What is workflow orchestration? And how to get started

Whether I’m returning from a quick trip to grab coffee (the struggle of working from home) or my wife is coming back from saving actual lives as a nurse, the second either of us opens the door, our dog’s workflow orchestration is unwaveringly consistent and devastatingly effective: grab nearest toy, activate maximum tail velocity, deploy full-body wiggle, and present toy to returning human with what can only be described as weaponized enthusiasm. 

While my pup’s flawlessly sequenced routine is driven by instinct rather than software, it’s a perfect reminder of what great workflow orchestration looks like.

Here, I’ll walk you through what workflow orchestration is, why it matters, and the strategies you can use to bring that same level of consistency and efficiency to your own workflows—with or without a full-body wiggle.

Table of contents:

What is workflow orchestration?

Workflow orchestration is the automated coordination and management of multiple tasks, systems, and data to create a unified end-to-end business process.

Despite sounding like something a band leader with a PMP certification would have on their business card, workflow orchestration is more like the sane, grown-up version of a Rube Goldberg machine. It ensures each step is triggered precisely at the right moment and that if one step gets stuck, someone (or something) notices and fixes the problem before everything else goes off the rails.

In practice, workflow orchestration involves arranging individual automated tasks into coordinated, efficient processes.

For example, when a new customer signs up for your service, you might need to:

• Create their account in your CRM

• Add them to your email marketing platform

• Generate a welcome email

• Trigger an onboarding sequence

• Create a support ticket for account setup

• Notify the customer success team

• Schedule an initial consultation

Workflow orchestration manages this entire process end-to-end, making sure each step happens in the right order, with the right data, at the right time.

With tools like Zapier, workflow orchestration becomes accessible to businesses of all sizes. Instead of having to code custom solutions, you can visually map out your processes and connect various apps and services with no-code, in just a few clicks.

Workflow orchestration vs. workflow automation

While workflow orchestration and workflow automation are sometimes used interchangeably, they represent different levels of process management:

• Workflow automation focuses on automating individual tasks within a workflow so that they can be performed without human intervention. For example, automating the process of sending an order confirmation email or updating inventory when a customer places an order.

• Workflow orchestration integrates the entire sequence of automated tasks to create a complete, end-to-end process, such as managing the order fulfillment process.

Think of automation as teaching a golden retriever to shoot a basketball—it’s impressive but limited in scope. Orchestration is letting that same golden retriever join a basketball team, win the championship, and capture the hearts of the crowd, all while defying all logical sports regulations.

Key components of workflow orchestration

To better understand workflow orchestration, let’s break down the key components:

• Triggers: The events or conditions that kick everything into motion. Similar to how accidentally double-tapping an acquaintance’s Instagram post from 2018 initiates a deluge of panic and shame.

• Actions: These are the individual tasks that make up your workflow.

• Control flow: This is the logic that determines the order and conditions for executing actions.

• Dependency tracking: Remember the domino theory from high school history? This is like that, but less about communist expansion and more about making sure Task B doesn’t start before Task A is complete.

• Task scheduling: This dictates when each part of the workflow should run and in what order.

• Resource allocation: Has anyone else accidentally killed off a character while playing The Sims because you forgot to put a ladder in the pool? Resource allocation is the opposite of that—it ensures your workflow has access to everything it needs when it needs it.

• Error handling and recovery: This anticipates potential failures and defines responses to mitigate disruptions.

• Monitoring and logging: This tracks workflow performance and logs events for transparency, debugging, and compliance.

Benefits of workflow orchestration

Here’s what you get when you orchestrate your workflows:

• Increased efficiency and productivity: By automating tasks and optimizing workflows, businesses reduce manual effort, eliminate bottlenecks, and accelerate processes.

• Reduced errors and improved compliance: Humans are wonderful at many things—creativity, innovation, consuming entire seasons of “Succession” in one sitting. What we’re not great at is performing repetitive tasks without error. Orchestration leads to greater accuracy and consistency, reduced rework, and better compliance with regulations.

• Better scalability and adaptability: Workflow orchestration can easily adapt to changing business needs and scale operations as required—like having stretchy pants for your processes.

• Cost reduction and resource optimization: You know what’s expensive? Paying humans to do robot work. You know what’s less expensive? Letting robots do robot work while humans do human work.

• Improved employee and customer satisfaction: When you free people from mundane tasks, they can focus on more meaningful work—like coming up with increasingly elaborate excuses for missing deadlines. (Though with workflow orchestration, you won’t need those anymore.)

• Better visibility and control: Orchestration provides a centralized view of workflows, offering real-time monitoring to improve visibility and inform decision-making.

Workflow orchestration use cases

Every department in pretty much every company can benefit from a streamlined orchestration workflow. Let’s check out a few departments and how they might benefit.

Marketing

Marketers juggle multiple campaigns, channels, and data sources simultaneously. Workflow orchestration helps automate complex marketing processes like tracking engagement, scheduling follow-ups, and updating dashboards—all while you put all your energy into optimizing your WFH nap schedule.

How marketing teams can use workflow orchestration:

Sales

Workflow orchestration can automate the entire sales process, from lead capture to contract signing, leaving time for your sales team to do what they do best: convincing customers they absolutely need that enterprise plan and expensing lunches.

How sales teams can use workflow orchestration: 

Customer support

Support teams are in the trenches handling endless inquiries while trying not to burn out. From ticket routing to escalation procedures, orchestration allows customer service teams to automate routine processes while maintaining the flexibility to handle unique situations.

How customer service operations can use workflow orchestration:

• Ticket routing: Automatically assign and escalate support tickets with ruthless efficiency based on complexity, priority, and agent availability.

• Knowledge base updates: Coordinate the creation, review, and publication of support documentation across multiple platforms so customers stop asking the same darn questions.

• SLA monitoring: Track and manage service level agreements by automating alerts, escalations, and reporting processes.

eCommerce

Online retailers manage complex operations spanning inventory, orders, and customer data. Workflow orchestration ensures these eCommerce processes work together smoothly.

How eCommerce businesses can use workflow orchestration:

• Order processing: Coordinate the entire order lifecycle from payment verification to fulfillment workflows.

• Customer communications: Automate transactional emails, SMS updates, and shipping notifications tied to real-time order status changes.

• Returns processing: Manage the complex workflow of return authorizations, refund processing, and inventory updates across systems.

Human resources

HR deals with processes that are basically long chains of paperwork and approvals. Workflow orchestration ensures smooth operations by automating HR functions while keeping compliance goblins at bay.

How HR departments can use workflow orchestration:

• Employee onboarding: Coordinate system access, equipment provisioning, and training assignments across different departments.

• Performance reviews: Orchestrate the collection of feedback, scheduling of reviews, and documentation processes.

• Benefits administration: Automate enrollment processes, changes, and updates across multiple benefits providers and systems.

Accounting

Accounting teams deal with complex financial processes where precision and compliance are non-negotiable. Workflow orchestration ensures accuracy, cuts manual effort, and keeps chaos in check.

How accounting teams can use workflow orchestration:

IT operations

If there’s one department that should never do things manually, it’s IT. These are the people who babysit critical infrastructure and systems that love to break. Workflow orchestration helps coordinate and automate IT processes while reducing manual intervention.

How IT management can use workflow orchestration:

• Access management: Automate user access across systems while maintaining security protocols.

• System maintenance: Coordinate backup processes, updates, and maintenance windows across different systems and environments.

• Incident response: Streamline alert management, diagnostic processes, and recovery procedures during system outages.

How to implement workflow orchestration

Implementing workflow orchestration might feel daunting if you’re used to manual processes or a scattered set of automation tools. But by taking a structured approach, I promise it will be considerably less scary than one of those DIY YouTube tutorials that starts with “First, build your own forge.”

1. Identify and map processes

The first step in implementing an orchestration workflow is figuring out what the heck is actually happening in your business. This is like inspecting your refrigerator before a big grocery run, except instead of finding leftovers in various phases of decomposition, you discover that the office manager has been manually entering data into seven different spreadsheets because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” (Both are equally stomach-churning.)

Identify workflows that will benefit most from orchestration. Look for processes that span multiple departments or tools and cause frequent confusion or delays. Examples might include lead handoffs between marketing and sales, order fulfillment, or onboarding sequences.

Once you know which workflows you want to tackle, map them out. Document the current steps as they stand, even if they’re messy. Ask yourself:

• Where do requests come in?

• Who handles which part?

• What tools are used at each stage?

• Are there any bottlenecks where delays occur, tasks that frequently fail, or places where you rely on manual effort for something repetitive?

Gather input from stakeholders who live these workflows daily. They’ll know where the hiccups are and how to fix them.

Once you have a clear map, look for opportunities to automate and orchestrate. Start with a single process that’s important enough to matter but not so critical that if it breaks, the whole company implodes.

2. Choose the right orchestration tool

Picking a workflow orchestration tool is like choosing a spouse. You’re going to be stuck with it for a long time, and it’s exhausting to change your mind, so you should prioritize a partner that’s reliable, adaptable, and doesn’t drive you crazy.

When choosing a workflow orchestrator, consider factors like:

• The complexity of your workflows

• Required integrations with existing systems

• The technical expertise of your team

• Budget constraints

• Scalability requirements

Zapier (whose blog you’re on right now) is a no-code workflow orchestration tool that can automate your business-critical processes across departments. Zapier has helped companies do everything from employee onboarding to lead management to end-to-end operations.

Zapier isn’t alone in this space—here are some other available tools, though they also require code to use.

3. Integrate with various systems and applications

Your workflows don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re hooking into CRMs, ERPs, marketing automation platforms, Slack channels, and (probably) some poor soul’s personal Dropbox being used for critical business files. Before you start orchestrating, audit what you have.

Which apps do you rely on most? Where does your data live? Identify the key integration points. For example, maybe you need to feed marketing leads from your form builder into your CRM and then trigger a task in your project management app.

Implement the tasks within your workflow using the appropriate tools and technologies for each step. Many modern tools support webhooks and APIs for seamless connectivity. This is technical speak for “make things talk to each other without breaking.” If you’re not technical, find someone who is and bribe them with coffee—or use Zapier, which takes this step out of the process.

It’s very important to test everything thoroughly before you go live. I cannot stress this enough. Set up a staging environment and run through multiple scenarios to make sure data passes between systems exactly as intended.

4. Monitor, track, and optimize workflows

Just because you got your workflows up and running doesn’t mean you’re off the hook—you need to make sure they’re up to snuff. Look at the metrics. How long does each step take? Where are errors popping up?

Good workflow orchestration tools come with monitoring features and logging capabilities that help you diagnose issues before they become big problems.

Even the best systems can encounter setbacks—maybe an API rate limit hits or a third-party system goes down. Your orchestrator should let you prepare for that, like rerouting tasks or sending alerts.

By monitoring performance metrics and planning for errors, you can fine-tune your workflows over time and continuously improve your operations.

Orchestrate your workflows with Zapier

After reading roughly 2,500 words explaining workflow orchestration in increasingly tortured metaphors, you’re probably thinking, “Great, but how do I actually get started?”

With Zapier Canvas, you can visualize your workflows from beginning to end, so you can design and manage complex workflows. Then, when you’re ready, you can launch your workflows all on Zapier, using the built-in database, interface builder, and chatbot tool, along with AI help along the way. Discover the right workflows for your role.

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