New “Flow” Tool Automates CRM Tasks to Save You Time
I think we all agree that computers increase productivity, but that doing repetitive tasks on computers is a drag. Not only do repetitive tasks slow productivity to a crawl, they also put our brains nearly to sleep. Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of those boring tasks and focus on real work? Now you can, with Flow, the new automation tool from Microsoft. Read on to learn how you can banish dull tasks forever using Flow.
A More Productive You
Athletes and creative professionals call their super-focused state “The Zone,” and Flow by Microsoft helps sales professionals like you get in your own zone: The Zone of Productivity. It does this by getting all your productivity tools to work together.
Yup, that’s right: with Flow you no longer have to enter repetitive data in each of the separate tools you use. Flow does all that copying for you.
But Flow is so much more than a copy-paste tool; here’s how it works:
- You Identify Where You’re Wasting Your Time
Think about what you spend your days doing, versus what you wish you could spend your days doing. Banish common time-wasters such as copying leads from Twitter to CRM and then to your MailChimp email list, or writing an email to notify your sales team of a newly closed deal.
- You Set Up Rules and Conditions That Help Flow Monitor or React to Your Tasks
Flow offers you the ability to set automatic or conditional responses to common triggers. For instance, if you choose the task of adding Twitter followers to your CRM, you could set a condition to only add followers with more than 1,000 followers themselves. You could also automate a reminder email for registrants in an upcoming event, or you could auto-send a welcome email to new clients. The possibilities are virtually limitless.
- You Save Time
Once you’ve set up a task, Flow will take care of it for you from that point forward. You don’t ever have to do that task again.
Watch the Flow introduction video here:
How Do I Know What to Automate?
The problem with repetitive tasks is that we do them so often we don’t even realize we’re wasting our time on them. For instance, how many times per day do you check your email, expecting a response from a VIP client or your boss? With Flow, you could skip the time-waster of your junk-filled inbox and get notifications sent to your phone specifically when a VIP or your boss emails.
Okay, that’s one repetitive task taken care of – but what about the others? Get ideas from the Flow templates released by Microsoft and updated weekly, and then start creating new ones on your own. With 107 integrations built in the past 4 months, (and new ones being added all the time), it’s highly likely you can find or build an automation for each of your repetitive tasks, hassle-free.
Here are a few other ideas:
- Track your working hours and location
- Push notifications for tweets with specific keywords
- Create Dynamics CRM leads from an Excel table
- When a new lead is created in Dynamics CRM, add it to a Smartsheet
- Create leads from forms submitted through Typeform
Flow Works with On-Premises and Online Tools
The great thing about Flow (aside from its price: FREE) is that it connects your online productivity apps to your critical business software and databases, while keeping your company’s sensitive data securely protected. It does this with policy-based environment management capabilities that your admins can set up with granular data control.
Flow Handles the Complex So You Can Simplify
The worst repetitive tasks are the ones that take multiple steps. You know, the ones that keep you staring at your window-filled computer screen as your fingers hover above Ctrl+V so you can copy data from one program to another program, to another program, to another program… Zzzzzzzzzzzz….
Sorry. I fell asleep for a second there just talking about that boring task. What I was saying is that Flow empowers you to automate complex, multistage tasks that normally would require a lot of copy-pasting and scheduling, so you don’t have to do those tasks anymore.
Imagine a More Productive World
If you suspect that much of your time is taken up with dull, repetitive work tasks, and you would rather spend your work time closing more leads, Flow is for you.
Speak to a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM expert at QuantaCRM to get your free access to Flow, or to get tips and tricks for improving sales productivity your company.