Workplace communications have greatly improved in the last few years. We are getting used to casual, instant responses and more informal ways of communicating with each other. The slower, more formal email processes are getting left behind.
Are emails entering the age of landlines and fax machines? It certainly seems that way.
One of the most important pieces of software that has fast-tracked this informalised, fast-paced way of working? Slack!
As Slack themselves say – ‘It’s not that Email is broken – it’s limited’ and better technology allows organisations to move faster, accomplish more and connect more easily. That’s exactly what Slack provides, while email communications remain stuck in a cycle of refreshing and replying.
One of the best things about Slack is its ability to integrate with thousands of different applications, including bots, and this allows you to take Slack to the next level, making it the next step for companies who want to streamline their success on Slack.
The Importance of Streamlining Processes
For many of us, admin is an unavoidable aspect of our workday. When administrative processes become outdated, repetitive and time-consuming, they can make us inefficient and take us away from our core responsibilities. One survey by Entrepreneur found that 40% of full-time employees end up wasting an hour or more a day on “administrative tasks that do not drive value for their organisation.”
Integrating Slack with Bots gives the ability to handle and streamline routine business tasks, which in turn will lead to a more efficient, agile and productive workforce.
Document Searches
One of the biggest drains on admin time can simply be searching for the right information or document. To maximise performance, employers need to look at ways to improve data access to achieve greater workplace efficiency. Sage research has found that small businesses are spending an average of 120 working hours a year on administrative tasks and that an average of 5.6% of staff time in each UK-based small business is used doing back-office tasks, because firms do not have sufficient systems to deal with them. The survey unveiled that if productivity was increased by the same amount, an extra £33.9 billion could be added to British GDP each year!
Customer Story - Clarins
At The Bot Platform, we helped Clarins UK to solve this problem. With a distributed UK workforce of around 2,000 employees, they were looking to build their own automated tools that integrated with a platform they were already using to improve their information exchange, streamline processes and develop better access to documents. They created a custom bot to provide easier access to documents and link all of their HR policies and procedures. The results were immediate, with 128 documents searched within seconds of the launch.
Repetitive Paper-Based Tasks
The Webexpenses survey found that more than a third of respondents said their company still relied on manual administration processes and more than half (51%) said dated business processes are preventing them from doing their jobs properly. Businesses need to keep up; the emergence of cloud-based tools and real-time data management has virtually eliminated the need for manual or paper-based office administration.
Paper document management and archiving can be intensive and expensive work. Re-entering data from paper forms can take hours or even days. By adopting a digital solution, your team will reduce the amount of time spent on unnecessary tasks and your company will be able to operate more efficiently while reducing costs. An additional benefit is that by using digital data collection technologies you can increase data quality, as the chances of human error will decrease.
Customer Story - Ennismore
Using The Bot Platform, Ennismore has been able to easily build and deploy over 30 bots for their 1800 staff around the world. They’ve digitised previously offline processes and automated previously manual and time-consuming activities. Bots receive over 500,000 monthly interactions with 93% of Ennismore staff using at least 2 bots each month.
Unnecessary and Lengthy Meetings
High-quality, focused interactions can improve productivity, speed and innovation within any organisation—and drive better business performance, as found by the Harvard Business Review. Their article examines how Lotta Laitinen, a manager at If, a Scandinavian insurance company, jettisoned meetings to spend more time supporting her team, which led to a 5% increase in sales by her unit over a three-week period.
Integrating The Bot Platform with Slack can implement solutions like Leadership Q&As that can help employees and leaders prepare for meetings in advance; keeping agendas on track and ensuring the time is valuable to all attendees.
Customer Story - A French Football Team
A French top-tier football club built an Ask The Boss bot that allows staff to ask anonymous questions to the CEO to answer during their monthly meeting. These questions are then read and prepared accordingly before the call. This allows staff to have their voices heard, and encourages greater knowledge sharing and idea creation, whilst also streamlining the meeting’s agenda and minimising time spent off-topic. After launching the bot, the club saw a 15x increase in the number of questions being asked by staff, as well as far more specific and meaningful questions being asked to the leadership team.
Bots on Slack
The Bot Platform allows users to easily build Slack bots, work apps, and digital assistants. These automations streamline processes, improve content delivery, increase engagement, and save significant time and resources. With The Bot Platform, building better ways to work on Slack has never been more accessible.
Popular use cases and solutions that can be built and deployed on Slack include…
Onboarding New Starters: Efficiently communicating with new staff members and creating intuitive onboarding programs becomes a breeze with digital assistants integrated into Slack.
Employee Recognition: Highlighting company values and encouraging staff to participate in recognition programs is made seamless with Slack bots.
Crowdsourcing Ideas: Gathering knowledge, feedback, and insights from the workforce can be efficiently managed through Slack bots, enhancing collaboration and innovation.
Promoting Training & Development: Implementing comprehensive training programs is crucial. A Slack Training Assistant ensures that staff know how to use Slack and engage with its features to their fullest potential.
Automating FAQs: Providing instant answers to common questions from staff and workforce 24/7 ensures smooth operations and empowers employees with readily available information.
Conducting Surveys: Sending surveys to staff and the workforce to gauge sentiments on various topics or issues can be automated, providing valuable insights for decision-making.
Broadcasting Announcements: Ensuring that important company news and announcements are seen and acted upon is simplified through automated messaging.
Want to see how easy connecting bots to Slack is if you’re using The Bot Platform? Click here to see our Creative Solutions Architect, Mel, show you the platform in action!
Interested in seeing how The Bot Platform will help you build better ways to work on Slack whilst streamlining processes? Click here and we’ll happily set you up with a free trial account.
