Organizations, companies, or businesses indulge in repetitive tasks/processes every day. Often, these tasks are mandatory for their seamless business functions. Most of them are similar tasks that follow the same procedure. For instance, hiring employees, file transfers, payroll, approval processes are a few tasks that every organization undergoes regularly.
Asking your employees to do such stereotypical tasks daily can affect their productivity. It means you are also wasting resources. Thus, most organizations understood the problem earlier and started investing in Business Process Automation (BPA).
Businesses started relying on digital systems to manage data and access real-time information. With more workload, these complex and high-volume work environments became impossible to manage without automation. Thus, businesses started acting fast and automated their business processes to stay competitive.
Business Process Automation (BPA) enabled organizations to shift their tedious and repetitive tasks to create improved and efficient workflows. That further allowed businesses to have enterprise-wide visibility and control.
Yes, automation can help businesses by actively managing data and dependencies across various tools and technologies. Thus, organizations can accommodate the changing business needs quickly.
What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?
Business Process Automation (BPA) involves using technology to automate complex business processes. Organizations often automate the recurring tasks or processes in their business, replacing the manual efforts.
In other words, businesses can make use of advanced technologies to automate repeatable and day-to-day tasks. Thus, they can speed up the work by routing the data to the right person at the right time through predefined protocols. Hence, BPA can help organizations streamline their processes, increase efficiency, and minimize costs.
You can consider automating your business process if:
- It is repeatable
- It is consistent across the organization
- It needs to be error-free consistently.
The most common business processes that organizations often automate are employee onboarding, accounts payable, contract management, etc.
Who Can Automate Their Business Processes?
Any business from any industry can automate its process and use the technology to its advantage. Here are a few of the most common business sectors that often automate their processes to streamline their business functions.
★ Banking
The banking sector is one of the biggest industries with a massive customer base. Automation has almost revolutionized the banking sector. It enabled the banks to serve their customers efficiently and promptly.
Yes, banking is available on digital platforms. It only takes a few minutes to get your checks cleared and transfer your funds. However, this was not the case years before. Banking automation enabled the customers to enjoy faster responses. Thus, one can manage their finances effortlessly.
★ Manufacturing Industries
Automation replaced the need for manual approvals for business processes like document flow management or procurement activities in the manufacturing industry. Automation allows digital document workflow that helps organizations to reduce a lot of paperwork. Thus, it improves the overall efficiency of day-to-day operations.
★ Telecommunications
The Telecom industry is drastically expanding with an extensive customer base. Customer service, renewing subscriptions, managing orders, addressing queries, making profile updates are some recurrent processes that need automation for seamless service.
★ Healthcare
Healthcare is one such industry that cannot afford any errors or mistakes. Any error or misinformation in a prescription can be fatal. Automation can bring all these manual errors to nil in the healthcare industry.
Automation allows hospitals with their day-to-day activities. It can be anything like maintaining patient records, medicine lists, doctor appointment details, etc. Automation has made life a lot easier for both patients and health care professionals.
★ Internet and Online Businesses
Automation enabled businesses to serve their customers online 24/7. Also, local brands can go global and reach a wider audience by automating their business processes.
Customers can order your products from anywhere in the world. The automated sales funnel will guide them through the purchase processes and deliver the products effortlessly. Thus, businesses can make sales all day all night regardless of the timezone.
Automation helps in generating leads, marketing, sales, and social media management promptly.
Business Process Automation Examples
As we discussed, though you can automate any business processes. Here are some of the most common examples that organizations automate.
⇾ Onboarding New Employees
Hiring employees is one such activity that organizations encounter very often. Onboarding and hiring new employees demand a substantial amount of time, tasks, and dedicated resources. Multiple works like filling out employee forms, arranging training programs, collecting documents, setting up bank accounts, and assigning mentors, the list goes endless.
Doing all of them by yourself can be a daunting job and a chaotic process. With automation, you can automatically deliver forms, arrange training sessions and assign mentors. Thus, organizations can be sure of smooth transitions of their new employees by keeping relevant employees in the loop.
⇾ Purchase Orders
Purchase order requests are one of the recurring processes in most organizations. Often, the requesting team fills out the form and sends it to the purchasing team. The respective authority either approves or rejects by examining the information. Rejection sends the form back to the requesting crew. In case of approval, the company sends the purchase order copies to the supplier and the inventory team.
Business Process Automation (BPA) can automatically approve the purchase requests if it stays the same every time. Thus, it saves a lot of time filling, sending, and accepting the forms.
Automation enables transparency, improved accountability, and accurate data recording. It allows relevant stakeholders to access data when necessary. It also retains all process-related communication within the workflow, encouraging easier and faster execution.
⇾ Operations Management
Operation management is one of the administrative practices that involves converting materials and labor into goods and services efficiently. Thus, operations management is one such business process that links directly to the revenue of the organization.
Operations management is a complex process that demands monitoring the work of a large team of employees. Business owners cannot track the progress of the projects without interacting with the supervisors or team leaders.
Automating the entire operation management process will allow the entrepreneurs to track the status of the raw materials, records, stores, people, and action steps in any project. Also, it provides a seamless workflow. For instance, if one employee completes his/her task, the BPA system automatically notifies the other employee about their new task.
Why Should You Automate Your Business Processes?
You can use Business Process Automation(BPA) for many reasons. Let us discuss the motives behind the BPA. Businesses generally automate their process for the following reasons.
♦ Enables Digital Transformation
Every business needs an online presence these days. Though many of them are already online, some are still struggling to bring their businesses digital. Such entrepreneurs can use BPA as a stepping stone to adopt the technology and give their business a digital transformation gradually. One can start automating a few of their repetitive processes and keep adding more tasks to them.
♦ Encourages Clarity
In an organization with many projects and several people working on them, it is challenging for the business owners to track everyone and every project. Automation allows them to identify the tasks and the people responsible for them. Thus, the organizations can maintain a seamless workflow.
Process mapping can further give clarity to all employees and can act as a training resource too. Thus, automation can bridge the gap between your business processes and makes them seamless.
♦ Streamlines Processes
Businesses often need Business Process Automation (BPA) to streamline their process and avoid chaos. Yes, it eliminates manual errors and aids transparency. Thus, automation ensures accountability, valuable insights, and faster responses. Organizations can enhance their tasks and save time.
♦ Standardize Operations
Automating your business process will aid you in standard outcomes every time. Standardized operations mean seamless service to the customers. Thus, they will start seeing your business as a reliable and trustworthy business.
♦ Improved Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction varies from one industry to another. However, automation can improve overall operational functions allowing you to exceed customer expectations every time. When you give standards consistently, customers are more likely to stick with your business.
What Business Process Should You Automate?
There is no hard and fast rule for automating business processes. You can automate any business processes you feel worth automating. However, here are some of the factors that indicate the need for automation.
- Involves high-volume of tasks
- Demands multiple people to execute tasks
- Requires to finish it on time
- Causes significant impact on other processes of the organization
- Needs compliance and audit trails
If any of your business activity demands the above-stated points, you can consider automating them. To get a better understanding, we have come up with a list of business processes that organizations generally automate.
- Payroll
- Employee leave requests
- Helpdesk support
- Email and push notifications
- Procurement
- Sales orders
- Invoicing
- Time and attendance tracking
Benefits of Business Process Automation
⦿ Aids Improved Operational Efficiency
Automated processes mean less human effort. Yes, you need not personally verify every single task. The system itself identifies and corrects errors preventing any bottleneck in workflows. Thus, it improves the overall operational efficiency of the business.
⦿ Reduces Overhead Costs
When your employee manually executes your everyday business processes, it comes with a cost. You will need more resources, and you have to pay them accordingly. Automation encourages limited resources. Also, you can use your resources more effectively by assigning them to handle other essential tasks. Thus, you can generate more profits at a reduced overhead cost.
⦿ Excellent Customer Service
Automating your business processes will allow you to serve your customers promptly every time. Yes, with automation, you can make sure your products and services reach your customers on time. With Artificial Intelligence and other advanced technologies, businesses can resolve their customer queries immediately.
⦿ Aids Effective Document Management
Maintaining documents and records manually can be a daunting and time-consuming task. Despite that, there are high chances of errors too. With automation, businesses can streamline data organization efficiently. Yes, one can secure confidential data with role-based access. The correct data reaches the right person at the right time.
⦿ Supreme Employee Morale
Automation simplifies the business processes providing a hassle-free environment for employees. When the repetitive and stereotypical processes are taken care of by automation, the employees can perform way better. Also, automation enables approvals faster, ensuring employees do not wait for managers to approve the process.
Best Practices For Business Process Automation
Yes, Business process automation can bring immense advantages to your business. However, merely signing up for the BPA tool will not guarantee any success. You would need to follow some practices to automate your business processes.
Here are a few steps that you can take while automating your business processes.
- ⦿ Make sure you understand what tasks are involved, who is responsible, and when to execute each task.
- ⦿ Define your goals precisely before automating your business process. That will save you a lot of time in course correction.
- ⦿ Do not expect results overnight. Using a phased approach and taking a little long time to evaluate your outcome can help you precisely.
- ⦿ Dedicate time to train your employees and allow them to adjust to their new tasks.
- ⦿ Stay positive and maintain a long-term outlook. Trust the process. Thus, you can generate good ROI eventually.
Conclusion
Automating your business processes is no more a choice in this competitive and uncertain market. When the whole world is running behind automation and staying competent, you would need to switch if you still haven’t automated your processes. However, experts highly recommend taking time and analyzing your business needs before automation.
What could be working for other businesses need not work for you. Even with similar business niches and industries, the needs will vary. So are your business processes. Hence, take time to identify the right task that needs automation.
Now, after automating your business processes, do not expect immediate results. Train your employees and allow them to understand their new tasks. When the tedious and time-consuming tasks are automated, your employees will now have more time to focus on other crucial business functions. Thus, your business will generate a higher ROI at a relatively lesser cost.
