Introduction

If you google “future of work,” you’ll see hundreds of articles with theories about the kind of work that people (or robots) will do and how they will do it.

Well, the future is now. How people work has changed.

As the pandemic forced fundamental changes to how — and where — we work, no-code data management workspaces (which first began gaining steam over 10 years ago) got their time to shine.

All of a sudden, anyone who was looking for an efficient software solution discovered that no-code platforms helped them

• Automate their data-related tasks in new ways
• Collaborate with teammates efficiently, no matter where they were
• Effortlessly connect their data and information with third-party solutions
• Customize their workflows based on how they do their best work
• Work securely, with multiple access levels built for different stakeholders

As a result, the popularity of no-code productivity platforms grew exponentially. That growth reflected a sea change in the type of tools we prefer to work with: solutions that marry the power of database management with multifunctional, tabular-based workspaces.

Getting data automation right

Automation — of data, tasks, processes, and workflows — is intrinsic to the future of work.

In late 2020, Salesforce surveyed global IT and engineering leaders (half of whom were VPs or CTOs). They measured the ROI of automation initiatives in a number of ways — namely, through employee time saved (44 percent), costs saved (26 percent), and faster operations (26 percent).

It’s more important than ever to identify the automation features you need to make your workflow more efficient.

Because automation is involved in all your workflows, you require an agile, cloud-based solution (typically no-code or low-code) that works seamlessly whether you’re in person or remote.

Teams today must be able to adapt to new processes and tools to do their best work. They need tools that use AI — not as a claim to say they have it — but to streamline automation and increase productivity.

We all know folks have varying levels of technical aptitude, so it helps if the solutions you employ are as user-friendly and flexible as possible.

The catalyst for many automated workflows is data. The platform you use to collect your data plays a central role in how and where you use automation later on — and impacts your team’s productivity down the line.

Get data automation right, and you’ll prepare your organization to navigate today’s workforce landscape and the future of work.

A Gartner survey revealed that 80 percent of executives think automation can be applied to any business decision. While that may reveal a bit more enthusiasm than warranted, the fact remains that integrating workflow automation is key to your organization’s productivity and future.

And let’s be real, with the number of workflow solutions and tools available in the marketplace today, we’ve reached a saturation point. There are so many tools that

• Offer the same or similar functionality
• Have the same look and feel
• Have an “app”

We can barely keep up, and we work in this space!

However, we believe the key component of best-in-class tools is a workspace solution that enables the ultimate in collaboration: a front-end design (for initial data collection) along with a backend design (for automated data storage with access/security levels for multiple stakeholders).

In today’s tech environment, you need

• To automate not just the storage of your data and assets but their connection with third-party solutions in order to save time
• Visualizations and dashboards to analyze and understand what your collected data is telling you
• To share and collaborate on your data to be more efficient

It’s our job to make this possible in one no-code, easy-to-use workspace, so you can spend more time doing what matters.

Wait a second, our workflows have been reinvented?!

Back in the day, it seemed everyone relied on the good old spreadsheet to handle a multitude of tasks.

What was once conceived as a digital ledger to help with accounting-like tasks somehow became a catch-all for any and every need, and — importantly — for all organizations and roles.

Need to manage a project? Use a spreadsheet. Need to create charts to analyze your data? Use a spreadsheet. Need to create a dashboard or organize your sales team’s workload? Well, you know…

In addition to the fact that spreadsheets are often used to do things they’re not designed to do,

• They aren’t very secure
• Their data visualizations are clunky and unsatisfactory
• Communicating with stakeholders directly from spreadsheet entries is difficult if not impossible
• Reporting from a spreadsheet is difficult
• Spreadsheets aren’t built to manage non-numerical data
• Collaborating with others on a spreadsheet leads to overwritten data and confusion

A handful of integrated, no-code workspace solutions were built to ensure that your tools are customizable based on your people’s (and your business’s) needs, not the other way around. Naturally, spreadsheets are woefully bad at this. Rethinking and reinventing how people work started with the gaps that spreadsheets couldn’t fill.

We constantly think about ways to help you gather the information you need to grow your business. As a result, the idea of building an integrated, no-code collaborative workspace — that you can customize to share, manage, organize, analyze, and present the form data that comes to you organically — became a no-brainer.

The result is a powerful suite of automation tools that include Jotform Tables, Inbox, Report Builder, and Form Analytics. Individually and collectively, this suite of tools is a great way to handle all the tasks associated with your data for today’s integrated workplace.

The sky’s the limit in terms of how you can automate your post-submission data so it works for your needs!

Combined with our best-in-class Form Builder, Jotform Tables maximizes data collection, management, and post campaign workflow from beginning to end — all with industry-leading security protecting your customers’ information.

In this guide, we’ll highlight key features, talk about the latest updates, walk through popular user types, and share stories of how some of our current users work with these automation solutions.

We aim to help you and inspire you to automate your data!

Works cited

Gartner. TechWave: Artificial intelligence annual survey findings (2022). https://www.gartner.com/ document/4016478

Salesforce. How IT leaders are using workflow automation to save time and money (2020). https:// www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/fueling-productivity-with-process-automation/