Users Share Their Best Workflow Practices | Salsify

Workflow is one of the most useful features Salsify offers. The feature helps disorganized, time-consuming processes become streamlined and simplified so you can get products launched or updated much faster.

Recently, a few customers spoke with us about some of the best practices they use to get the most out of Salsify Workflow. Here’s what they had to say.

Be Sure to Plan Ahead

When initially establishing workflows, it’s helpful to take your time and plan out what you need, who your stakeholders are, and exactly what the optimal workflow will look like. 

Benjamin Gournay, chief technology officer at Gournay Consulting, weighs in on this process: 

“The first step is really to put on paper what the process looks like. What are all the different steps? And then you get into a discussion about, those are the steps today, but are they all still valid? Is it still how we want to manage it? And then, what part of those tasks can be managed in parallel versus sequential?” 

John Gregory, ecommerce project manager at Nestle, adds: 

“We updated along the way and iterated on the workflow design, but I think having a more data-driven approach at the start [would have been good]. We had an idea in mind when we designed it, but then had to quickly iterate.

So I think some of those iterations could have been anticipated by just getting the different groups in the room and playing out the different steps that the workflow would facilitate.” 

Look for Opportunities for New Efficiencies

There are a number of ways Salsify Workflow can help you be more efficient, some more obvious than others. Our customers have suggestions for getting the most out of your workflows.

Kevin Creese, ecommerce manager at Wastequip, says: 

“The idea is to work more efficiently within Salsify across multiple departments asynchronously. You have more control because you are not having to move data around – it is being done for you.

You are not waiting for one person to finish this update and then sending it off to the next person. You are collecting marketing copy at the same time as shipping and product details.” 

Drew Lewis, chief operation officer at SM Nutrition, adds: 

“Every creative process in the company goes through a workflow in Salsify … At first, the creative team was trying to pair Trello with Salsify … [but] we just realized that there were limitations when we did things outside of Salsify. When we brought everything under one roof, and everything was through a single flow, efficiency skyrocketed.”

Don’t Be Afraid of Change

Because our ecommerce world is constantly changing, your workflows will likely have to get updated from time to time. Some good change management can help turn those changes into new opportunities for efficiency.

Carsten Krohn, senior solutions advisor at Sitation, offers insights into change management: 

“Change management is, especially in the technology world, a very critical piece … Customers always overlook this as a cost because there’s time and money involved, but it’s so critically important to how people gain these efficiencies, to bring people together and educate them on, ‘These are the new processes, and they will help you with x, y, z.’ 

Focusing on the challenges they currently have and showing how the tool can easily overcome them is generally the best [way to] win people over to adopt these new processes.” 

Seneca Klopatek, senior digital marketing content specialist at Design House, adds: 

“I like to call my workflows living workflows. With ecommerce being ever-changing … I think a workflow needs to be living. There are going to be changes and updates all the time. It’s ok to be updating it and working with it, and having it work with you too.”

Make Test Workflows to Learn With

It can take some practice to learn to use workflows really well. Fortunately, Salsify Workflow is flexible enough for you to practice on, so you can get prepared with some hands-on experience.

Heidi Ollhoff, ecommerce associate manager at Nature’s Way, says: 

“When I was first learning [about workflows], I would do test workflows and assign myself and someone I knew to them … Just being able to learn it is really helpful.” 

Krohn adds: 

“Salsify is extremely flexible. You can take data that is just dummy data and you can run it through a workflow, assign those tasks to yourself, see how the user experience is for people that get assigned tasks, and start getting experience.

Start seeing how things work … Once a customer gets down that path of actually doing it, a lot of these ‘Aha’ moments will pick up … Then you can put a real workflow in place, route real data through it, and get the benefits from it.” 

Learn more about how Salsify Workflow could help your team take your disorganized, time-consuming processes and make them streamlined and simplified.