In today’s graphic arts industry, printers are increasingly focused on finding ways to maximize their equipment and ensure efficiency. Building a concise equipment workflow ultimately affects the bottom line in a variety of ways, from the scope what a company might sell, down to the speed and quality at which it can turnaround it’s workload. However, workflows do not only exist in the world of production, but are also rather important in the worlds of sales, customer service, project management, and more. One’s personal workflow is the key to maximizing efficiency in the office and producing the best results possible. A few hurdles do exist however, as many external tools are available, and might not integrate with the systems in place. Is it worth disrupting the unity of a company’s CRM software? Is working offline in order to stay organized worth the risk? Who determines what is and isn’t productive? A few tools exist for people willing to add additional weapons to their arsenal, as well as people looking to simply maximize those that are already in place.
Email with a Delayed Send option
This is a tool that every office is bound to have access to. The prospecting cycle for a salesperson may often be long and rigorous, and require immaculate timing with regards to customer communication. There are peaks and valleys in the typical day of a salesperson where clients may be less apt to respond, such as late afternoons or around lunch time. This is why most email services have implemented a delayed send option. This option allows email users to set a time at which they would like their communication to be sent. There are multiple strategic ways to use this; On a friday afternoon, where a prospect might be out of the office early or not as willing to talk business, it may often be more advantageous to time the email for first thing Monday morning rather than setting a reminder and having to follow up later. This tool is a personal favourite for using lower efficiency times in one’s work week to maximize primetime! The benefits extend to internal communications for the same reasons as well.
IFTTT – If This Then That
This option is not part of the typical computer arsenal, but is very easy to integrate into a digitally focused work environment; it’s a great tool for the more progressive, flexible corporation. IFTTT is a workflow building tool that allows users to craft recipes between the services that they use to maximize efficiency and productivity. IFTTT is partnered with over 240 services ranging from WordPress, to Salesforce, Office 365, iOS, Dropbox, and more. For example, a smaller business user of Google might optimize their IFTTT recipe to catalogue all emails where customers might be placing an order into a spreadsheet. An HR manager might optimize their recipe to ensure that when someone’s birthday comes up on their calendar, they are automatically sent an email. A social media manager might program IFTTT to catalogue all tweets with a specific hashtag into a Google spreadsheet for later response or engagement. The possibilities are endless with the a wide variety of combinations that can be made between the 240 partnered services.
Evernote
This service is far from new, but certainly underutilized in the corporate world, and very easy to integrate into an existing workflow. Evernote, is a note-taking tool that notes both audio and text, organizes reminders, as well as upload attachments. The greatest benefit of this service comes with its mobile presence. For anyone who travels often for work from a sales manager to a SaaS implementations specialist, the ability to take concise notes on a mobile device and access them at a later time when back at home base is invaluable. When out in the field, it is hard to digest everything, and a broken telephone effect may also occur when later recalling what happened. A solid note taking software might prevent that. One of the greatest value adds of this service is that the only part of one’s workflow it is likely disrupting is the pen and paper or Notes application on one’s smartphone.
Overall, the tools available are endless, but what is most important is being able to identify the needs and pain points of one’s current workflow and being able to implement tools that aren’t overly disruptive but still save time and prevent loss of organization. Personal workflows might sometimes be even more important than the equipment workflows we often get hung up on in the graphic arts industry. Cheers to increased productivity!
