Workflow Automation Solutions

Overheard in a client meeting last week: “We have 8 regional managers sending their monthly reports in Excel. One of our guys spends 1-2 days combining them all.” Ok… You're paying a skilled analyst to: • Download eight separate spreadsheets • Copy & paste everything into a single master file • Fix formatting differences (especially dates) • Match up product codes • Hunt down discrepancies • Update pivot tables • Distribute the final report manually We sorted this with a simple SQL database setup and a simple process. 1. Excel attachments on emails are automatically saved to a folder using Power Automate 2. A simple daily process gobbles up those files and ingests them into SQL database tables 3. They now run a simple SQL query to extract the data. Takes seconds, not days. 4. Kettle on. Now their analyst actually analyses data instead of wrestling with Excel. Mad, isn't it? The power of SQL. #dataanalysis #businessintelligence #automation #sql #learnsql #corporatetraining #uniquetraining

LlamaIndex just unveiled a new approach involving AI agents for reliable document processing, from processing invoices to insurance claims and contract reviews. LlamaIndex’s new architecture, Agentic Document Workflows (ADW), goes beyond basic retrieval and extraction to orchestrate end-to-end document processing and decision-making. Imagine a contract review workflow: you don't just parse terms, you identify potential risks, cross-reference regulations, and recommend compliance actions. This level of coordination requires an agentic framework that maintains context, applies business rules, and interacts with multiple system components. Here’s how ADW works at a high level: (1) Document parsing and structuring – using robust tools like LlamaParse to extract relevant fields from contracts, invoices, or medical records. (2) Stateful agents – coordinating each step of the process, maintaining context across multiple documents, and applying logic to generate actionable outputs. (3) Retrieval and reference – tapping into knowledge bases via LlamaCloud to cross-check policies, regulations, or best practices in real-time. (4) Actionable recommendations – delivering insights that help professionals make informed decisions rather than just handing over raw text. ADW provides a path to building truly “intelligent” document systems that augment rather than replace human expertise. From legal contract reviews to patient case summaries, invoice processing, and insurance claims management—ADW supports human decision-making with context-rich workflows rather than one-off extractions. Ready to use notebooks https://lnkd.in/gQbHTTWC More open-source tools for AI agent developers in my recent blog post https://lnkd.in/gCySSuS3

Power Automate is quite frequently used for automating some emails. Obviously, it's not intended to do mass emailing campaigns - there are better tools for that. But it works great for distributing some documents, sending reminders, etc. It gets slightly tricky when the emails need to go outside of the organization and we need to include signatures in the email body. Especially when those signatures include some images, like the company/product logo. When that's the case, the email body must be formatted as HTML. The image can then be embedded in one of the following ways: 📌CID (Content-ID) 📌Inline embedding (base64 encoded images) 📌Linked/hosted images The easiest to do is usually base64 encoded images. In PAD, there's even an action for converting files to base64 strings, which allows generating the string. But it is actually not recommended because most mail services do not even display it at all due to security concerns. The best way is to actually use linked/hosted images, which basically means having a URL in the body that targets an image that's available online. So, it actually requires that your logo is actually available online. If you can do that, you're good to go. It could still get blocked by some mail providers - especially if the recipient does not already know the sender, but at least this shows up with a banner saying some content has been blocked, and the recipient has a choice for whether to allow it or not. That doesn't even happen with base64 encoded images. So, when we have that, we just need to put the URL (or the base64 string, if you're still feeling brave) inside an HTML body and use that to send the email. An easy way to do that in PAD is to have a template file, such as the one in the screenshot below. 👇 Then make PAD read the file using "Read text from file", and use "Replace text" to replace the placeholder (in this case it's {EmailMessage}) with the actual message you want to include. And the rest is simply using the outputs of "Replace text" as the email body in the action you use for sending emails. Do not forget to enable the "Body is HTML" toggle in the action, if you're using anything other than the Office 365 Outlook connector, as all the other email actions default to plain text email body.

Some say email tree, but I prefer customer experience blueprints. 😊 No matter what you call them, data-driven email nurturing workflows that are based on lifecycle stage, buyer intent signals, and content engagement are a sales enablement engine—and more so, they act as a strategic lever for aligning marketing and sales to accelerate revenue outcomes. So why don't more teams prioritize them? While workflows are less visible and not as flashy, viewing workflows as living GTM assets offers a framework for operationalizing personalization at scale—something most marketers want but few actually execute well. Here are some hard truths about nurture workflows: - Most marketers know they should personalize—but execution is the tricky part. Start by auditing your user journey and mapping your segmentations, trigger logic, and dynamic content. I like the whiteboard feature in Canva or a tool like Miro for this.  - Integration is everything. Marketing can build the journey, but Sales still drives the close. Full CRM sync powers pipeline velocity, accountability, and better conversion. Sales can’t act on signals they can’t see. - Quarterly performance reviews and workflow audits are non-negotiable. Treat nurture like any other campaign: optimize regularly based on buyer behavior shifts, sales feedback, and funnel performance. What worked last quarter won’t always work next. - And let's face it, personalization at scale is HARD to do. Even the best intentions won't go far without clean data, sharp segmentation, integrated systems, and—the most overlooked—time. Are you feeling guilty because you haven't optimized your workflows yet in 2025? At least you have them. Over 65% of B2B marketers don't even have established lead-nurturing programs, which supports why 80% of marketing leads don't actually convert to sales. (gulp) But fret not, B2B marketers that implement marketing automation have reported increased sales pipelines by as much as 10%! (phew) Whether you're just getting started or ready to review, use this as your call to action to optimize opportunities you may be overlooking. Even the best-run teams can benefit from quarterly workflow audits, behavioral trigger improvements, or segmentation refreshes. If you want more, these topics were featured in Brianna Miller's article for MarTech, "How data-driven email nurturing transforms the B2B sales funnel". I really like this article because it bridges theory to execution and reminds us that nurturing your customers isn't a one-and-done, it's a mindset. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gGqn2j8v #B2BMarketing #LIPostingDayApril #EmailMarketing

I've processed hundreds of AP bills in my career. And I can tell you, most teams are doing it the hard way. So I put together a complete AP cheat sheet that covers everything you need to know about managing accounts payable efficiently. (Check the first link in the comments for the tool I use to automate this) → What is Accounts Payable? AP represents the money your company owes to vendors and suppliers for goods and services purchased on credit. It's one of those critical functions that can either run smoothly or become a complete nightmare → How to Calculate Accounts Payable The formula is pretty straightforward. Beginning Balance + New Bills minus Payments equals your Ending AP Balance. This calculation helps you track what you owe at any point in time → How to Forecast Accounts Payable You need to follow the BASE formula to create accurate AP forecasts. There are two methods I use with my clients. Method 1 is calculating Days Payable Outstanding. Method 2 is tagging each GL account to a payment cadence like Immediate, Net 30, Net 45, or Net 60. Both work well, it just depends on how detailed you want to get → Optimizing Your AP Function There are some clear dos and don'ts here. Set up group email addresses for AP communications instead of siloing everything to one person. Collect vendor agreements and W9 forms upfront, not when you're scrambling to make a payment. Invite vendors to their own portal for banking details rather than chasing them down via email. And please, don't blindly trust unverified vendors or process payments manually without proper approvals. → Common AP Roles The AP Clerk handles day to day bill processing and payment execution. The Controller oversees financial operations and AP strategy. The Procurement Specialist manages vendor relationships and purchase orders. → So How Do You Actually Automate All of This? Manual AP processing is slow, error prone, and really hard to scale. BILL handles the entire workflow in four steps: capture bills with minimal manual entry, route approvals based on your business rules, pay through multiple methods including ACH and credit card, and sync automatically with accounting systems like QuickBooks and Xero. For businesses managing multiple entities, BILL consolidates everything so you can approve and pay bills across locations in one place. Businesses save an average of 12 hours monthly and reduce their AP processing time by up to 80%. 98% of customers feel more secure with BILL, and most see benefits within two weeks. If you're still processing AP manually, you're losing time and money every month. BILL is offering a live demo plus a $100 Amazon gift card to see how their platform works. Check it out at: https://lnkd.in/eEwvHTX2 === How much time does your team spend on AP each month?

Email still delivers strong ROI. What’s changed is how leading teams are using it. Here are 7 modern and practical email strategies you can use now and into 2026. 📩 1. AI-Driven Decisioning An example is “next best offer.” Use real-time, historical, and behavioral data to determine the most relevant content, offer, or CTA. Instead of sending the same message to everyone, tools like Movable Ink personalize content based on what users have or haven’t done. 📈 2. Product-Led Lifecycle Messaging Trigger emails based on what users do inside your product. If someone signs up but doesn’t activate, send a reminder. If they complete onboarding but skip a key feature, follow up. Email becomes part of the product experience. 🧱 3. Modular Templates + Guard Rails Stop building emails from scratch. Modular templates let teams assemble emails using approved, no-code blocks. Platforms like Knak help you move faster while staying on brand and rendering correctly across devices. 👁️🗨️ 4. Inbox Retargeting & Re-engagement If someone opens and scrolls but doesn’t click, you can adjust the next email. These behavioral signals help guide follow-ups. A scrolled-but-no-click email may call for a stronger CTA or tighter copy. 🧪 5. Automated Experimentation Go beyond A/B tests. Today’s tools can test dozens or even hundreds of variations at once, subject lines, images, layouts, and more. Platforms like OfferFit by Braze optimize automatically to drive better performance. ⏱ 6. Real-Time Triggers Send the right message the moment someone takes action, like signing up or abandoning a cart. It only works if your data flows smoothly and your systems are well-integrated, but the results are worth the effort. 💰 7. Revenue-Based Measurement Connect email to pipeline and revenue. If your data and attribution are in place, you can measure how nurture programs or product launches actually impact the business. Which do you think is most effective? What would you add? PS: Be sure to check out Knak to scale your email efforts, link in the comments. via Nick Donaldson #marketing #martech #marketingoperations #email

This isn’t the National Weather Service, it’s Walmart. Weather data isn’t just for your local forecast anymore. It’s becoming one of the most powerful and underutilized signals in modern business. Companies like Walmart, Amazon, and UPS are taking this to a new degree by making real time decisions based on the weather. Walmart’s in-house meteorology team (seen below) uses storm patterns to predict what customers will need before they know they need it. Warm front? Stock up on ACs and towels. Blizzard incoming? Time to push shovels and hot chocolate. What is stranger as pointed out by Morning Brew is that when there is no wind, berry sales skyrocket so they run targeted ads in calm zip codes. Sometimes sales as much as triple. This is what happens when you have a systems level integration of weather data into your operations. But most companies still can’t do this. Because integrating weather and climate data into analytics workflows has been painfully hard: 📦 Data formats are often obscure, array based cubes or NetCDF files not easily queryable. 🌐 APIs are rate-limited, difficult to scale, and often require custom logic. 🧠 Domain expertise is needed just to parse and understand it—let alone act on it. Most teams still rely on humans to interpret forecasts manually, or bolt on weather data as a sidecar to their analytics pipeline. That’s changing. New tools and platforms are making it possible to: 🔎 Query gridded climate data like tabular data. ☁️ Store time-series and multidimensional arrays in open formats like Zarr and NetCDF in the cloud. ⛈️ Treat weather as just another dimension in your feature engineering stack not an exotic or nice-to-have external input. When weather becomes part of the system it unlocks a massive new layer of intelligence. And if Walmart is tripling sales on berries based on wind speed imagine what your business could do when climate becomes code. 🌎 I'm Matt and I talk about modern GIS, geospatial data engineering, and AI and geospatial is changing. 📬 Want more like this? Join 7k+ others learning from my newsletter → forrest.nyc

I used to write all of my sales, onboarding and offboarding emails from scratch and send them manually. Sometimes I'd forget to follow up with prospects relying on my pretty rubbish memory. I am sure I lost a fair bit of business that way. That doesn't happen anymore. All of my emails are pre written and saved in automated workflows. If an email needs approval, I don't need to remember to approve it. The system sends me an email to remind to approve it. It took a few hours to do it in the beginning, but it's nothing compared to the number of hours I have saved. It's also nothing compared to the amount of leads I have been able to convert because I am no longer relying on my memory. You can do the same! 1. Identify all of the emails required for your sales follow up/onboarding/offboarding process 2. Write them all out. 3. Add them your CRM system as canned emails 4. Create a workflow that includes the canned emails, triggers and time delays 5. Add new leads to the workflow and watch the emails go with minimal or no input from you! 6. Use the extra time as you wish! Do you use canned emails and automated workflows to save time in your business? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Hey 👋 I'm Daniella, a business growth strategist, passionate about empowering Entrepreneurs, Founders & Business Owners to grow & scale their businesses without burning out.

Get Smart – How AI is Driving Smart Auto Insurance Claims Management? AI is driving a major transformation in the auto insurance industry. With smart auto claims management, insurers and customers can now experience a fully automated, seamless workflow—from reporting an incident to final settlement. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲: • Faster claim processing • Improved operational efficiency • Greater transparency and customer engagement With the insurance industry undergoing a significant transformation driven by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the concept of smart auto claims management – a fully digital and automated workflow process – is transformational. Smart auto claims management harnesses AI to automate and optimize end-to-end claims management, from the First Notice of Loss (FNOL) to damage assessment, repairs, communication, and final settlement. The primary goal? To provide faster, more accurate, and less labor-intensive claims handling, thereby reducing the time it takes for customers to receive payouts, and enabling insurers to reduce costs and enhance customer service. A Fully Automated Digital Workflow: Smart claims management works by enabling a logical, step-by-step process, utilizing a fully automate digital workflow. Examples of key steps include: First Notice of Loss(FNOL). In a smart claims process, customers can instantly report an incident using a smartphone app that guides them through the process. AI-Powered Damage Assessment. Using AI and computer vision technologies, this reduces the need for human intervention, and allows faster decision-making, leading to better outcomes. Automated Communication and Customer Interaction. Automated communication tools keep customers informed at every step. Through AI-powered virtual assistants and automated notifications, customers receive real-time updates on their claim status. Repair Management and Supply Chain Optimization. This bridges any gaps in the process through a connected ‘ecosystem’ that links all stakeholders in a single digital platform. Final Settlement and Payment. The automation of settlement not only speeds up payment, but also reduces administrative overheads for insurers, as fewer manual processes are involved. Key Benefits for Insurers and Customers :   For Insurers: Operational Efficiency Faster Processing Times Fraud Prevention   For Customers: Convenience and Speed Transparency and Communication Personalized Experience  

I audited 70 dtc e-commerce klaviyo accounts last year and they all had the same issues with their customer journey. Make sure you avoid these common mistakes and ensure your messages align with the customer's journey: ▸ Welcome Email 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who have started checkout or placed their order after starting the flow. ▸ Browse Abandonment 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who have started checkout or placed their order after starting the flow. ▸ Abandoned Checkout 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who placed their orders after starting the flow. ▸ First and Repeat Customer Thank You 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who placed their orders, started a checkout, or canceled the order after starting the flow. ▸ Replenishment 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who placed their orders or started a checkout after starting the flow. ▸ Post Purchase 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who placed their orders, started a checkout, or canceled the order after starting the flow. ▸ Winback 🔹Fix: Remove recipients who placed their orders or started a checkout after starting the flow. There are other exit conditions you can add to email and sms flows for better messaging and experience, but these are the most common issues I see. You need to consider the number of times a user can receive a particular flow and whether a subscription customer should or shouldn't enter specific flows (assuming you have a subscription program). Sending relevant messages to your audience helps improve the customer experience and nudges them to take the right action at the right time. What are the other flow filters you would like to add? #emailmarketing #ecommerce