55% of Managers Spend One Full Day Per Week on Manual Tasks

Formstack States That 55% of Managers Spend One Full Day per Week on Manual Tasks

Sudipto Ghosh

March 21, 2018

Formstack’s “The State of Workflow Automation in 2018” Report Reveals Businesses Are Increasingly Turning to Workflow Automation for Greater Efficiency

Formstack, a leading SaaS company for intelligent online forms, has announced the release of its “The State of Workflow Automation in 2018” report. The company is driven by a mission to empower its users through simple and elegant tools that remove the complexity from everyday business processes.

Poor Communication or Repetitive Errors Are the Most Glaring Issues Cited by Formstack Report

According to the data, organizations are wasting precious time!

62 percent of survey respondents identified three or more major inefficiencies in business processes that could be automated, with 54 percent citing poor communication or repetitive errors as their organization’s most glaring issue.

55 percent of managers are spending 8 hours—one full workday or more per week on administrative tasks, rather than strategic, high-value initiatives.

Nearly 300 managers, directors, vice presidents and C-level executives from small to enterprise-size businesses across a variety of industries were surveyed about the workflows they currently automate, their automation challenges and roadblocks to implementing workflow automation in their organizations.

At the time of this announcement, Formstack CEO Chris Byers, said, “Automating manual, time-consuming work frees up employees to do what you hired them to do, not fill out paperwork.”

Chris added, “With workflow automation tools like Formstack, your managers can gain back one full workday per week to focus on projects that move their companies forward.”

Other key takeaways from the Formstack report include –

Managers say the top workflow challenge they face is poor communication (30 percent), followed by repetitive errors (24 percent) and delays in project deployment (23 percent).
The majority of respondents (62 percent) are utilizing workflow automation tools, and many (44 percent) stated their business has made a significant investment in workflow automation tools in the last 12-24 months.
Respondents that are not utilizing workflow automation tools stated that ease of use, not cost or lack of leadership buy-in, is the most common roadblock keeping them from adopting automation.

The Methodology of Data Collection and Reporting by Formstack

Formstack has developed two additional reports focusing on education workflows and healthcare workflows. Automation is currently being used to create more efficient processes for enrolling new students, onboarding faculty, filling prescriptions and registering patients; however, each use case has its own set of unique challenges.

Data for this report was collected by Formstack through an online survey, gathering both qualitative and quantitative metrics. Respondents were screened for business size, industry and the primary department in which they work. Respondents were also screened for the amount of control they have over administrative or process decisions.

Currently, Formstack provides a versatile online form solution that streamlines processes for capturing and managing information.

With Formstack, businesses and teams of all types and sizes can easily create and use online forms to automate repetitive business processes and gain rich insights. People can embed forms directly onto their websites and social media profiles to capture leads, as well as use online forms to collect payments, gather feedback, and streamline internal workflows. This flexibility enables organizations to simplify their data collection while expanding their resources.