Abstract Living

The 47 Clicks Between Patient Intake and Chart Update

Vinay Patankar
07 Mar, 2026
Technology

I've been going to a lot of healthcare conferences this year. Every keynote is about AI. Every booth has a copilot demo. But you know what actually stuck with me? Something I saw during a customer implementation. A nurse at a check-in station clicking through 47 screens to move a patient from intake to chart. Forty-seven. I counted. She wasn't slow. She was fast. Muscle memory fast. She'd done this thousands of times. Tab, click, copy, paste, switch system, re-enter the same allergies she just typed in the other system. The whole thing took eleven minutes. Nobody at the conferences I've been to was talking about those eleven minutes. They were talking about AI-powered diagnostics. Clinical decision support. Ambient listening that writes your notes for you. All real. All important. But all of it assumes the underlying workflow works. It doesn't. The dirty secret of healthcare IT is that most of the pain isn't clinical. It's operational. It's the 47 clicks between patient intake and chart update. It's the compliance officer chasing vendor certifications through email chains. It's the credentialing team manually verifying the same documents across three systems that don't talk to each other. These problems aren't sexy. No one puts "we eliminated 30 redundant data entry fields" in their conference booth headline. But that's where the hours are. We've seen this pattern across 1,000+ companies at Process Street. The teams that get the most out of AI don't start with the flashy stuff. They start with the workflow nobody wants to own. The one where someone says "oh yeah, that's just how we do it" and everyone nods and moves on. That's the process you automate first. The real AI conversation in healthcare isn't "will AI replace clinicians?" It's "will AI replace the 47 clicks between intake and chart update?" That second question is less dramatic. It's also worth about 10x more.

My AI Second Brain Already Made Me $4,000

Vinay Patankar
07 Mar, 2026
Technology

Most people accept the first offer from their insurance company. I used to be one of them. My garage flooded last month. Six feet of water. Submerged my Tesla, completely bricked. Wetsuits, surfboards, electronics, furniture. Everything in storage, destroyed. The insurance company sent their offer. I was traveling. I had a few days to respond. The number looked reasonable enough. My instinct was to just sign it. That's the play, right? They know you're busy. They know you're not going to spend your weekend pulling receipts and researching comparable claims. So they send you a number that feels close enough, and you take it. I almost did. Instead I sent it to something I've been building for the last few weeks. An AI agent connected to all my personal data. My emails, my purchase history, my documents. I asked it: "Is this claim fair?" It told me no. Then it showed me why. It pulled comparable claims for similar losses. It found my original purchase receipts buried in Gmail going back years. Then it drafted a counter offer with all of that as supporting evidence. I read through it, hit send, and moved on with my day. The result was an extra $4,000. Not because I'm a great negotiator. Not because I spent hours on research. Because I had an agent that doesn't skip the fine print, doesn't lose track of old receipts, and doesn't just accept the first number because it's "close enough." Insurance companies have always had the information advantage. You're one person with a flooded garage and a lot on your plate. They do this thousands of times a day. Now you can have an agent that levels the playing field. If you're digging into technology, you'll probably also enjoy Startup Idea: Evernote for Spreadsheets.

Top 10 Compliance Software Platforms

The compliance software market has shifted away from static documentation tools toward platforms that operate directly within the workflow. Regulators expect more substantial evidence, boards want clearer visibility into risk, and operations teams must continue to move forward while maintaining control. These pressures have expanded the range of software solutions available, from enterprise GRC systems to lightweight operational platforms. This overview examines ten prominent vendors and how they fit into the modern compliance stack, ordered around the practical question of which systems best connect policy, control, and daily execution. ## Process Street Process Street is a platform that combines GRC and Operations into a single compliance operations suite. The platform enables organizations to transform policies into live workflows, integrating controls into day-to-day operations. As tasks are completed, the system automatically captures timestamps, data, approvals, and evidence. This creates a detailed audit trail without requiring manual assembly. The product combines governed documentation, workflow automation, and an agentic AI layer that checks tasks against policy and highlights exceptions. It is used across various industries, including financial services, real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, and the public sector, to manage compliance, employee onboarding, due diligence, internal reviews, recurring control activities, and policy attestations. The central idea is to close the gap between written standards and actual execution. Policies can be updated in one place, linked directly into workflows, and monitored across teams. This positioning makes the platform appealing to organizations that want consistent, auditable operations without the overhead of a heavyweight GRC suite. ## Vanta Vanta is widely recognized for its focus on security and trust management. It automates evidence collection for certifications such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 by pulling data from cloud infrastructure, identity providers, and other systems. High growth technology companies and fintechs use Vanta to accelerate initial certification and maintain continuous compliance with minimal manual work. The platform excels in technical control monitoring, though broader operational workflows typically sit outside of it. ## Drata Drata operates in a similar segment focused on security and privacy compliance. The platform consolidates controls, risks, and evidence for frameworks including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA. Automated checks and integrations keep compliance data current while reducing reliance on spreadsheets. The system works well for organizations that must manage multiple overlapping security frameworks, although complex business workflows usually run in other tools. ## OneTrust OneTrust is one of the largest vendors in the privacy and data governance space. Its platform covers privacy programs, consent management, data discovery, AI governance, and integrated risk. Enterprises utilize OneTrust to coordinate compliance across various regions and regulatory frameworks. The system supports policy management, regulatory mapping, audit functions, and risk assessments. Its scale and breadth are suitable for organizations with complex compliance needs, though implementations can be lengthy and require specialist attention. ## Diligent One Diligent One focuses on governance and senior-level oversight. It brings together board management, ESG data, risk registers, and audit activity. Directors and executives rely on Diligent for consolidated reporting and governance visibility. The platform is structured around top level risk and compliance oversight rather than operational execution. Evidence and workflow activity typically originate from other systems and are integrated into Diligent through updates. ## NAVEX One NAVEX One is a broad ethics and compliance platform that includes policy management, training, incident reporting, risk management, and third party due diligence. NAVEX has long been associated with hotline and whistleblowing solutions and has expanded into integrated risk. It suits organizations that need a global ethics and compliance program with structured frameworks and training content. Smaller teams with narrower operational needs often find the platform more extensive than necessary. ## ServiceNow GRC ServiceNow GRC is built on the larger ServiceNow platform and connects risk and compliance processes with IT service management and security operations. It supports control testing, exception workflows, risk assessments, and continuous monitoring. Organizations that already rely on ServiceNow can extend the platform to cover compliance and risk functions. For companies without a strong ServiceNow footprint, the required configuration and licensing can feel heavier than more focused alternatives. ## MetricStream MetricStream is a leading provider of enterprise GRC solutions. Its platform integrates enterprise risk, regulatory compliance, internal audit, and cyber risk into a single system. It is commonly used by large enterprises with complex governance structures, especially in financial services, energy, and manufacturing. MetricStream supports structured workflows and global reporting but can require substantial implementation effort. ## LogicGate Risk Cloud LogicGate Risk Cloud is a no code GRC platform that prioritizes flexibility. Organizations can configure custom workflows, data models, and approval paths, allowing them to tailor processes without significant engineering work. This makes it useful for mid-sized firms migrating away from spreadsheet-based compliance. The flexibility places more responsibility on internal teams to design and maintain processes. ## Hyperproof Hyperproof is a continuous control management platform for security and privacy frameworks. It helps organizations manage SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, and PCI from a single system and reuse evidence across frameworks. Controls can be maintained through scheduled tasks and dashboards that track compliance health. The platform is suited for teams that treat security compliance as a recurring operational program rather than a periodic audit exercise. ## How Organizations Approach These Options Although these platforms are grouped within the compliance or GRC category, they solve different problems. Enterprise GRC systems such as MetricStream, NAVEX, ServiceNow, and Diligent focus on governance, oversight, and structured risk frameworks. Security automation platforms, such as Vanta, Drata, and Hyperproof, focus on technical controls and certification readiness. Privacy and data governance platforms such as OneTrust address regulatory complexity in data handling. Process Street sits closer to the operational layer. It is designed for organizations that need to connect policies and controls directly to the work that staff carry out every day. Evidence is captured as tasks are completed, allowing firms to demonstrate compliance without requiring heavy manual preparation. Many organizations combine tools from these categories, allowing enterprise GRC to provide governance, security platforms to handle technical controls, and a Compliance Operations Platform to ensure that workflows are executed consistently, with proof generated in real-time. You can compare this approach with Business Process Outsourcing Software for more on software.

Building Cora: Our AI Compliance Agent

When we started Process Street, our goal was simple. Help teams run recurring work without mistakes. The world didn’t need another task manager. It needed a system that could enforce standards, catch skipped steps, and give teams confidence that what should happen actually did. So we built it. A process management platform that made SOPs executable. A no-code workflow engine that turned policy into action. A tool that teams could actually use without calling IT. Over time, our customers pushed us further. Regulated industries brought their toughest workflows. Financial controls. Risk reviews. Policy certifications. Audit procedures. And that’s when it became clear. We weren’t just in the business of process. We were in the business of proof. **From Process Management to Compliance Operations** It wasn’t enough to help people document what to do. We needed to ensure it was done, every time, by everyone, with evidence. That’s where compliance operations come in. Compliance operations is what happens when you connect policies to workflows, workflows to monitoring, and monitoring to real-time action. It’s the difference between a checklist and a control system. Between paper compliance and actual enforcement. That’s where Process Street is today. Docs is where policies are created, governed, and versioned. Ops is where those policies become workflows, executed with full audit trails. And now, we’re building the intelligence layer to tie it all together. **Enter Cora. Our AI Compliance Agent.** Cora (which stands for "**C**ompliance **O**rchestration and **R**isk **A**gent) is not a chatbot. Cora is not another assistant with a cute name. Cora is a system of enforcement. It watches how work gets done. Flags when it drifts from policy. Suggests updates when regulations shift. And generates the proof teams need to pass any audit, without the scramble. It’s not here to make compliance easier. It’s here to make it automatic. **Why We’re Building Cora on AWS** You don’t build a compliance-grade AI system on weekend infrastructure. Cora runs long sessions. Monitors real workflows. Triggers real consequences. We needed scale, security, and performance without compromise. That’s why we’re building on AWS. AWS AgentCore gives us exactly what we need. - Long-running agents that can observe and act in real time - Secure, isolated sessions that respect data boundaries - Deep integration into the services that power enterprise operations This is not a prototype. This is the foundation for the next generation of compliance enforcement. **What’s Next** We’re starting with the high-stakes use cases, capital markets, risk teams, and audit-heavy ops. But Cora is not a one-off. It's a system. A platform. A new layer for how compliance gets done across every industry. Process Street is now a Compliance Operations Platform. Cora is our intelligence layer. AWS is our partner in making it real. If you’re building the future of AI, compliance, or operations, let’s talk. No more missed steps. No more compliance theater. Just policy, executed. You can compare this approach with Cacoo - Cool Tool for Process Diagrams for more on business.

Customer Development Questions for Startup Founders

At Process Street, our relentless pursuit of customer development is fundamentally about one thing: nailing product-market fit as swiftly as we can. We're in the business of building not just products, but solutions that truly resonate with the needs and hurdles our users face daily. This conviction has driven us to put together a set of probing questions that go beyond mere inquiry. They're a direct line to the pulse of our customers, designed to peel back layers of surface-level feedback and unearth the core insights that can steer our offerings towards immense value for our customers. **Demo Questions:** Their Name: Their title: Their company name: Their company size: Their industry/vertical: Understand their Current State: **TIP: Begin by focusing on the customer. Encourage them to articulate their issue in their own terms. This conversation should center on their needs, not the specifics of your product or services.** Q: Describe your current process for X. What works? What doesn’t? (For new customers) What were your operations for X before you hired us? Q: How does your team stay on top of X or don’t get overwhelmed by Y? Q: What are a few of the tools you currently use? What do you like about them? Q: What do you not like? **Uncover Their Biggest Problem:** Q: What problems do you face when trying to do X today? Tell me more. Q: What people on your team or company are impacted by this problem? How does it affect their day? Q: How long has this been a problem? Q: What solutions have you tried to implement? Did they work? Q: What obstacles have you encountered to solving this problem? **Define Their Ideal Solution:** Q: How important is it to you/your organization to solve this challenge? Q: What would be an ideal solution to this problem? Why is that the best solution? Q: In a perfect world, how quickly would you solve this issue? **Sample Benefit questions:** Q: What impacts does problem X have on your business? Q: What happens if you do nothing to solve it? Q: What would it mean for you, your team, and your business to solve this problem? **Get the Real Impact of a Solution** **TIP: Don't presume that stated benefits automatically imply significant impact. It's crucial to determine whether the impact is substantial enough to motivate a purchase.** What would you do, or do more of, if you had more time in your day? How important is being able to do more to you, your team, and your organization? If startup is relevant to what you're working on, this is worth reading next: How to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Startup Success.

Why Your Remote Team Will Fall Apart Without Processes

There's a psychological theory developed back in 1895 that still holds true today that can help explain why remote teams fall apart if they're mismanaged. It's called deindividuation, and states that when groups of people can't be identified in a group, they're more likely to misbehave, e.g. cause violence, riot. To put it in the words of Gustave Le Bon, the psychologist who first theorized this, “a loss of personal responsibility in crowds leads to an inclination to behave primitively and hedonistically”. Bear with me… This might sound like a long shot, but it holds true for remote teams, too. In an office, everyone is held physically accountable for the work they do. They're a tangible employee in a building, being actually overseen by other people. In a remote team, everyone's just an icon on Slack, an email address, or a source of app notifications. If team members feel like they can get away with not communicating, not keeping their team updated, and not getting work done, they're much more likely to. And that's why remote teams are fragile. This is a shame for businesses who can't manage them because 77% of remote workers are more productive than their office counterparts, and get more done in less time. In this article, I'll look at the problems that come along with having a remote team, and go through some methods for solving them. ## Problem #1: No accountability without remote team processes In an office you keep your team updated naturally by chatting how work's going on the way to lunch, or just mentioning your progress while you have a coffee break. However, many remote workers report feeling isolated, which is part of what creates a lack of accountability, causing teams to go silent and work to start slipping. How do you solve a lack of accountability? At Process Street, our remote marketing team has several channels of communication and policies that mean we always keep in the loop: - A group Slack channel - Trello card comments - Two short meetings every Tuesday and Thursday It's enforced that all work-related conversations amongst the marketing team must go into the group chat, creating an activity log of work and information. Any task being discussed must be presented alongside a link to its Trello card, and it's expected that all Trello cards will be commented on whenever progress has been made. During the meetings, we present our Trello cards to each other for review as proof of work (plus an activity log recorded in Trello/Slack), and go through the tasks together. Using a Standard Operating Procedure software is a great way to ensure that everyone adheres to the same way of doing things. This approach leaves absolutely no room for a lack of accountability. If team members aren't working on their tasks, it's totally obvious because there will be no record of it. ## Problem #2: No centralization of information without remote team workflows With your whole team collaborating over the internet (without opportunities just to look over their co-worker's shoulder) it can be a pain to share information if it isn't centralized. It's an obvious problem for businesses since some of the biggest software companies — Dropbox, Box and other document management systems — were created purely to solve it. ### How do you centralize information? One of the main ways to do it is to make sure you're working entirely on the cloud. We've written about all of the SaaS (software-as-a-service) products we use together before, and it made me realize how stuck we'd be without live collaboration and the ability to store information in the best, most easily accessible places. As I said in the solution to problem #1, everything can dumped into a Trello card. Trello cards can hold links, attachments, images, and even spreadsheets, so there's no excuse for not centralizing information when it's that easy. For documents, we use Quip and Google Sheets, ensuring we can always access what we need, no matter where we are. Get information centralized by enforcing all work-in-progress task material to be uploaded to Google Drive or Dropbox, or dropped into a project management app like Trello or Asana. ## Problem #3: No teambuilding without remote planning Building camaraderie through direct messages is easier than before thanks to the prevalence of emojis, gifs, and other just-for-fun things, but it's nowhere near as easy as when you're face-to-face. You might get invited to a get-together after work if you're in an office, but that's not the kind of thing that'll happen in a remote team, and neither will natural team-building. This could mean that team members are shy, uncommunicative, or less productive because they feel isolated, especially when first joining a new team. Managers should nip this in the bud by facilitating effective employee onboarding. The onboarding stage is integral and it sets the tone for your new employee. Using an onboarding software can be a great way to centralize information, get insightful feedback all while welcoming your new hire aboard. ### How do you improve remote team building? The ways that have worked in our remote team have been have: - gaming tournaments (playing the card game Hearthstone against each other to win a prize) - sharing videos, movies, and music (we will share weekly recommendations, such as guilty pleasure movies, music to help focus) - having a general chat channel (a work-unrelated channel for water-cooler style conversation) If those options don't suit, you can also try this list of team building activities for remote teams. ## The long-term solution: Agile process management All three problems explained in this article are caused by a lack of communication, policy, and process. As Atul Gawande explains in The Checklist Manifesto, key aspects of how we get work done can be overlooked without a process, and policy to enforce it. “_When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination. We know the patterns. We see the costs. It’s time to try something else_.” — Atul Gawande Remote teams are susceptible to disconnection, deviance from process, and an attitude of unaccountability. As Gawande says, and as we’ve found in our time building process software, the solution is strict regulations and processes that enforce the centralization of information, encourage communication in open channels, and actively build culture. It doesn’t sound as appealing as letting a strong team grow organically, but it’s a lot more likely to work. ## Resources to help you get started: Your remote team processes! Below are some public Process Street templates and then a whole load of really useful blog posts they've published too, to help you get started and systemize your remote business! ### Process Street remote team processes - Daily Schedule Template - Daily Standup Meeting Checklist - Employee Onboarding Checklist - Employee Background Check - Job Application Form - Job Description Template - Performance Review Checklist - Project Proposal Template - Sprint Planning - Sprint Retrospective Process - Recruitment Process - Standup Meeting Checklist ### Remote team blog posts about remote work processes - Virtual Team: How to Excel at Remote Working (Free Templates) - The 19 Best Tips from My 3 Years Working Remotely - The Complete Guide to Asynchronous Communication in Remote Teams - Best Video Conferencing App: Skype vs Hangouts vs GoToMeeting vs Zoom vs Join.me vs Appear.in - How to Use Slack Like a Pro and Become a Power User (22 Tips & Tricks) - How to Run Business Meetings That Aren’t a Useless Waste of Time - 7 Key Tools for the Ultimate Paperless Office (Your Go-Paperless-Stack) - 14 Ways Your Team Can Boost Productivity While Working From Home - 8 Top Workplace Team Chat Apps for Effective Team Communication in 2019 - The 11 Agile Processes We Use to Run an Efficient Software Team - Content Creation Workflows: Why You Need One and How to Build It - How to Write a Proposal and Get What You Want (Free Template) - Approvals: How to Streamline Decision-Making in Process Street - 6 Checklists to Perfect your New Employee Onboarding Process - What is an SOP? 16 Essential Steps to Writing Standard Operating Procedures - ISO 9001: The Ultimate QMS Guide (Basics, Implementation, ISO Templates) - What is BPM Software? The Best Business Process Management Software (BPMS) - Best Way to Learn Spanish: A 6 Month Process That Works for You - The 14 Best Language Learning Apps for Fluency in 2019 - The 7 Best Language Learning Software of 2018: The Awards! - Breakdown of the Best Workflow Management Software - 5 Free ISO 14001 Checklist Templates for Environmental Management - ISO 19011:2018 Basics (8 Free Management System Audit Checklists) - 6 Powerful PPC Management Checklists to Run Paid Ads - 20 Free SOP Templates to Make Recording Processes Quick and Painless - ISO 50001: The Ultimate Guide to Energy Management Systems (EnMS) - What is HRIS? The Best Software for a Human Resources Information System - Agile ISO: A Holistic Business Process Management Framework - Product Market Space: An Evolving Conception of Product-Market Fit I think this is a pretty complete round up! If you have any other recommendations or resources, leave them in the comments below! For another perspective on processes, read How to Build Efficient Processes for Your Remote Team.

Accel, Atlassian & Salesforce Leads $12m Series A for Process Streets No-Code Workflow App

Vinay Patankar
23 Mar, 2020
Business

2020 – San Francisco… _Read more about this announcement on Business Insider, Crunchbase and Forbes._ I’m very proud and excited to announce that Process Street has raised a $12M Series A from Accel, Atlassian, Salesforce Ventures and other amazing investors. The funds will go towards our vision of building the GitHub of no-code; where teams around the world can find and use checklists, workflows and automations to improve their productivity at work. Our mission is to make recurring work fun, fast, and faultless for teams everywhere. Having experienced investors and leading SaaS partners will put us in a powerful position to achieve this mission. ## The Process Street story so far Process Street started as an internal tool to document and track simple checklist-based processes. We were running a distributed marketing agency with contractors all around the world and were struggling to keep our repetitive processes on track. Spreadsheets and project management tools were causing more problems than solutions. We needed a tool to provide structure and manage internal workflows, so we built Process Street. We’ve grown that simple tool into a fully-fledged no-code workflow builder with an easy-to-use interface that can handle almost any type of business process, from client implementation to employee onboarding and content approvals. We are proud to service over 450,000+ registered users including enterprise customers like Colliers, Accenture, Spotify and Airbnb, as well as institutions like Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University. Process Street continues its distributed roots as a fully remote team with 45 members spread across North America and Europe. It’s a popular tool for remote organizations, and we use it heavily internally, but we’ve found an even greater market in distributed enterprises; large organizations looking to standardize and automate work across vast geographical areas. ## Why Accel, Atlassian & Salesforce Ventures? We chose to partner with Accel because they believe in product-led growth, understand the SaaS space, and know-how to deliver maximum value at scale. The experience built within Accel from investments in Atlassian, Slack and Dropbox means they’ve been on this journey before. Rich Wong, Partner at Accel will be joining our Board. Rich has been an investor and Board Member in fast-growth SaaS leaders such as Atlassian, Checkr and UiPath, and we look forward to leveraging his wealth of experience and expertise to further our growth. Salesforce Ventures and Atlassian were obvious partners. Salesforce Ventures has the leading global portfolio of enterprise SaaS companies and brings access to the Salesforce platform and their customers. Process Street workflows are tightly integrated with other SaaS products and rely on the data and activity happening in these systems to automate work. Our customers integrate with hundreds of different SaaS products, but Salesforce, Trello and Jira are among the most popular. ## What’s next for Process Street? The future for Process Street is to be the no-code workflow solution for teams everywhere. We want to expand how and where teams can manage their work. To make this happen, we’ll be launching a mobile app, a redesigned experience, and building on our recent improvements to enable manager approvals on-the-go. Process Street has a giant library of plug-and-play process templates created by our team, customers and partners. We’ll continue to grow this to be the largest repository in the world for all workflows and operational playbooks; the GitHub for knowledge workers. We’re going to be launching further enterprise features for improved reporting and analysis, while opening up greater API access to let teams control their data and build custom automations. We’ll also look to deepen existing partnerships and forge new ones. This will mean greater alignment between Process Street and the other products you already rely on, furthering our seamless integrations. We are beyond grateful for all of your continued support and can’t wait to keep working with you in the years ahead. Many thanks, Vinay Patankar, CEO. Read on Process Street Blog. To go deeper on app, check out App Idea - Turn iPhone's into Public Hot-spots.

The Best Standard Operating Procedure Software

Here is a new video we made on our product Process Street. We built Process Street to be the best standard operating procedure software on the planet. Watch the below video to see how it in action: ## Click Here to Create a Free Account # Standard Operating Procedure Software Standard Operating Procedure software is a kind of software that captures and structures your organizations ongoing procedures. Procedures are generally structured in a format either derived by ISO Standards or designed in house in the company. **SOP Software** is a subcategory of Enterprise Content Management or Knowledge Management and is essential for ensuring quality and consistency across an organization. **Common procedures that are documented include:** - Human Resources - Marketing - Finance - Operations - Manufacturing There are many tools out there to help you document, capture and track standard operating procedures but the tool we are building goes a step above and beyond. ## The Best Standard Operating Procedure Software ## Click Here to Create a Free Account The product we have designed is a workflow software called Process Street and not only does it allows you to easily capture company procedures, but it helps you execute those processes effectively, by turning documents into interactive checklists that you track and report on. This really is a new way of handling operational documentation which traditionally is stored in flat files like word documents and wikis. Those traditional tools are clunky and slow, forcing people to trudge through hundreds of pages of static information without breaking it down or making it easily accessible. Process Street business process management software is also hosted on the cloud meaning it can be accessed from anywhere, anytime on any device. ## Standard Operating Procedure Examples Below are some example standard operating procedures designed using Process Street ### Here are some of the reviews from Capterra: **Standard Processes Minimize Training Costs** **Kim A. - Founder and President** Computer Software, 11-50 employees Used the software for: 1-2 years **Pros:** I love that we can create the process steps we need for all of our standard processes. We can create mandatory steps, and we can also see where a process is, and if someone is out, another person can pick it up and complete it. It's brilliant!! **Cons:** I would like a way to share processes with other Process.St customers -- so they can have the processes within their Process.St account -- ideally, I would like to share an entire folder of processes with someone - and that would prompt them to set up their own Process.St account, and import the processes to their account. We would like to share these processes with our customers who need guidance on implementing certain things in their business... and it would be a way we could help Process.St grow, while serving our own customers and the growth of their businesses as well. **Overall:** It has allowed us to standardize the way things get done, and document processes that are repetitively done with our customers, so we can scale our staff and get people productive a lot faster than traditional hiring and training. We love Process Street! **Nathan R. CEO** **Pros:** The ability to quickly edit and customize a process is very helpful. The development team has also been very helpful and responsive. **Cons:** Not much - it's clean, it just works, and the team seems to be focused on improving. **Overall:** I've used this app to help set up meeting structures with my team. We have a set checklist of items to talk about on a regular basis, and this app helps us to move through them together, with visual aids and reminders, with checklists, and more, in a way that we choose. I also use it for repeating processes in my own planning, journaling, and decision making. I've taken checklists from personal development speakers and writers, and broken their ideas/suggestions into tasks. With Process.St, i can set them up with reminders, visuals, and videos in ways that help me cruise through these tasks to get the results smoothly and easily. **Recommendations to other buyers:** Get started with it! Also, check out "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande - it could be a good introduction with regards to setting up processes. You can compare this approach with Examples of Standard Operating Procedures for more on operating.

The Checklist Manifesto Summary

###### Checklists are for everyone What do Johns Hopkins surgeons, anonymous big-time investors and World War II pilots have in common? This isn't the set up for a terrible joke but a demonstration of how widespread an often-overlooked tool is - they all use checklists to avoid disaster. For surgeons, disaster is a lethal infection caused by straying from proper precaution. For pilots, it’s crashing a plane that was deemed far too complicated to fly – the Boeing B-17. For investors, checklists avoid what is sometimes known as ‘cocaine brain’; the drive to make snap decisions on high-risk investments that often result in huge losses. For more information on a similar process, see Warren Buffet's Investment Checklist. It details the steps taken by the man known as the world's greatest investor prior to parting with massive sums of money. The Checklist Manifesto, written by writer/surgeon Atul Gawande, is proof that checklists really work (whether anyone wants to admit that or not). Check out the the Checklist Manifesto Review I wrote for more details. In his words, if another solution that could be even a fraction as effective would be a new drug or piece of technology it would be backed by billions of dollars, sponsored by the state and be the only thing the worldwide medical journals talk about. A case he cites is the development of robots to perform tricky laparoscopic surgery. It was widely backed and implemented in many hospitals around the US to the great excitement of the medical community. Positive results? Next to none. Checklists, however, are deceptively simple. The Checklist Manifesto is the tale of how Gawande took an idea first popularized by pilots into the operating theater and then out into the hospitals of the world, with the help of the World Health Organization. Not only does the book document his own research, but implementations of similar strategies, from hugely complex construction projects to Walmart’s innovative yet highly organized approach when dealing with Hurricane Katrina. ###### Providing a solution to human error One of the main problems with checklists is that some feel they are above them, unable to make silly mistakes in routine procedures and not subject to human error. Gawande references a 1970s essay by Samuel Gorovitz and Alasdair MacIntyre that boils down all situations to find the only two reasons for human dilemma: > “The first is ignorance – we may err because science has given us only a partial understanding of the world and how it works. There are skyscrapers we do not yet know how to build, snowstorms we cannot predict, heart attacks we still haven’t learned how to stop. The second type of failure the philosophers call ineptitude – because in these instances the knowledge exists, yet we fail to apply it correctly. This is the skyscraper that is built wrong and collapses, the snowstorm whose signs the meteorologist just plain missed, the stab wound from a weapon the doctors forgot to ask about.” In practical terms, ignorance can be corrected by answering the question "what do I do?" and ineptitude with "how do I do it?". Checklists can solve both of these issues. They are great teaching tools that can be used to convey information simply, such as our Podcast Publishing Checklist, as well as highly practical, no-frills documents such as the B-17 checklist, one of the most famous of all time. An example that's likely more useful to our world comes from one of the stand-out passages in the book where Gawande meets with three high-powered directors who meet to make venture capital investments in companies that have a slim chance to make a huge breakthrough. Since these investments are usually nothing short of gambling against terrible odds, this exclusive group of investors implement one very simple tool - a checklist. For them, this checklist is worth millions. That's how much it has probably saved them by helping to avoid bad investments. This quote explains how Mohnish Pabrai, managing partner in Pabrai Investment Funds in Irvine, California, has taken the idea from medicine and aviation to use checklists in his work. > "Pabrai made a list of mistakes he’d seen—ones \[Warren\] Buffett and other investors had made as well as his own. It soon contained dozens of different mistakes, he said. Then, to help him guard against them, he devised a matching list of checks—about seventy in all. > One, for example, came from a Berkshire Hathaway mistake he’d studied involving the company’s purchase in early 2000 of Cort Furniture, a Virginia-based rental furniture business. Over the previous ten years, Cort’s business and profits had climbed impressively. Charles Munger, Buffett’s longtime investment partner, believed Cort was riding a fundamental shift in the American economy. > The business environment had become more and more volatile and companies therefore needed to grow and shrink more rapidly than ever before. As a result, they were increasingly apt to lease office space rather than buy it—and, Munger noticed, to lease the furniture, too. Cort was in a perfect position to benefit. > Everything else about the company was measuring up—it had solid financials, great management, and so on. So Munger bought. But buying was an error. He had missed the fact that the three previous years of earnings had been driven entirely by the dot-com boom of the late nineties. Cort was leasing furniture to hundreds of start-up companies that suddenly stopped paying their bills and evaporated when the boom collapsed." ###### Are checklists for egomaniacs? This cautionary tale shows what happens when a formal procedure isn't in place when it really should be. The fact that the human brain is not so great can be proven by the amount of productivity tools, to-do lists, products like this, this and - when was the last time you forgot your baby in the car? - this. These are tools for the simplest things! Brain surgery, alongside rocket science, has the anecdotal title as being among the most complex and difficult tasks in the history of the world. What makes people think they don't need tools for remembering the proper procedure? The thing is, people in these professions likely have genius-level IQs. This can result in what is known as intellectual arrogance, the features of which are: - They have a "my way or the highway" attitude since only their views are supposedly the right way to think. - They regard themselves as experts in a particular field or subject. - They refuse to see the big picture or another viewpoint, especially of those they consider "ignorant". - They like explaining, theorizing and dictating; basically they like hearing the sound of their own voice. - Their mood can become very nasty if their ideas and views are contradicted. - They regard any question as an insult or a doubt on their intelligence. - They are not above creating proof and arguments to defend their theories vehemently. - They are very confident in their own knowledge and do not want to learn anything new. - Sometimes they can come across as very wannabe and attention-seeking. - They can get very smug and snobby, especially if they are actually right about something. - They pretend to be very broad-minded but actually are very narrow-minded as they feel they know everything and in the right way. (Source) A man who fits the above description nicely. Does this sound like the sort of person who would be open to the idea of being told what to do by a checklist? That was the main problem Gawande ran into with the first large-scale implementation of checklists into hospitals worldwide. He notes how that the egotistical nature of surgeons plus the fact that checklists had to be read out by a subordinate created a large amount of friction among colleagues. He intended the checklists to promote teamwork in the same way we created our app to promote and streamline collaboration. One of the first stages of the process was a friendly introduction to help everyone get on and work as efficiently as possible, knowing each others names and duties; you'd be surprised at the amount of surgeries performed by teams who have never met prior to the operation and leave the theater none the wiser as to each other's names or positions. It was basically through the process of long trials and repeated exposure that Gawande managed to create success for his checklists. After a while, people started to see results that were undeniable - checklists worked! > "More than 250 staff members—surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and others—filled out an anonymous survey after three months of using the checklist. In the beginning, most had been skeptical. But by the end, 80 percent reported that the checklist was easy to use, did not take a long time to complete, and had improved the safety of care. And 78 percent actually observed the checklist to have prevented an error in the operating room. Nonetheless, some skepticism persisted. > After all, 20 percent did not find it easy to use, thought it took too long, and felt it had not improved the safety of care.Then we asked the staff one more question. “If you were having an operation,” we asked, “would you want the checklist to be used?”A full 93 percent said yes." ###### The Checklist 'Eureka!' Moment The penultimate chapter of the book ends on a powerful note, summing up the unlikely turn of events that led to widespread checklist usage in the aviation industry. Nothing sums up the point of the book more effectively: > "We are all plagued by failures—by missed subtleties, overlooked knowledge, and outright errors. For the most part, we have imagined that little can be done beyond working harder and harder to catch the problems and clean up after them. We are not in the habit of thinking the way the army pilots did as they looked upon their shiny new Model 299 bomber—a machine so complex no one was sure human beings could fly it. > They too could have decided just to “try harder” or to dismiss a crash as the failings of a “weak” pilot. Instead they chose to accept their fallibilities. They recognized the simplicity and power of using a checklist." If you enjoyed reading the Checklist Manifesto, take a look at our checklist software built on the book's great ideas. If you haven't read it yet, you can buy the book on Amazon here. If you have, let me know your thoughts in the comments. I'd love to hear your opinion! Process Street is more than just checklists - check out the different ways it can be used: - Workflow software - Business process management software - SOP software - Onboarding software - Property management software You can compare this approach with Due Diligence Checklist Restaurant for more on checklist.

5 Ways to Improve Your Next Sales Outreach Campaign

Vinay Patankar
25 Sep, 2018
Sales-and-marketing-standard-operating-procedures
Technology

One of the best ways to improve your craft is to check out what your competition is doing. If you get to know what’s working for everyone else (or at least the success stories), you can avoid many pitfalls when it comes to your own company. So, when I set out to find out how we could improve our sales and marketing cadences around 6 months ago, I knew that I’d have to gather data. A _lot_ of data. By the time I was finished, I’d signed up to 281 SaaS companies (including the Montclare SaaS 250 and some of the top startups in AngelList) using the details of a fake Vodafone employee and analyzed the 1,000+ emails and voicemails I received in return. While I won’t go over everything I learned right now (we’d be here for days) I _will_ highlight five of the core takeaways I gathered to help you convert more of the leads you generate. If you want the rest of the data (including a Slideshare summary and copies of every email and voicemail I received), check out Inside SaaS Sales - a site we set up specifically to house this data. Otherwise, read on! ## #1. Send an email every day First up, you need to keep in regular contact with any potential lead who signs up. This both reminds them that you’re there and builds the connection they have with you. Although tactics obviously differed based on the company, the majority of companies (41%) sent us one email per day until they stopped contacting us. Other companies averaged out to sending one email per day, but instead took a staggered approach. A great example of this is Salesforce. Their team sent us two emails per day for the first two days, then one email for the following four days, and then one five days after that as one of their final touch points. This is a great way to strike while the iron’s hot (aka, when the lead first signs up), but to avoid drowning them in sales and marketing emails if they aren’t interested. ## #2. Don’t send the same kind of email two days in a row Although most companies sent us one email for every day of their sales cycle, it’s important to make the distinction between marketing and sales emails. Too many marketing emails and the lead’s attention could be split between offers or they may not have the drive to take action on your product (depending on your copy). However, too many sales emails and most people will also be put off. Doing this makes your sales efforts very impersonal, and they will feel like they’re not being valued as a potential customer. That’s why sales teams on average only sent one email every two days - the rest were marketing emails. ## #3. Leave a voicemail (if it’s worth it) Assess whether the lead’s value is enough to warrant the time and effort to reach out and call them. If so, it’s also worth your time to leave a voicemail if they’re unavailable or don’t answer. I’ll say straight-up that not every lead is worth following up on in this manner (the resource investment can be massive depending on the number of leads and size of your team). A massive 74% of companies analyzed didn’t leave voicemails, which gives a clear picture of the kind of investment we’re talking about. If you’re not sure whether voicemails are for you or not, compare the resources you have to the potential gain from the lead. Does your sales team have time for another call? How much would a call effectively cost in terms of time spent and the sales rep’s wages? What would such a call prevent them doing, and how valuable is that action? Also, don’t forget to look at how successful voicemails have been for you in the past to get an idea of how likely the gamble is to pay off. ## #4. Stick with leads you voicemail for longer If you have a lead that’s worth voicemailing, it’s also worth sticking with that lead for longer. This was shown by the sales cycle of companies who left voicemails being 160% longer than those who didn’t. In other words, if these companies left a voicemail, they kept trying to convert us for 1.6x as long. Now, I know that this data could be due to a number of reasons. It could just be that the companies who had the resources to leave voicemails just had a longer sales cycle. Maybe a few took special exception to us since we were a high-value lead. Either way, if you think that a lead is worth the investment to leave a voicemail after failing to call them, then chances are you have the resources to stick with that lead for longer. You’ve put the work in, so don’t throw it away at the slightest resistance! ## #5. Use (or at least consider) marketing automation Marketing automation is a fantastic way to save time and money - it lets you queue up your emails long before they ever go out and is an absolute must-have for any team looking to scale. Any kind of business process automation is vital for those looking to grow quickly without running a major risk of imploding. However, to back up the point, a massive 67% of companies used marketing automation to send their emails. An even more shocking 39% _only_ used automation - there were no salespeople involved. In short, if you’re not using some kind of automation to take the strain off your team, you’re missing one of the biggest shared tricks in SaaS sales cycles. ## Don’t make the same mistakes as everyone else While all of these points are useful, if you only take one thing away from this post today, take away this. Don’t make mistakes that someone else has before you. It might sound simple, but this simple principle will take you a long way in almost anything you do. Whether you’re looking for a way to improve your sales cycle or you’re trying to build a blog, do your research beforehand and search for what others have to say on the subject. Someone out there will have published their own experience on the topic, and learning that takes you one step closer to success. You can compare this approach with How Much Money Does the Facebook Ecosystem Produce? for more on sales.

How Top SaaS Companies Use Email Marketing

Vinay Patankar
28 Aug, 2018
Marketing

Effectively using email to connect with your customers is an important part of being a SaaS company. When someone signs up, you want to reach out to show off what your product can do, or tempt someone into upgrading to your premium service. We know this all too well, and we know how difficult it can be. With low open rates and even lower click through rates, email can sometimes seem like a daunting area to focus on. This is why we conducted a study of how top SaaS companies approach their email marketing and sales. In partnership with PersistIQ, we looked at the sales cycles and drip marketing techniques of 281 top SaaS companies, analyzing 1183 emails in the process. We compiled all the emails into a searchable database at first but decided to make it a bit more user friendly for people to browse by turning it into the microsite Inside SaaS Sales. You can hop on there to search by company and view their emails; analyzing their approach. Our tip is to find a few companies like yours - i.e. with similar business objectives - and work out why they’ve created and structured their emails in the way they did. But there’s only so much we can learn from one email at a time. What trends can we find in the data? What sales cycle takeaways do we have? ## The key findings from analyzing 281 companies’ emails ### Companies follow up for 9 days before stopping contact Companies tend to be persistent. While avoiding sending emails on weekends, the average period of a sales cadence is 9 days - just short of two working weeks. Some companies tended to stray quite a distance from this average. Salesforce, for example, took 1 month before giving up with their outreach. While a company like Slack, where each customer tends to be of less value to the business, hit the 9 day mark square on the head. ### Companies send one email per day until the end of the cycle In that opening flurry of emails, the SaaS company doesn’t want to overdo it and scare you the customer away, but they don’t want you to move on either. Looking at the two previous examples, Slack send the first 4 emails over the first 5 days with the final email coming on the 9th day. That pattern of sustained outreach initially followed by quiet rare reminders is mirrored by Salesforce’s approach, even if their cadence is longer. Salesforce send two emails a day for the first two days and one email a day for the following four days. The last email in their cadence comes over a fortnight after the penultimate. This pattern can be seen across the data set and suggests that a sprint start is preferable to a balanced campaign. ### 65% of companies hand you over to an automated marketing campaign Automation is huge at the moment, and not just in marketing. We’re slowly walking into a world where computers are performing an increasing number of our tasks. In the report _Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation_ from McKinsey, they predict that 18% of a marketing executive’s working time could already be automated by existing commercially available technologies. And that report is about 18 months old. Zapier have integrated with an extra 500 companies since then! In our data, it is clear that though lots of companies use automated elements, many of them combine automated with manual. Both Slack and Salesforce send automated marketing email, but Salesforce have a person on hand to reach out to you too; using the double tap method to follow up on previous outreach as a warmer mechanism Consider automation! All I’m saying... ### Most SaaS companies have two sales contacts per lead Typically a company will have two contacts and at least one of them will have a title which is geared toward bringing in new customers: Sales (35%), Business Development (18%), or Marketing (18%). It’s not unusual, however, for a company to reach out from a different member of staff - something which puts a friendly face on the company. Like the CEO or Founders themselves (7%) or a Customer Success (6%) person. This kind of internal branding could add a little more positive to the mix, maybe? ### 74% of companies don’t leave voicemails If a company leaves voicemails, the sales cycle length is usually 160% longer. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because voicemails are indicative of a high touch sales approach. This involves a lot more effort and a lot more commitment from your sales team. Generally, a company like Slack has no interest in sending you voicemails. Yet, a company like Epicor - who provide serious industrial services in a high value specialized niche - knows that their market is smaller and each lead is super valuable. It’s in their favor to leave voicemails where possible! (All voicemails we received are transcribed with the rest of the email data on the microsite) ### MailChimp is the most common email marketing software Used by 49% of the sample, Mailchimp is the faraway winner of the email marketing software battle. Up in second place is Marketo at 21% with HubSpot biting at their heels on 19%. The rest come in a little further behind with “other” coming before (in order) Eloqua, Tout, Sidekick, Pardot, Marketing Cloud, Sable, and Sendgrid. Mailchimp is very easy to use and they’ve offered useful automation elements for a while now. It’s surprising to see how far ahead they were in terms of usage amongst industry leaders, but it’s a compelling sign for anyone searching for an email marketing tool. ## Learn your techniques from the best It’s very easy to write an article online about how you should approach your email marketing. You’ve probably read loads of these articles. I know I have. But often these articles are written without the expertise for your particular needs. The expertise you need to listen to and learn from lies within the businesses with whom you share business objectives and demographics. Hopefully, we can help you cut the bull and check out what the real big players do, so you can learn from them. Let me know how your company approaches its email marketing in the comments below! If marketing is relevant to what you're working on, this is worth reading next: 6 Marketing Tasks You Can (and Should) Automate.

6 Marketing Tasks You Can (and Should) Automate

_The following is a guest post from Ben Mulholland, content creator at Process Street._ Everybody -- and I mean _everybody --_ has tasks they could automate. From basic tasks like saving email attachments to centralizing customer data, the possibilities for saving time are practically endless. Plus, as we all know, time is money. Getting started with business process automation can be a daunting task, so I’m here to show off six tasks our marketing team automates (mostly using automation platform Zapier). Use these to get started automating your efforts and giving yourself time to focus on the tasks that actually _need_ your attention, like attracting clients and growing your list. ## Organizing post ideas Inspiration can strike at any time and from anything. You could be sat at your computer actively trying to think of blog post ideas, or one could take you by surprise as you browse a local shop. When that time comes you’d better be prepared to record and organize your idea properly, or risk losing it forever. Our marketing team does this by creating a note in Evernote (which can be installed on any device) to hold the idea and then assigning a particular tag to it. However, rather than having to open up Evernote later and manually process these ideas, we use Zapier to automatically push notes into Trello and format them into actionable project cards. In other words, when inspiration strikes we note it down in Evernote and that will automatically get pushed into Trello and organized appropriately. ## Creating documents While it may sound lazy or unnecessary, automatically creating a new document for the posts you write saves a huge amount of effort over time. Rather than having to open up a writing app, create a new document, organize it, and post a link back to it in Trello, me and my team can just move the corresponding card into our “WIP” column. Zapier picks up on this, creates a document in Quip, sorts it into the correct file (according to who the Trello card is assigned to), and posts a link back into the card. Again, it may not seem like much, but every little helps when you’re running a tight ship in a field where flow and minimum distraction levels rule supreme. ## Triggering checklists Whether it’s keyword research or guest posting, we have a documented process for everything we do more than once. That way we aren’t ever left wondering what to do next - we can look straight at our checklist, follow the next step, mark it as complete to track out progress, and then continue. Unfortunately (much like creating documents), creating checklists manually adds up to a hefty chunk of time over any extended period. So, instead, we automatically trigger them with Zapier. For example, blog pre-publish checklists can be triggered by moving a Trello card, and meeting checklists can be triggered at a set time (even without using Zapier). In fact, speaking of meeting checklists... ## Centralizing meeting notes We’re a little mad on centralizing information - the idea that everyone should be able to access everything they might need to. Hence why we post notes takes from our meetings into our shared Slack channel. Usually this would need manually pasting in, but instead we have Zapier detect when our meeting checklist is complete, then automatically ship the notes into Slack for us. While it’s true that we technically have an accessible version of the notes with the checklist, having that second copy in a much more freely available space is a godsend. That way we can check exactly what we’ve each pledged to work on, what we need from each other, and our CEO doesn’t have to go digging around for the checklist to be able to see our progress at a glance. In short, everyone wins. ## Tracking activity I’ve already mentioned how we use Trello to manage our marketing team, but it actually goes further than that. Each of our team members has their own personal Trello board, while we share boards for thing like “Blog articles” and “Knowledge Base Content”. That way we can manage our personal tasks separately from, say, blog articles and ideas we need to easily separate and track. Now, the main problem with Trello is that is can be extremely difficult (and awkward) to get a concise summary of a person’s activity, or that of activity on a board in general. This can be easily solved, however, by once again using Zapier. We’ve linked our Trello boards to various team members’ Slack channels, meaning that any activity in those boards is posted as part of a conversation in our messaging app. So, rather than even having to open Trello, I can see everything that’s happened in the Blog board by just checking a Slack channel. Similarly, my boss can see all of the activity I’ve taken (along with a timestamp) on my personal board by checking a different channel. This makes it incredibly easy to get an immediate summary of how our team has spent their day, thus increasing accountability and making everyone more aware of the need to report any work that they’ve done. It may sounds a little extreme, but it’s one of the best ways to keep on top of a remote team such as ours (especially if some members are new to remote work). ## Creating invoices The final basic task you should be automating to save time and money is that of creating invoices. Everyone likes getting paid, after all, so why not make the moment even sweeter by taking the boring work out of the equation? The exact method for this will vary depending on what you use to create your invoices (eg, an accounting app or something simple such as Google Docs) and how you wish to record your information, but we decided to keep things simple. By filling in an invoice checklist in Process Street we can quickly note down all of the important information the invoice needs, such as the date, payment amount, personal and client details, etc. Once complete, ticking off the final task will (using Zapier) automatically push that information into an invoice template and email the final product to both ourselves and the client. These are just a few of the tasks you could be automating to make time for the work which actually requires your attention - to make the most of automation you need to get creative and test the limits of what you can do. After all, wouldn’t you rather automate as much shovel work as possible? _What tasks do you automate? Have you got any automation tips of your own? I’d love to hear from you in the comments._ One more post that complements this topic is 7 Marketing Tasks You Should Really Outsource to a VA, especially around marketing.

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