Nonprofit finance managers are turning to workflow management solutions to increase organizational efficiency, decrease repetitive workflows and re-work, and boost employee satisfaction.
Workflow automation uses technology and procedures to automate mundane manual tasks and free nonprofit team members for work that accomplishes their mission, according to Neil Taurins, general manager of MIP Fund Accounting. Organizations can automate simple tasks or a series of tasks, depending on how much control they want versus how hands off they want to be.
A 2023 Trends and Insights Report shows that 61% of 416 respondents said using their current technology was time-consuming. These results follow a previous survey showing nearly half of 400 respondents used six digital tools to do their jobs, with 23% of professionals relying on eight digital tools. Disparate tools decreased efficiency, with 78% of respondents spending at least a quarter of their workday managing multiple systems.
Organization can bene fit from workflow management systems, according to Taurins. While automating elements like creating weekly reports of tasks completed in a project and data entry between separate systems helps operations, nonprofits can automate tasks for every operational department, he explained.
Workflow systems can track and compile social media mentions for marketing team members, follow up with prospects, and schedule demos and consultations for sales, among others. Workflow management systems decrease time spent navigating inefficient tools, improve productivity, and save on organizational costs.
Here are the five benefits of workflow management systems and automation:
- Reduce Errors: Data entry tasks can be long, tedious, and error-prone, so workflow management tools streamline these tasks, for example, by auto-populating data entry fields and automating data import, export, and reporting.
- Save Time: By eliminating manual tasks and reducing error, workflow automation saves your staff time, and that’s for both data entry and downstream error correction.
- Increase team capacity: Workflow automation increases the capacity of work a team can handle. By working efficiently, teams can reduce strained workloads and reduce the likelihood of needing additional administrative labor and find and correct data entry errors.
- Improve Accountability: Workflow management tools that assign responsibilities, predict the next best actions for your processes, and automatically record all transactions provide a complete trail for process audits and regulatory compliance. That transparency correlates to more accountability and leads to better business outcomes.
- Improve efficiency: By reducing process errors and delays, workflow management tools save time and money.
When your nonprofit needs to balance workloads and make more strategic decisions, consider workflow management tools. They’re often worth the investment, and let your team work smarter and more efficiently.
