Top 3 Workflow Automation Tools for IT Teams

In any organization, there will be tons of tasks that need to be completed on a daily basis. Some of them are repetitive and take a lot of time and energy, which prevents employees from concentrating on other important aspects of a business. That's why organizations deploy workflow automation software. 

Making employees do repetitive tasks manually can frustrate them, which will directly affect their productivity. As an IT head, it is your responsibility to offer them the tools that will help them focus on creative aspects without wasting time and effort on the same kind of tasks every day. 

IT workflow automation tools have made it possible by automating mundane tasks like onboarding, offboarding, requesting new software apps, etc.

An IT workflow automation tool helps IT admins, SaaS operations managers, and IT and software asset managers are more productive by optimizing their routine tasks. They also provide reports that can be used to find the bottleneck tasks and work around the inefficiencies.

When we were searching for an IT workflow automation tool, there were plenty in the market. Such a large number of tools might overwhelm you. So, we made a list of the top tools to cut down your evaluation time.

We have shortlisted the best IT workflow automation tools in the market, which you can try out in your organization. Before discussing the tools, let's delve deeper into what a workflow automation tool is.

What is a Workflow Automation Tool?

A Workflow automation tool helps to optimize and streamline your daily workflows. You can use these tools to run repetitive tasks in the background while concentrating on other strategic tasks.

Most of these tools are not easy to use, and you require a level of expertise to get benefit from them. But some of them are custom made for IT teams and feature drag and drop or the flow chart set up, making them easy to use. 

With these workflow automation software applications, you can save a lot of time & money, speed up productivity and stick to deadlines. In short, you can simplify almost all the IT processes.

Types of Workflow Automation Tools

Workflow colloquially means tasks that are carried out on a daily (routine) basis. So there are different tools for different workflows. So finding a one-size-fits-all workflow automation tool is very hard. You need these tools majorly for: 

• Project management

• Task management

• Employee Onboarding and Off-boarding

• Employee workflows

• Database management

• Vendor workflows

And this list keeps going. 

Zluri, for example, is designed to help IT teams streamline the IT automation process, employee onboarding and off-boarding, and vendor workflows. It helps the IT team stay on track without wasting much time on mundane tasks.

The Top 3 Workflow Automation Tools for IT Teams

1. Zluri

Hello, that's us. Zluri is a SaaS management platform that helps IT teams discover, secure, and optimize SaaS apps. It is an all-in-all tool that automates your entire SaaS management process. 

For example, suppose your organization uses spreadsheets or depends on invoices to calculate SaaS costs or surveys (or worse word of mouth) to know the new SaaS apps you have bought. In that case, it is high time you switch to a fully automated SaaS management tool like Zluri. 

Complete overview of SaaS apps present

After onboarding to Zluri, it takes a few minutes to completely analyze the SaaS apps running in your organization by integrating with your SSO, Finance/Expense management platforms, and directly with apps. After a complete analysis, all the apps are displayed in a single centralized dashboard. 

Apps usage insights

Zluri makes sure that nothing is missed, and you get an account of all the SaaS apps, with their usage, users, compliance level, security level, and also the cost spent. Imagine how much manual labor, time, and money you can save when investing in a workflow automation tool like Zluri. 

Smooth Vendor Management workflows

Zluri's vendor management workflows make sure that all your IT contacts are stored in a common place where you can quickly pick them up when you need them. This not only helps you during the time of renewing but also helps you stay compliant. 

When you can access all the SaaS agreements in one place, you can self-audit yourself anytime and make sure you are compliant with required standards, be it SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, etc.

Automatic Renewal alerts

Also, if you have been using SaaS apps for a while, you know the menace of auto-renewals. Though it is given to make your renewal process easy, sometimes you never know whether a tool is used or brings value to your organization. You might wish to discontinue it or level down a tier in those cases. 

But with auto-renewals and too many SaaS apps, it is difficult to keep note of renewals of each app. Zluri can make this easy for you by sending you renewal alerts at least 30 days before the renewal date, giving you enough time to decide on what action to take. 

Automated Onboarding and Off-boarding workflows

Zluri also helps you to automate time-consuming and repetitive IT tasks such as employee onboarding and off-boarding, making it quicker and safer. 

IT teams/HR no longer need to indulge in the repetitive process of onboarding the newbies to the SaaS applications one by one, which is extremely time-consuming and tiring.

On the first day of the employee onboarding or even before that, Zluri can give access to tools that they would need for their daily work.

Zluri's approach to workflow automation is completely unique and very use case-driven. Since the system has tons of data, it can help users build workflows properly. Instead of using generalized templates that make it complicated, Zluri uses personalized workflows that analyze the new employee's job profile, seniority, and department and give access to applications based on that.

Similarly, when an employee is leaving the organization, Zluri makes sure that their access is revoked from all the individual applications they were using and not just from the SSO or Google workspace account. Before terminating the licenses, Zluri creates a backup of data from those applications, which you can transfer to a new owner. 

During de-provisioning, Zluri doesn't stop at SSO level authorization. It monitors the usage of the SSO system as well. For example, it monitors users for which apps they have access to, what level of permissions they have for the apps, their sign-in logs, audit logs, and access logs. 

If a user still has access to any app or has not been removed (in rare cases), Zluri alerts you that the user can still use the application. 

Though Zluri takes some inputs from SSOs, such as sign-in information, for Zluri, SSOs are not mandatory. Moreover, Zluri is better than SSO in provisioning and deprovisioning because, with SSO, you just get access to surface-level data while Zluri can go directly to the application. 

Pros

• Discovering your organization’s subscriptions.

• Category and function of each application.

• Find unused and underused apps.

• Removing duplicate apps with overlapping functions.

• Automating contract renewals.

• Automating employee onboarding and onboarding.

• Remove unsafe apps.

• Maintain audit readiness for compliance.

• Offers custom integrations with 36 hours TAT.

• Direct integrations with 320+ popular apps for feature-level usage insights.

Rating

• Capterra-5/5

• G2 - 4.9/5

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2. Zapier

Zapier is a web-based tool that helps companies connect to various apps together to automate the workflow and boost productivity which would usually be done manually. 

Zapier provides tons of pre-crafted templates that can be used to create your workflows for anything from lead generation to social media marketing. It also lets you customize the workflows based on your team's needs by letting you add extra steps and workflow logic.

To set up Zapier, you need to integrate your apps and share data with workflows called Zaps in Zapier. Then you can start building the process without any need for coding. Zaps lets you connect with all the apps you use regularly, like Gmail. 

For example, you can set a trigger for notifications, copy attachments from Box to your Gmail account and then let it Slack you about this new file. In addition, Zapier can connect with any number of web apps while also rolling out new options every week. Currently, it connects with 3000+ apps so that you can always find the apps you need in its library. 

Three rules for automating tasks in Zapier

• The tasks you do daily and frequently

• It involves moving data between apps

• It is mundane and doesn't require much thinking

Trigger and actions

While using Zapier to create workflows, you need to first create a trigger and perform the action. For example, a trigger is when you get a new lead in a form (when); you can set the action as send an email (do). The entire Zaps follow the same when and do structure. 

It allows you to create simple as well as more complex zaps (having actions for multiple steps at once).

Multi steps Zaps

Multi steps Zaps feature lets you add more triggers and actions to one particular Zap. This way, you can automate all the complex workflows across multiple systems at once.

Say, for example, you would like to set opened email from Zluri as a trigger and copy the same information to Google contacts and Zoho CRM; you can do that with Multi-step Zap.

Search Action

This feature lets you look at specific data from a system that has been integrated with Zapier. For example, if you want to search for a contact or a product from the desired app, you can use the search action. 

Filters

Zapier Filters makes sure that your Zaps run only when certain conditions are fulfilled. Only if there is certain information in the required fields will you be able to launch a Zap. For example, say you want to add the prospects' details to Lemlist from CRM, you can only do so when the data contains name, email address, and designation (if you have defined them in the filter).

You can use the Filter option in many ways. For example, you can even filter fields to check if they are blank or contain text or some specific keywords. 

Formatter

One of the most powerful features of Zapier is the Formatter tool that helps you convert any sort of data before using it on any of the apps.

Its options include

• Operating on dates and date formats

• Converting currencies

• Editing some parts of texts

• Managing the numbers and applying the spreadsheet formulas

Something that makes Zapier unique is its lean yet robust dashboard that helps teams manage apps and zaps with ease. Its powerful way of creating systems and processes makes teams give their best. It also simplifies the way data is moved between web pages so that teams can keep their focus on what matters.

Pros

• User-friendly

• 3000+ integrations library

• Powerful automation that helps users automate tasks done by their apps

• Task history to look at all the Zaps created by a user

• Zapier offers flexible pricing that has a free version and quote-based plans.

Cons

• Zapier is prone to outages.

Source: G2

• Poor Customer Service

• UI glitches

Pricing

Has a free version

The premium version starts from $20 per month

3. Kissflow

The biggest selling point of Kissflow is its simplicity and reasonable pricing, which has made it popular among workflow automation tools. It is a truly visual workflow tool that is built for teams focused on speed. 

Teams can access data from any number of devices for on-the-go work. It offers a variety of templates so that you don't need to spend time building one from scratch. All employees can operate Kissflow with no coding knowledge. 

Seamless integration

Kissflow offers seamless integration that you don't get easily in other workflow automation tools. It lets you connect your flow internally or with the assistance of external apps. Remote tasks can be performed more efficiently. 

You can use the Kissflow platform to quickly and easily integrate with APIs and tools like Slack, Zapier, Dropbox, etc.

Employees who are connected to your business processes can share processes and tasks across multiple systems. Kissflow's integration is also extended to Google Apps, giving you greater flexibility and scope to switch between tasks. 

You can even set automatic triggers when you share data with external apps, connect Kissflow with 1000 different business apps through Zapier, and also maintain a single version of the collected data. 

Zero Training Required

You need absolutely no training to set up workflows in Kissflow. Anyone can use it regardless of them having coding experience, which helps you save a lot of time and money. It just takes a few minutes to automate your entire business process; however, complex workflows are (Conditional tasks and parallel branches). 

Easy UI

Kissflow's workflow automation tool poses a simple and easy-to-use visual interface and design. There are particular days during which the volume of business operations might be so chaotic, and the platform ensures that your workflows run smoothly without any complications. In addition, anyone can easily manage and track their progress under one unified dashboard. You can acquire key information in just one glance, keep track of important KPIs and metrics when necessary, and use heatmaps to analyze data.

Customizable reports and analytics

Yet another attractive feature is a robust reporting option. It offers a pre-built report feature that allows for easy tracking of tasks and requests at any stage. It features an intelligent charting feature that will suggest the proper chart type for the data you've selected. This includes deep insights into your workflow and metrics. It offers data-driven storytelling, which helps you make sense of your data by providing you with information in an accessible, efficient manner.

Inter-team collaboration

A smooth collaboration is a major requirement for any organization. Kissflow's Workflow automation platform offers smooth communication between all the team members. 

Managers and department heads can allocate tasks to their teams and provide their inputs even from remote locations. Once you upload the documents to the file storage, the system automatically manages and shares them with team members as and when required. 

Kissflow is an all-in-one workflow automation platform that you can use to cut down on time wastage and increase productivity. As well as this, you'll enjoy increased accuracy of workflows.

Pros

• Intuitive user-interface

• A platform for higher team engagement

• Drag and drop editing

• Design fully customized forms for upto 20 field types

Cons

• Issues during migration

• It can be expensive for large organizations with lots of users

• Slow response from customer service for technical issues

Pricing

Starts from $9

Conclusion

The needs of every business in performing tasks on a daily basis vary. For some, it may be basic; for others, it may be complex. But in the end, if it is possible to be automated, then it should be.  

There are plenty of tools for Workflow automation, but not all of them might be the right fit for you. After thorough research, we have shortlisted the best that has kept IT teams in mind. It is very important to test and analyze each and every workflow automation solution before deploying them.