Are you interested in running your business more efficiently?

Then, perhaps you should incorporate business process automation into the way your organization operates.

With modernization, business automation is becoming more and more common across various industries. In fact, workflow automation is considered one of the critical aspects for growing your revenue and satisfying customers.

In this article, we will learn more about what business process automation is and why it matters.

What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?

Business process automation is described as the use of technology to carry out recurring tasks or processes. It most commonly occurs in businesses where manual effort can be easily replaced.

BPA is mainly done to reduce costs, streamline processes and boost efficiency of your business. It mainly relies on advanced technology, automation tools, cloud platforms and process intelligence capabilities.

Business process automation solutions are typically complex. As such, they can be specifically tailored to fit the needs of your business.

What is a Business Process?

A business process refers to any set of activities that help your business achieve a certain goal. Generally, they tend to involve repeatable processes.

Business processes usually begin with an action, and can span multiple of your business departments. Automating your workflow steps within your business process allows you to increase efficiency. 

Why is Business Process Automation important?

The aim of BPA is to make your business processes more streamlined, cost-effective, transparent and error-proof. 

Using automated processes allows your business to save time. Furthermore, you can also ensure the best practices are incorporated. Thus, improving your overall operational efficiency. 

Business Processes You Should Automate

It is a fact that almost any business process can be enhanced using automation. When deciding which processes should undergo automation, here are some characteristics to look for:

• The process should be consistent across your organization
• Your process has minimum room for error
• The process should be recurring

In addition, tasks that are time-sensitive, need compliance, high volume and involve multiple people are also candidates for business automation. 

Examples of Business Process Automation 

Let’s now examine some examples of business processes that can be automated:

1) Employee Onboarding

Although hiring of employees may appear simple in nature, the process actually involves multiple tasks. For example, arranging training sessions, filling out employee information forms, collecting important documents, mentor assignment, etc.

Without the use of business automation, the whole process becomes a bit chaotic. As such, it could lead to employee dissatisfaction, high volumes of paperwork, missed tasks and overall low productivity.

Using BPA in your employee onboarding process helps with smooth transitions between tasks and increases visibility of process status. Alongside this, it also allows you to keep relevant employees in the loop.

2) IT Service Desk Support

Typically, the high volume of incoming IT tickets often surpasses the capacity of IT staff responsible for them. 

In such scenarios, you can use automation to swiftly accomplish various tasks. For example, the analyzing, routing and classification of incoming tickets to concerned personnel, service updates to customers, etc.

In fact, advanced business automation tools even incorporate AI. You can use the AI to predict, manage and solve common issues faced by users.

3) Purchase Orders

In most businesses, purchase orders are recurring processes.Here, the requesting party has to fill out a form and send it to the purchasing team. The authority in charge of approval then examines the request.

In the case of inadequate information or budgetary constraints, the request is rejected. It is then sent back to the requesting team. If it’s approved, a purchase order will be made.

A lack of business process automation could delay your purchase order approval and result in incomplete records. Not only this, it could also impact your productivity and cause errors in the purchase order.

4) Onboarding New Customers

In finance industries such as banking, insurance, etc., companies must conduct background checks on any new customers. 

They need to then inform the relevant local as well as federal governments when onboarding them. In such situations, BPA helps you greatly streamline these processes. 

Moreover, with the use of AI, you can automate many manual steps. Furthermore, faster automated processes lead to improved customer satisfaction.

5) Marketing Automation

Marketing automation enables your business to target your customers with automated messages across multiple channels. You can make use of websites, text messages, email and social media to generate more sales leads. 

Business automation technology is generally used by marketing departments to get rid of repetitive tasks. Thus, ensuring smoother workflows and boosting marketing efficiency.

Benefits of Business Process Automation

Business process automation allows you to eliminate issues that can lead to loss of time and revenue. 

With business automation, improvements in control and efficiency can spread to every part of your business. As a result, this leads to improved productivity and better customer experiences.

Here are some of the main benefits of business process automation:

1) Saving Time

BPA saves your employees a lot of valuable time.In this way, it enables them to work smarter. By automating recurrent and rule-based tasks, your employees can focus on important work like that which involves critical thinking. 

2) Increased Productivity

According to statistics, organizations that utilize business automation often experience an increase in productivity. This is because machines are able to perform various tasks simultaneously. Thus, speeding up these processes.

Furthermore, relying on technology to help with tasks, allows employees to finish more work in the same amount of time.

3) Improved Profits

Although routine processes are important for any business to function, they don’t create any value for your customers. As such, spending time manually carrying out these processes often leads to lost profit.

Using business process automation, your business can increase profitability. By allowing machines to handle mundane repetitive tasks, you can focus on activities that provide value to your customers.

4) More Efficiency

BPA helps your business complete tedious tasks with minimum resources. In fact, companies are able to get faster and more reliable results with significantly lower costs. This goes a long way in boosting efficiency of your business.

5) Reduction of Errors

Even some of the most experienced and skilled employees can make a mistake. Certain states of absent-mindedness, lack of attention, forgetfulness and multitasking can affect how your employees perform. This is especially true when it comes to carrying out routine tasks.

However, unlike humans, computers and machines don’t forget. Moreover, they do not get distracted or tired. As a result, companies automate such processes to reduce the likelihood of human error.

6) Enhanced Customer Experience

In these times, convenience alongside fast access to products and services are of great importance to customers.

BPA can lead to quicker response times, enable data-based personalization and consistency across various channels. As a whole, this improves your customers’ experience and interactions and helps distinguish your business from your competition.

7) Better Standardization

Oftentimes, multiple employees will have to perform the same processes in very different ways. However, these ways might not always be efficient. 

Automation solutions help you follow steps to complete tasks and don’t deviate from rules you create. Hence, business process automation helps obtain consistent results, standardize specific processes and improve transparency across your organization.

8) Improved Scalability

Due to lack of scalability, manual processes can negatively impact business growth. For example, more resources are needed for manual invoicing a hundred clients than when invoicing ten. As such, businesses aren’t always able to court. 

In comparison, automated processes are much more scalable. Furthermore, machines perform tasks at a faster rate compared to humans.They can also easily handle increases in demand, workload and your customer base.

Conclusion

Overall, automation helps any business boost their efficiency. This is just as true when it comes to business process automation.

Business Process Automation allows you to save on time as well as unnecessary manual efforts. Not only this, but it also has a very positive impact on your business’ productivity.

For all these reasons, it’s worth considering which processes within your business stand to benefit from business automation!