10 Workflow Examples and Use Cases in 2024

Unless you’re sitting for a hand-painted self-portrait with your dog, being at a standstill is never a good thing. 

This is especially true when it comes to your business processes and repetitive workflows. 

You’ll be hard-pressed to find success stories behind companies that “always did things this way.” And trust me, no one will miss the time spent on busy work that could otherwise have been reserved for an after-work cocktail. 

Staying stagnant in your processes ultimately threatens a company’s potential to grow, and leads to bottlenecks or even missed opportunities. 🙅🏼‍♀️

Luckily, we now have workflow automation to do a lot of the heavy lifting on this front! 

With the help of flexible workflow management apps for monitoring updates, clients, reports, requests, and more, many daily repetitive tasks can be automated. 

Eliminating these tedious to-dos will grace your schedule with a ton of new-found time for critical tasks and lead to increased productivity across the entire team. 😍

The benefits of proper workflow automation are clear, but the challenge lies in figuring out the best automation to streamline your processes and create the optimized workflow of your dreams. 

But you’re not in this alone! We are here for you every step of the way with 10 efficient workflow examples and helpful tips from industry professionals who swear by their processes. 

Here we go! 🙂🚗

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10 Workflow Examples for Different Teams

Let’s start with the basics here—what is workflow management?

Workflow management is the process of mapping out the order of actions you must follow to achieve a goal or complete a larger task. In this business process, you can also identify the actions that can be automated with the help of a workflow management tool. 

This will smooth over or prevent lags between steps in your process to keep your workflow as productive as possible. So proactive! 👏

These 10 workflow examples will give you an idea of how different teams think through their processes, the platforms used to optimize these business processes, and how to create a workflow of your own. 💯

1. Recruitment Workflow Mangement

When you find the perfect candidate, you want them on the team as fast as possible. 

A streamlined recruitment process is essential for making this transition smooth and organized. It also shows the candidate that your company seriously has their sh*t together and that your interest in them is genuine. 

Plus, a seamless workflow is the secret to ensuring that the right prospects find your opportunities and no candidate falls through the cracks. 

By automating the busywork behind the recruitment process, your talent team can focus on what matters most—a candidate’s skills, values, and likelihood to succeed in the role. Here’s an example of what that looks like at ClickUp. 👉

1. The hiring manager identifies a need and sets the job requirements
2. The hiring manager creates the appropriate job description and sends it to the recruiting team
3. A member of the recruiting team creates a task for the open position and adds it to a List in ClickUp that is organized by department and ranked by priority
4. The recruiting team member creates a job posting with a link to a ClickUp Form 
5. The position is posted on the company website, social media, and job boards
6. A candidate applies for the job through one of these postings and the information from the Form automatically becomes a task for the recruiting team to review
7. If the candidate meets all of the hiring managers criteria, an initial interview is made
8. If not, a polite rejection email is sent to the candidate

ClickUp’s Recruitment Action Plan Template can be used to simplify and streamline the recruitment process of a company. This template can help HR teams create an effective recruitment strategy for open positions in the company by providing a clear and organized plan. It includes a step-by-step guide that helps teams outline the recruitment process from start to finish, including job posting, resume screening, interview scheduling, and job offer procedures.

2. Employee Onboarding Workflow

It takes a lot of careful thought and effort to attract top-tier talent to your company—but landing the perfect candidate is only half the battle. 

The onboarding process is a new hire’s first experience as an employee and will set the tone for how they expect a company may treat them going forward. 

More than a day of solitude to read the handbook or sign a stack of papers, the employee onboarding process is a critical first impression. Think of it as an opportunity to flex your company’s passion and ability to: 

• Help employees grow
• Promote a healthy physical and mental well-being
• Offer support
• Facilitate a smooth transition to a new team
• Engage in conversations on important topics

And so much more! 

Onboarding should be as informative, engaging, and efficient as possible, which requires a well-planned workflow analysis to start every new employee off on the right foot. Before the offer goes out, here’s what the pre-onboarding process could look like in ClickUp: 

1. A candidate submits a ClickUp Application Form for an open position
2. The Form routes to a List of potential candidates in ClickUp for review
3. The Form converts to a task in the status RECEIVED
4. Once the interview process is complete, the candidate’s task is moved to NEW HIRE status which triggers a new task creation for ClickUp’s Onboarding team to take over

Believe it or not, the employee onboarding process begins before an offer is extended—it begins at first contact. Workflow apps are crucial for keeping track of communication, updates, and next steps throughout the entire onboarding process. At ClickUp, changes to a custom task status trigger a new set of task automations to remove manual work from the onboarding team’s plate. 

1. In HIRED status, a comment populates for the Onboarding Trainer and hiring manager to connect
2. In OFFER SIGNED status, the new hire receives an automated ‘Welcome’ email with information to prepare for their first day
3. In EQUIPMENT status, a Supplies Checklist populates within the task for all required work equipment. Once every item is marked complete, another automation moves the task status to REVIEW
4. In REVIEW status, the Onboarding Trainer will know that all pre-boarding action items are complete
5. In DIRECTORY status, the new hire’s task will stay in the Directory List for the remainder of their ClickUp employment

Loving what you see here? Check out our blog for more details on how ClickUp’s Onboarding team uses ClickUp. 💜

ClickUp’s Employee Onboarding Template is a pre-built template that can be used to streamline the onboarding process for new employees. This template provides a step-by-step guide covering all aspects of the onboarding process, including HR paperwork, company policies and procedures, training schedules, and more.

3. Customer Onboarding Workflow

The customer onboarding process is just as important as your employee processes. 

A choppy customer onboarding workflow may be the thing that stands in the way of your customers fully diving into your product, especially if it requires additional learning tools to fully integrate it among their team. 

Here’s how Belén Papa, Digital Marketing Analyst at Flokzu, uses workflow automation to optimize her customer onboarding workflow: 

You can automate reminders, emails, and reports depending on your workflow. When you register a new customer, you can enter all of their information in your system: country, language, company, etc. With Flokzu, we also turn that information into valuable metrics and statistics.

The workflow starts when you register the new customer. You can set an automatic personalized email where you welcome and invite them to their first meeting with a Customer Success Manager. During that first meeting, you establish joint goals and plans to show the customer how to get the most out of the service.

From this moment on, the CSM becomes a partner in the customers’ success and assigns the client to an Executive to continue the process.

With Flokzu, the Executive can set automatic reminders with due dates to follow up and ensure that every goal is achieved. Once the onboarding process ends and the client is stable, you can automatically notify the CEO and COO.

Use ClickUp’s Customer Onboarding Template to create an efficient and consistent onboarding experience for their customers, helping them get started with their products or services quickly and easily. The template allows businesses to customize the onboarding process according to their specific needs and requirements, ensuring that customers receive the appropriate information and support they need.

4. Vacation Request Workflow

Even if you work for a hip startup with unlimited PTO and vacation time—you’ll need to get the request approved by a manager.

An efficient vacation request workflow will help you stay on the good side of every manager (and HR) by keeping your vacay requests out of the team chat or busy email inboxes. Plus, an automated process helps your request go through faster! So you can start making your beach plans as quickly as possible. 

Here’s another workflow shared by Belén Papa, showing how she implements her employee vacation request workflow: 

In our vacation request process, you can see how much simpler the workflow can be when you automate the process with a BPM software like Flokzu.

Employees complete the personalized public form which is automatically sent to HR to accept or deny. You can set reminders and due dates to make sure HR decides quickly.

Once this decision is made, it will send an email notifying the employee if their request has been accepted or not. This option is extremely helpful for companies with hundreds of employees.

Bonus: BPM Software

5. Sales Order Workflow

Sales orders include quotes, invoices, estimates, returns, product information, and more. That’s a lot to manage. 😳

No matter the size of your business or the industry, having a digital workflow to keep track of all sales orders is a must. This not only keeps you organized, cuts down on clutter, and helps you accurately track your profitability—it also does it faster.

Opting out of a digital sales order process can lead to significant delays while waiting on signatures or approvals—and forgoing an automated workflow can be just as turbulent.

Digital forms and e-signatures completed in workflow management software can trigger new tasks or notifications when completed, helping teams process orders faster and from virtually anywhere.

Here’s an example of what a sales order workflow might look like:

1. A salesperson or customer creates an order using ClickUp Forms
2. The Form submission automatically creates a corresponding task to that order with all necessary client and order information
3. The salesperson’s manager approves the order and it’s sent to the customer
4. The customer approves the order, and the accounting department is alerted 
5. Accounting invoices the customer
6. The customer receives the order
7. The corresponding task is completed and stays in an organized List for record-keeping

Related: CRM Workflows

6. Email Campaign Workflow

Frfr, email campaigns are tough. 🥵

But a well-executed email campaign can bring in a lot of new attention and revenue to your business. Plus, it’s also a great and more personalized way of engaging with subscribers or customers that you want to pull further down the funnel. 

So if you haven’t already gotten on the email workflow train, it’s time to climb aboard. 🚂

Beyond the customer relationship side of email marketing, your email campaign workflow should help you save time, manage customers across multiple channels, and be tailored to each campaign goal. 

Let’s say a new user just subscribed to your blog. A welcome email campaign workflow will help you connect with that new subscriber, take your relationship a little further, and lead them to content on your blog that they’re likely to love. 

Here’s an example of what that workflow might look like: 

1. A new subscriber joins your email list
2. A pre-written welcome email is sent to that subscriber
3. After two days, check to see if any of the links in your welcome email were clicked
4. Send another email with content personalized to their interests based on the links they clicked

7. Content Marketing Workflow

A workflow that I hold near and dear to my own heart. 💓

Producing high-quality content is crucial for establishing your brand as a leader in your industry. It draws in new potential customers, further establishes trust with your existing customers, and provides another opportunity to promote your product and services. 

No surprise here, but at ClickUp, we use ClickUp to pull off a clear and functional content marketing workflow to publish as much content as we can on a regular basis. But there’s more than just one way for different teams to achieve their unique content goals. 

Here’s how Kashyap Trivedi, Growth Marketer at Salesmate, created and implemented his content marketing workflow: 

We use Salesmate’s Pipeline Management (Kanban) to manage our content flow for our marketing team. Basically, we broke down the entire content journey into a series of steps and turned it into a pipeline.

Once the deal (content card) is moved to the next stage, relevant people are assigned their next task using Salesmate Workflow Automation.

Want to know more about how different content marketing workflows and see how we customize our blog processes at ClickUp? 

Look no further than this seminar from our LevelUp productivity conference! Learn the best practices and tools ClickUp has to offer for managing different parts of the web design workflow like, writers, designers, and developers. 

Marketing teams can use ClickUp’s Content Calendar Template to create and manage their content marketing strategy. This template helps teams plan and organize content creation, publication, and promotion, ensuring that they stay on top of their content marketing goals.

8. Design Approval Workflow

Making sure every design, copy, marketing, and product choice rings true to your brand is a full-time, all-encompassing job. 

Like any HR request or lunchroom snack suggestion, all designs must adhere to a fixed approval process before they can get the green light. 🚦

That design process may look something like this:

1. A design request is made with a general idea and possible mockup for the planned design
2. The design concept or mockup is approved 
3. The designer receives the request and creates an image or graphic based on the approved concept
4. The design is reviewed by the manager and either approved or sent back with specific notes for slight edits 

9. Product Launch Workflow

There are a ton of moving parts behind every successful product launch—and maybe a few tears at some point too. 

It is essential to align agile teams on all processes, messaging, and goals surrounding the product well before the launch, and it will take more than a detailed checklist to get the job done.

Here’s how Gabrielle Lafontaine, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Unito, created and implements her product launch workflow: 

Product launches are hard, so we designed this template to facilitate the merging of planning (which happens in Miro) to ClickUp (where work actually gets dispatched and tracked).

Our launch involved months of hard work researching, planning, designing, building, and then finally launching, which means a LOT of cross-functional collaboration between product managers, developers, designers, marketing, and customer-facing teams.

Managing everyone in each department and ensuring they deliver on time without anything falling through the cracks can take a lot of effort. We used Unito to build this workflow, to help deliver the biggest and most complex product launches.

Product teams can use ClickUp’s Product Launch Template to plan and execute a successful product launch. This template provides a step-by-step guide covering all aspects of the product launch process, including market research, product development, testing, and promotion.

10. Support Process Workflow

Customer success or support workflows are an excellent way to ensure that every customer’s questions are answered, and needs are met in a timely manner. 

Customers want to know that their voices are being heard and their experience with your product or service is important to you—and a dependable support process is key in achieving this. 

This workflow is essentially the sequence of automated actions every customer support agent takes to resolve complaints, questions, or issues a customer may have. Issue resolution is one of the most common situations customer support agents will face on a daily basis, and part of what makes them so important is that these issues are often time-bound. 

Meaning, you’ll want to tackle these issues ASAP. 

In ClickUp, a support process workflow might look something like this:

1. A customer fills out an issue Form with their basic information, a detailed description of the issue, and its priority
2. That Form becomes a task in ClickUp and is assigned to a member of the Customer Success team
3. The Customer Success team will either provide a solution or escalate the issue to the proper person

Bonus: RACI Chart Examples!

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How to Create a Workflow for Your Business in ClickUp

TL;DR, there is a workflow example for literally everything. But you don’t want to jump between workflow software to carry out each process. 

The solution? 

An all-in-one productivity platform that centralizes all of your workflows—no matter the size of your team or industry. AKA, ClickUp. 🤓 

Among ClickUp’s library of fully customizable features are Mind Maps and a digital Whiteboard tool to create highly visual, engaging, and automated workflows for any use case. All without ever having to open another tab.

ClickUp Mind Maps are perfect for visualizing the step-by-step process of any project or workflow. 

Map out and organize ideas with its drag-and-drop functionality. Then drag branches to show task relationships and dependencies, or adjust your nodes’ locations to organize and rearrange your workspace.

Digital whiteboard software is booming right now—but did you know that ClickUp is one of the few platforms to build our whiteboard feature in-house? 🏡

ClickUp Whiteboards provide an infinite canvas to draw workflows of any kind—even Mind Maps! Not to mention, ClickUp offers tons of workflow templates specifically for its collaborative Whiteboards to help you save time faster. 

Add shapes that convert directly into ClickUp tasks and connect to your workflow, then draw connections between them to easily show the order of tasks. 

No matter business or industry, ClickUp will be your new favorite go-to for all things process and workflow-related. 

And did we mention these features are completely free? Start saving time by automating and streamlining your processes in ClickUp. ♻️

Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.

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