How to Streamline Your Approval Process With Slack

We’ve all been that employee waiting on a manager’s approval at least once. Whether it be a new computer, PTO request or onboarding as a new employee, hold ups in the approval process are irritating and frankly a waste of time.

The last thing any business needs is idle workers waiting on an approval or even worse, a senior leader’s time being taken up sifting through emails to find a request. In fact, time spent idle costs employers an estimated $100 billion per year, according to a new study from Harvard Business School.

What makes a typical approval process difficult is that it’s often a service management function that is “outside” of IT. A recent survey by Praecipio Consulting found that only 59% of enterprise companies are employing a Service Request Management practice outside of IT. This can lead to a lack of ownership, oversight and ultimately accountability in the approvals process. When the approval process sits as an unclaimed function of a business, it’s highly likely to result in a bogged down system that hurts your bottom line.

Beyond the money wasted on a poorly functioning approval process, there is also the issue of compliance. When an already busy manager has to take precious work time away to sift through approval emails, it becomes more likely that they will approve without thoroughly reading the request and then not properly document the approval. This can result in a compliance nightmare that can be costly to the business in audit and litigation fees.

Integrating Approvals Seamlessly Into Slack with HelpDesk+

But there is a better way, now HelpDesk+ makes the approval process easier than ever. By integrating your approvals into Slack, you’re able to eliminate multiple steps in an otherwise cumbersome process.

Users are able to create new approval requests multiple ways within Slack:

1. The bot’s home tab
2. Slack’s global shortcut
3. A message action
4. Even just from an emoji

A new approval request can be made within a few clicks without ever switching context from Slack.

If you’re a manager who has to frequently handle approvals, all your requests will be shown in one spot within Slack. No more emails to sift through and no more reminder alerts from your team. All you have to do is open your approvals channel in Slack and boom, all your requests are neatly organized in one spot.

HelpDesk+ lets savvy businesses bring approvals into their integrated IT process without bogging their teams down. All requests and approvals are automatically documented, so your business is always kept in compliance and the use of smart ai does much of the process for you.

Many of our clients have found approvals within HelpDesk+ to be one of the features they are surprised they get the most benefit from. For example, The CIO of Riachuelo, Brazil’s multi-billion retailer, utilizes Helpdesk+ approvals to make decisions significantly faster for the 300+ stores which depend on IT’

If you’re still using a traditional approval process and find it is causing frustration, it is time to explore how an automated integration with Slack can improve your process, save your team time and boost your bottom line. Contact us at info@nextup.ai for a demo of how the approvals work within HelpDesk+.

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