What is workflow automation? (Benefits, tools, and how to begin)
Airtable
3 min read
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Airtable
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An old Hemingway quote from The Sun Also Rises feels particularly apt these days, especially with regard to workflow automation and artificial intelligence (AI). The character in the novel is asked a question about how his finances dwindled, and his reply is: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
This idea of subtle quickening can move us toward any number of destinations, and often great ones. In technology, it’s not uncommon to dabble a bit or test a hypothesis before committing to a full-scale adoption of any process or software. Large enterprise companies have long experimented with automation to streamline repeatable processes, but the technology available today, combined with a variety of workforce models, has given most companies reason to pause and rethink their workflows and identify opportunities to rapidly automate.
Global Market Insights reported in October 2024 that the “global workflow automation market size was valued at USD 20.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.1% between 2024 and 2032.” Add to that, a 2024 survey of chief financial officers (CFOs) revealed that nearly two-thirds of CFOs say it’s a strategic priority to automate tasks that are typically handled by employees, primarily to enhance business processes.
So, what does this all mean? Let’s take a closer look at how you can benefit from workflow automation and select the right workflow automation software for your team.
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation allows you to use software and technology to handle repeatable tasks with minimal (if any) human oversight. You can employ automation in service of reducing paperwork, delegating repetitive manual tasks, and achieving results much faster. Automation is not about replacing people so much as saving their time for more creative or strategic work, allowing them to act on the insights that technology helps provide. Overall, automation allows you and your team to do more work in less time.
Learn how to easily automate your workflows with Airtable
What is AI workflow automation?
AI workflow automation integrates AI with traditional workflow automation systems to create intelligent and adaptive business processes. Conventional automation follows pre-programmed rules, whereas AI workflow automation introduces more flexibility because it can learn, adapt, and make decisions based on real-time data patterns and business context.
AI workflow automation combines machine learning algorithms, natural language processing, and intelligent decision-making capabilities with automated task execution. This means that automation isn’t simply trigger-based. Instead, AI workflow automation can analyze a document's content, determine its priority, and route data to the right place with AI—to the right person, project, or team—and even suggest or implement next steps.
Examples of workflow automation
Any team looking for ways to automate processes likely has multiple tools at their disposal. AI tools for project management, in particular, can go a long way toward helping teams across the entire company manage their unique workloads and projects more effectively and efficiently. Here are a few additional areas where teams can apply workflow automation or consider adopting workflow automation software.
Marketing automations
There are many processes and workflows within marketing that can benefit from automation—whether you’re managing content operations or executing on campaigns, using AI for lead qualification and nurturing, or streamlining PR outreach for your company. In fact, marketing teams can use AI at every stage of a project, from planning to production to distribution and measurement.
Project tracking automation
One example of workflow automation in project management is automating task assignments and status updates based on project phase changes. For instance, when a project moves from "Planning" to "Execution," the system can automatically assign tasks to team members, set due dates based on predefined timelines, and notify stakeholders via email or Slack. Simultaneously, progress dashboards update in real time, and any overdue items trigger alerts—eliminating manual follow-ups and keeping the entire team aligned without added overhead..
Product discovery and development
Product teams balance a lot—including a lot of high stakes work that ultimately impacts how your product or service sits in the market, and whether it’s compelling to customers. Product teams can use AI for everything from analyzing customer feedback to creating product requirements documents, prioritizing features and streamlining development processes.
Human resources (HR) automation
Automation in HR is also an easy use case, considering the repetitive paperwork required to post a job, or onboard and offboard every employee. Automating the new hire onboarding process and streamlining employee training programs saves (often understaffed) HR teams valuable time that could be spent on relationship building and other impactful initiatives.
Invoice processing and approvals
For finance and accounts payable teams, smart workflows can extract data from invoices, validate information against purchase orders, flag discrepancies for review, and route approvals through the appropriate channels based on amount thresholds and departmental budgets. Automating invoicing and approvals removes a lot of busy work and also reduces the risk of human error.
Benefits of workflow automation
Anywhere you’re able to automate processes helps your team work more efficiently and to focus on the work that most engages them. It also helps reduce the risk of human error for tasks that are tedious and repetitive. Beyond that, your ability to streamline processes internally reflects externally, supporting a better customer experience.
Supercharged productivity
AI workflow automation can eliminate hours spent on manual, repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on more strategic, creative, and high-value activities. Because AI automation is intelligent, it can ensure that processes run faster and more accurately than if they were manually executed. Business process automation helps ensure that there’s a backup plan if a critical team member is out on vacation or leave, for example, so that projects can move forward.
More accurate and more consistent results
AI systems are very good at handling data entry, calculations, and routine decision-making (and aren’t distracted by needing a caffeine boost or watercooler gossip). Automated workflows ensure consistent application of business rules and standards across all processes, eliminating the variability that comes with manual handling.
Scalability and adaptability
AI-powered workflows can easily scale to handle increased volume without requiring proportional increases in resources. Whereas pre-configured automations are fixed, AI-based automations can evolve alongside business needs and adapt based on patterns in data.
Who uses workflow automation?
If workflow automation is a new concept, rest assured that there are many ways that it can be applied—and often easily, using built-in low-code or no-code features in your software. Here are a few examples of how and why different teams and businesses might use workflow automation or workflow automation software to streamline processes:
Small and medium businesses can maximize efficiency with limited resources and automate routine tasks that would otherwise require additional staff. This might look like automating invoicing or marketing emails to help save time.
Enterprise organizations can manage complex, multi-departmental processes requiring detailed orchestration across teams, with consistent application of policies and permissions, to ensure scalable operations that can handle high transaction volumes.
Marketing and creative teams can automate lead-nurturing campaigns, social media posting, content creation, and performance tracking to maintain consistent customer engagement without manual intervention.
Project managers can use workflow automation to streamline project tracking, automatically assign tasks, trigger deadline reminders, and generate status updates—keeping teams aligned and timelines on track without manual oversight.
Product managers can automate product development workflows, including sprint planning, user feedback collection, and roadmap updates, helping to accelerate delivery cycles and ensure cross-functional coordination.
Human resources departments can streamline recruitment processes, employee onboarding, performance reviews, and compliance tracking while ensuring consistent application of policies across all personnel activities.
Finance and accounting teams can automate invoice processing, expense approvals, financial reporting, and compliance monitoring to reduce errors and ensure timely completion of critical financial processes.
Customer service organizations can automate the collection and analysis of customer feedback, sentiment tagging, and survey responses to quickly identify trends, surface common pain points, and prioritize improvements—reducing manual effort while improving the customer experience.
5 best practices for implementing workflow automation
Some sage advice: Walk before you run. Runners must train for marathons; similarly, it's important to start slowly on your workflow automation journey before ramping to full speed.
Why? The automations you put into place must accurately represent the full spectrum of considerations that a human might encounter, including cross-functional team dependencies and data silos. If not, they may invite more problems than solutions.
Here are a few best practices as you begin:
Start with high-impact, low-complexity processes to build confidence and demonstrate increased efficiency before tackling more complex workflows. Choose processes that are already well-defined, repetitive, and time-consuming. This helps to maximize initial returns on automation investments.
Map and document existing processes to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement. Think about the type of workflows your team handles, stakeholder responsibilities, and decision points. The goal is to eliminate redundant steps while retaining required oversight for the approval process. It’s also important that there are opportunities for human intervention, if needed.
Involve stakeholders throughout the implementation process to ensure buy-in, gather insights about nuances in processes, and address concerns early. Regular communication and training help teams successfully adapt to new automated processes. As any project manager knows, workflow management is both an art and science.
Implement monitoring and analytics from the beginning to track performance, identify issues early, and measure the impact of automation initiatives. Establish clear metrics for success and regularly review automated processes to ensure they continue meeting business objectives and evolving requirements.
Plan for continuous improvement rather than treating automation as a one-time implementation. Build feedback loops that allow workflows to evolve based on performance data, user feedback, and changing business needs. This helps ensure long-term value from automation investments.
Tools for automating workflows
Automation makes repeatable workflows more efficient, allowing team members to spend their time on higher-value work. That said, implementing automation also requires some critical decisions: which processes or parts of processes to automate, and what technology to use. Here are some key features and functionalities that your workflow automation tools will ideally offer:
No-code app builders allow non-technical users to create sophisticated automation through visual interfaces using drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built templates, and intuitive condition settings. You don’t need to have programming knowledge to take advantage of powerful automation capabilities.
AI agents for automation setup allow users to describe what they want to automate in natural language—such as “assign tasks when a project kicks off” or “send reminders for overdue invoices”—and the agent builds the automation for you. These tools reduce the learning curve, accelerate setup, and make automation more accessible across the organization.
Multi-platform integration capabilities connect disparate business applications through APIs and webhooks, allowing for seamless integration between tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, email platforms, project management software, and accounting tools without manual data entry or switching between applications.
Intelligent triggers and conditional logic respond to specific events, data changes, time-based schedules with follow-up reminders, or complex multi-condition scenarios, enabling workflows to make smart decisions about when and how to execute actions based on real-time business conditions and predefined rules.
Data transformation and manipulation features automatically clean, format, validate, and restructure information as it moves through workflows, ensuring data consistency and accuracy while reducing manual processing time and eliminating common data entry errors.
Monitoring and analytics dashboards provide real-time visibility into workflow performance, execution history, error tracking, and success metrics, enabling teams to optimize automated processes and quickly identify and resolve issues before they impact business operations.
How to automate workflows and processes with Airtable
From sending notifications to orchestrating cross-functional work, Airtable Automations are a powerful rules engine that can help you and your team stay connected and do your best work. With Airtable, you can build custom apps without any code to automate essentially any workflow using a drag-and-drop builder.
Even better, add Airtable AI to any workflow to maximize the impact. Airtable AI is flexible enough to advance critical steps across workflows in every team or department—whether you’re categorizing customer feedback, generating product specs or creative briefs, automating internal messages or updates to Slack, gathering competitive intelligence, drafting blog posts or job requisitions, or categorizing budget spend. Our integrations with apps and platforms you’re already using make Airtable an even more practical choice for workflow automation. Learn more about how to create automations in your Airtable base.
Learn how to easily automate your workflows with Airtable
About the author
Airtablepowers digital operations for leading enterprises to accelerate their most critical business processes with AI. Across every industry, leading enterprises trust Airtable to power workflows in product operations, marketing operations, and more – all with the power of AI built-in. More than 500,000 organizations, including 60% of the Global 2000, rely on Airtable for digital operations to help transform how work gets done.
Filed Under
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