5 Reasons Your Business Needs a Pipeline

Whether you know it or not, you probably use pipelines in your business. But, how do you know if you’re using them to their full potential? Knack can help.

You see when you build a Knack app, the fun doesn’t stop there. There are numerous options to add functionality to improve your already amazing online database application. Among these options are multiple workflow automation opportunities, including pipelines. So, we’d like to help ensure you are using them to their full potential by explaining the power of pipelines in helping your business save time, stay organized, and more. But first, let’s be a little more clear about what we mean by a pipeline.

What is a Pipeline?

It’s miles and miles of pipes used to deliver oil, gas, or other liquids long distances, right? Not always. In your business, pipelines are those typical steps, actions, or processes, also called workflow, that have the same beginning point and follow through the same series of actions to get to the end. An excellent example of this progression is the customer pipeline that begins with a potential customer, or “lead,” and progresses through the pipeline to a proposal or elevator pitch, eventually ending as a “customer.” Each time you have a prospective customer, this is the path they follow…thus, they are in the customer pipeline.

More important, however, is how a pipeline can be used in a way that helps you manage your processes and track progress while keeping everyone on the same page.

But, how do you know this is what you need for your business? Excellent question! We’re glad you asked. If your business processes rely on the completion of certain tasks in order for the next phase to start, you may want to consider making a pipeline.

Other examples of pipelines that you may have in your business include marketing or project pipelines. Any project you start, you intend to take to the finish line. What is it that you need to track to make sure it is getting to the end? Milestones? Drafts? Requirements gathering and implementation? Hawaiian shirt Fridays? Whatever those items are between the beginning and the end of your project are part of your pipeline.

With all of this new knowledge, you now may be wondering what you can do about it. Well, finding a way to track steps visually through the pipeline is a good place to start. Using workflow implementation tools, such as Knack, will help you visualize your pipeline, which has numerous benefits.

Benefits of a Pipeline for your Business

Now that you know what pipelines are and have processes that can be treated like them in your organization. How do you start tracking and managing them? A great question! The power of pipelines is most evident when they’re tracked and managed.

Business pipelines are essential to the success of any company. Here are our top 5 benefits of business pipelines:

1. Fewer Errors, More Accountability  – To err is human. To blame someone else for it is brilliant! But, you’ll not need to worry about who you’re going to blame for the next error in your pipeline data because using a tool to manage it will result in fewer errors and more accountability…so mistakes made will be found quickly and fixed immediately.
2. Leaner Processes  – When you are engaging with your leads, it is important to know where they stand in the pipeline. If this information isn’t tracked correctly, then there can be issues moving forward and reaching that common endpoint of gaining a new customer. The benefit of the pipeline is to make your processes more efficient and effective so you capture good data from the start!
3. Save Time  – Not only are you saving time by capturing good data from the start, but having all your information in one place makes it easy to capture and share important information. Centralized pipelines help to streamline your organization. You won’t need to track multiple versions, share spreadsheets or documentation across teams and users, or worry about information overloads. Viewers will only see the part of the pipeline that is relevant to them so everyone saves time with no issues!
4. Clearer Communication  – On top of increased accountability and the ability to share information, a pipeline can help you communicate more effectively throughout every process. You will be able to assign tasks to people at specific points in the pipeline or know where the clogs are within the pipeline. It also will allow you to automate your workflow, ensuring it moves from one step to the next, automatically. In the customer pipeline example, for instance, once your sales representative changes the status of the lead from “proposal” to “customer,” your onboarding team can be notified and assigned the next steps. Not only that, but with the stages of workflow clearly defined and visible to everyone, people can focus on staying productive without worrying about getting off track.
5. Continuous Improvement – In this increasingly complex landscape, understanding how to improve processes and iterate on them is essential for success. By creating a pipeline — which will show your improvement efforts over time — you can better understand where and how to streamline workflows in the future.

How Knack Can Help You Manage Your Pipeline

Knack’s main goal is to help users build business apps quickly and easily so that you can get your data to the right users, at the right time, with the right workflows. To do so, Knack provides the tools you need to create workflows and business process automation for pretty much anything you do, including pipelines. And, as a no-code application, you won’t even break a sweat building your app from scratch.

As defined at the start, pipelines are a series of steps you execute that result in the desired outcome. Knack’s features help you through the steps required to get things done in your business. Here are just a few workflow tools that can help you build out your pipelines in Knack:

In short, adding a pipeline to your app can be done easily using Knack’s powerful features. Plus, the flexibility offered by Knack also allows you to make changes quickly to the pipelines in your app each and every time your process changes. If you’re like most businesses, your processes probably change…A LOT. And, that’s okay. It’s simple to change, without the need for coding.

Final Stage

Managing your pipeline or business processes can be a daunting task. It’s essential to have the right tools in place so you can optimize for efficiency and accountability on every level of your business processes. Knack is here to help you track and manage your pipeline with our intuitive app features and you can also share your data across teams, departments, and time zones so all stakeholders are always up-to-date on what needs to happen next.

Start a free trial today by visiting www.builder.knack.com/#register.