for extending future needs, including broadening its application beyond Legal Ops or GRC teams.
Building a process automation Buyer’s Checklist
So what are some of the checkboxes a potential buyer should use when kicking the tires on a process automation solution?
- Configuration: Is it Cloud-based SaaS? Does it offer unlimited user accounts? Is it reasonably priced for what it provides? Is it a standalone offering that doesn’t require you to buy or already own another product?
- Integration: Does it integrate easily with other components in your legal or compliance tech stack? Will it do the same with future products?
- Ease of adoption and use: Does it have a drag-and-drop UI that makes it quick to learn, and simple for a user to design (and update) workflows and forms? Is it platform- and device-agnostic, so it can work even for mobile users?
- Extendability: Can it be readily be adopted across the entire enterprise, so legal and compliance best practices can be embedded in processes everywhere?
- Time-to-Value: Doe it delivers immediate improvements in workflow performance and responsiveness, and quick, measurable ROI?
These are only some of the filters you should apply in choosing a legal or compliance process automation software product. We’ve compiled a complete list in a new infographic, What Workflow Automation Software Adopters Really Want. Check out the interactive version below — it’s also available as a PDF download.
It not only provides a workable checklist for evaluating process automation products, it includes verified testimonials from actual users who have been able to measure the benefits that come from picking the right solution from the right provider. In many cases, those benefits have rapidly exceeded expectations…and since a great process automation solution can unlock the imagination of its users, their ROI just keeps growing in unexpected ways.
