Feature highlight: Automations

Planning involves a lot of stakeholders. Chasing for their input, feedback, or approval can turn into a full time job, which means getting the right people involved at exactly the right time is a serious time saver - especially at month end.

That’s exactly what one of Pigment’s newer features, Automations, is designed to help you with. 

Once set up, Automations continuously monitor your data and notify stakeholders immediately when their attention is needed - saving you time that’d otherwise be spent chasing for a response.

How do they work?

Automations allow members to define specific conditions that trigger notifications to other Members. Automations work by defining a trigger based on any Metric and a corresponding action. 

The trigger defines the exact value and conditions that must be met in order to send the action. The action then defines which members receive a notification and the contents of the notification.

If you need to get granular, recipients can be direct (they will always receive a notification) or conditional. Conditional recipients will only receive a notification based on the specific items assigned to them from any given Metric - for example, you might only want to notify people from a certain geography.

And if the person receiving the notification isn’t a regular user of Pigment, they can choose to receive it as an email too, ensuring they don’t miss it.

There are two main use cases for automations that we’re seeing users employing:

Monitoring automations
Alerts or notifications when metrics achieve a certain value so you can proactively analyze, investigate and/or act on the information.

Collaboration automations
Notifications that aid in approval or validation flows, making it easier and more efficient to work together in Pigment

Use cases

So how does this all work in practice? Let’s examine a few different use cases.

Workforce planning

Monitoring

Notify finance and department lead if headcount cost is exceeding the budget so that TBH positions can be reassessed and prioritized proactively

Collaboration

When a new headcount request is submitted, notify the finance team to approve it. Once it’s approved, notify the Talent Acquisition team to start the hiring process

FP&A

Monitoring

If a budget variance metric is outside the acceptable range, notify the person who needs to take action so they can do so proactively

Collaboration

When your department heads submit their budget for review, notify the relevant finance team members to review and approve

Sales Performance Management

Monitoring:

Signal that a threshold value is reached, such as a quota or sales target, to the relevant stakeholders

Collaboration:

When your sales team lead submits the incentive compensation plan for approval, notify your finance team to approve it

Next steps

Interested to find out more? Join our next live tour and ask for a demo.