With increasing complexities, many business processes are better automated.
Business process automation has become a catchphrase in the organised sector. With that said, it isn’t a new fad or trend in the business world. The first noteworthy implementation of business process automation was done by Henry Ford in 1913, through the use of moving assembly lines for mass production. The rest, as they say, is history!
Business process automation doesn’t just save a significant amount of time and resources spent on rudimentary tasks, but also has several other significant benefits that can help organisations take their operations to the next level. With that being said, close to a quarter of businesses still haven’t implemented process automation yet.
If you are a business leader or an organisation interested in learning about business process automation, streamlining business operations and setting the goal for IT transformation, you have come to the right page! In this article, we will highlight several reasons for this and also share with you some use cases and examples to explain how your organisation can benefit from business process automation. But before we dive in, let’s understand what business process automation is.
An activity or a set of activities that help accomplish specific business goals, such as bringing on new customers, producing a product, or generating sales, is known as a business process.
Business process automation (or BPA, in short) refers to the use of technology to execute business processes and associated tasks with minimal human intervention. It makes use of automation tools, cloud platforms and process intelligence capabilities to automate mundane, day-to-day tasks, and workflows. The purpose for implementing BPA is typically one or more of the following:
Generally speaking, any tasks that are recurring, high volume, time-sensitive, require strict compliance or audit trails, and involve multiple people for execution are the right candidates for automation. Almost all business functions, including but not limited to operations, management, human resources, marketing, customer support, analytics and supply chain can benefit from business process automation.
For example, you can set up an HR system that handles employee onboarding automatically by sending out a welcome email, generating security credentials and configuring financial details in the backend (or compensation system).
In the Analysis phase, you review your business processes and identify the tasks that need to be automated and the ideal technology solution required for the job.
In the Implementation phase, you set up and start using the newly configured system. This phase also includes documentation of the technical aspects of the process and conducting user testing to ensure the solution is feasible and reliable.
The third phase involves API integration, which allows the new system to communicate flawlessly with the existing ones.
In the fourth and final phase, you identify flaws in your automated processes and unblock any bottlenecks that can be identified.
Business process automation is an important stepping stone to the digital transformation of an organisation. It can support a culture of ongoing process improvements that can otherwise seem like an overwhelming goal to work towards.
By implementing business process transformation you can identify the bottlenecks in your existing business processes and identify which ones need a course correction.
When you create a process map before automating your business processes it offers you plenty of insights into the functioning of your processes. This process map can also serve as a company resource and a training tool for your employees to understand exactly how each process operates and know the people responsible for handling the process.
Standardisation is key to maintaining compliance with quality assurance parameters and delivering products or services with a greater level of predictability. When you can expect consistent outcomes from your business operations, it helps build trust with your customers.
Errors can prove costly for your business. Business process automation can offer you the ability to constantly monitor processes and watch out for errors and even fix the errors as they occur. Not just that, you can also generate performance reports that can provide you with insights that enable you to identify recurring errors and take preventive measures against them.
Inefficient business processes can cost your business a lot in the long run. Business process automation can help you identify and remove any inefficiencies which can in turn improve the efficiency of your business processes.
When you automate the tasks that take a lot more time when performed manually, you can expect much faster turnaround times. This way you can move the supply chain faster and promise quicker delivery to your customers.
Once your business process has been automated, you will find yourself in a position to better allocate your workforce and redirect the focus of your employees to tasks that are more crucial for your business operations than the menial tasks that used to keep them occupied. As a result, your operational cost will go down and the productivity of your employees will go up.
As you may already know a single human error can have a significant impact on the affected workflows and even the supply chain. With fewer manual interventions, the degree of human error also goes down and that’s how business process automation helps you cut down on human error and improve the accuracy of the outputs.
In the highly competitive marketplace that most businesses operate in, flawless customer service is the name of the game. By standardising your operations, cutting down on errors and offering faster turnaround times, you can please your customers like never before.
Here are a few examples to illustrate how you can implement business process automation in some common areas of business operations.
When it comes to operations management it’s important to track, record and store the details of task progress in any given project. With the help of business process automation, you can assign tasks to the respective employees, get notified when an employee has finished their task and automatically assign the job to the next person responsible to pick it up from there. This way you can rest assured that the projects are on track to completion without you having to speak to the respective team leaders or supervisors.
It requires a substantial amount of time and resources for hiring and onboarding new employees. By relying on business process automation you can deliver welcome emails, send out forms, schedule training sessions, assign mentors and configure financial details in the backend and much more without lifting a finger.
Responding to each customer support ticket individually can be very exhausting and time-consuming for your team. With business process automation, you can create standard replies to some of the most common problems that your team encounters on a frequent basis and push them out to your customers automatically. By doing this, you can effortlessly handle a big chunk of support tickets in almost no time and have your customer support team focus on the tickets that require more of their attention.
Another example of recurring tasks that can be automated is the processing of purchase order requests. By implementing business process automation in this area of a business you can automatically approve purchase orders based on specific criteria, while also recording the details that can be reviewed by the decision-makers whenever required.
Perhaps you have a well-defined process for social media management that involves your marketing team managing your social media accounts posting updates and analysing the performance manually. With the help of business process automation, you can not only schedule the posts ahead of time, but also get performance reports of your social media accounts generated and delivered to you automatically.
In addition to this here are some more areas of business where you can take advantage of business process automation:
Business process automation can help unblock the true potential of your business operations and can have a direct impact on your bottom line. With that being said, you need to work with a team of business IT and automation professionals who can understand your specific needs and implement enterprise-level solutions that can integrate with your existing systems, without causing a disruption or downtime.
If you are serious about streamlining your business operations and scaling your business to the next level, get in touch with our team of business automation experts today!
