Think about it, it wasn’t long back that if you had to enjoy a refreshing cup of coffee early in the morning, you had to get out of bed and work your around the coffee maker with one eye open, trying to keep yourself awake. Now though, with smart coffee makers, you can wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and kickstart your day.
Businesses today have a similar option as well: continue to operate through sleepish manual processes or change the way they work through automation.
What is business process automation?
Business process automation (BPA) is a method by which organizations can increase efficiency by leveraging technologies to carry out core business processes with little to no human intervention.
By changing the onus of responsibility of completing routine manual tasks from human beings to machines, BPA allows employees to spend more time on activities that result in high business impact.
What business processes can be automated?
Any machine excels at following a set of clearly defined steps. This means, BPA works successfully for rule-based processes. Some examples include:
- Invoice processing
- Expense management
- Document management
- Employee onboarding
- Data entry
- Project management
- Data deletion
A Formstack survey from 2018 of over 280 companies in the U.S revealed that 62% of respondents reported three or even more process inefficiencies that could be resolved through automation. The results also showed that managers spend around 8 hours weekly on tasks involving manual data entry. In fact, around 25 percent of respondents reported that they spent 20 hours a week on manual data-related tasks.
If you’re wondering how automated processes are a step up over manual ones, let’s look at a comparison study to understand this better.
Automated process vs. Manual processes: a comparison
| Manual Process | Automated Process | |
| Management | Human intervention is needed at every step to move the process forward. | The system auto-assigns tasks and moves it sequentially without any intervention. |
| Reminder system | Manually sent by a human to everyone. | Reminders can be saved beforehand to be sent at specified times. |
| Storage | Forms, receipts, and documents need to be stored in different places. | All digital documents are stored in the same place. |
| Form filling | All data in a form needs to be filled manually. | Some fields are auto-filled which ensures there’s no data entry error. |
| Tracking | Employees must manually send messages to everyone involved in the process to know where an item is. | The system is updated in real-time with the status of every item. |
| Audit trail | Easy to provide falsified information and employees might even miss out on such minor details. | The system verifies every report, and logs every action taken with accurate time. |
| Communication | Work-related communication often happen outside the context of work (messaging, email) | All forms of communication remains with the tool itself. |
The benefits of business process automation
Business process automation evens out the rough patches of a process that are often the causes of lost time and revenue. These little improvements in control and efficiency are reflected in every corner of the organization – from higher levels of productivity and compliance to much better customer satisfaction and performance.
Listed below are the main benefits of business process automation
1. Saved time
BPA ensures your employees have to work smarter and not harder by saving them a great deal of time.
By letting machines complete repetitive, rule-based tasks, employees can free up their time to shift focus to tasks that need their attention, creativity, or that additional human touch.
2. Better profits
Keep in mind that while routine tasks are necessary to sustain a business, they do not create value for your customers. Thus, if these processes are done manually, the results can often show up in lower profit levels.
BPA helps organizations increase their profit ratio by letting machines take over mundane activities and letting employees spend more time on tasks that add value to customers.
3. Increased productivity
BPA also enables organizations to boost their productivity levels. The reason being machines can handle multiple tasks simultaneously, which decreases the time needed for completion.
This means employees can get more work done in the same amount of time by relying on technology.
4. Better efficiency
BPA lets organizations complete tedious tasks with minimal resources. Companies can get reliable results much faster with lower costs, thereby improving their internal efficiency.
5. Reduced errors
Human beings are prone to mistakes. Inattentiveness, absent-mindedness, forgetfulness, and even multitasking can hinder the performance of an employee – more so if they are doing routine tasks.
But luckily, unlike human beings, computers don’t forget. They also don’t get tired or distracted. Automation, therefore, nullifies the likelihood of a human error ever occurring.
6. Standardization
Every employee performs the same process in different ways. Unfortunately though, these ways may not be the most efficient.
Automation solutions, on the other hand, always follow the same set of steps to complete a routine task. BPA can help you standardize a process, ensure results are achieved consistently and improve organizational transparency.
7. Stay audit-ready
BPA ensures every step of the process is recorded to form a detailed audit trail. This ensures that you can:
- Track every subsequent step in the process
- See a record of all the changes made
Having a detailed audit trail also enables companies to establish their compliance with respect to official controls.
8. Better compliance
BPA simplifies regulatory compliance. By enforcing security controls like encryption, and role-based access, it enables organizations to meet GDPR’s data protection requirements.
9. Improved customer experience
Today’s customers care about two things – instant access and convenience.
BPA enables your organization to have faster response times and data-driven personalization while maintaining the same levels of consistency across different channels.
This improves the overall customer experience and lets companies distinguish themselves from the competition.
10. Scalable processes
Manual processes can easily hinder business growth as they can’t be scaled easily. For instance, sending invoices manually to a hundred clients would require much more resources than only invoicing ten, and companies often find it difficult to cope.
Automation, on the other hand, makes it easy to scale. Machines can perform numerous tasks at the same time much faster than any human being could.
This means they can easily handle dramatic increases in workload and demand.
Process automation in action
As mentioned before, a business process is a series of steps performed in a specific order to achieve a goal.
Therefore, your first step would be to define what your goal is and identify all intermediate steps in the process in order to achieve it. BPA will allow you to setup these automation rules for each step in the process.
Let’s look at this with the example of an expense report. Any expense report, would need to be approved by an employee’s immediate supervisor and the finance department before a reimbursement can be processed.
Business automation software lets you create an expense reporting workflow based on every stakeholder’s role in the process. The system will automatically route the report from the employee to the supervisor and then the finance department once the former approves.
This process when done manually, can be time-consuming as it requires multiple approvals to be done in a certain order.
Transitioning from a manual work mode to an automated one can often be the deciding factor on whether your organization continues on the path to sustained growth.
Keep employees afloat by providing learning resources that will help them become familiar with automated processes. From simple tasks such as learning how to delete gmail account to using automated tools, employees need to have in-depth knowledge to adopt automation.
Keep in mind to understand your processes thoroughly, and to go through multiple solutions out there in the market before you pick one that just suits your needs.
Key Insights
- Increased Efficiency: Business Process Automation (BPA) enhances efficiency by shifting routine tasks from humans to machines, allowing employees to focus on high-impact activities.
- Suitable Processes: BPA works best for rule-based processes such as invoice processing, expense management, document management, and data entry.
- Time Savings: Automation saves significant time for employees, enabling them to work on more critical tasks.
- Profit Enhancement: By automating mundane tasks, businesses can increase their profit margins as employees can engage more in value-adding activities.
- Productivity Boost: Machines can handle multiple tasks simultaneously, thus boosting overall productivity.
- Error Reduction: Automation minimizes human errors, ensuring more reliable and consistent outcomes.
- Process Standardization: Automation standardizes processes, leading to consistent results and improved organizational transparency.
- Audit Readiness: Automated processes maintain detailed audit trails, simplifying regulatory compliance.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: BPA provides faster response times and personalized experiences, improving customer satisfaction.
- Scalability: Automated processes can easily handle increased workloads, supporting business growth without proportional increases in resources.
FAQ
- What is Business Process Automation (BPA)? Business Process Automation (BPA) refers to the use of technology to perform routine business processes with minimal human intervention, thus increasing efficiency and allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks.
- Which business processes are ideal for automation? BPA is ideal for rule-based processes such as invoice processing, expense management, document management, employee onboarding, data entry, project management, and data deletion.
- How does BPA compare to manual processes? Automated processes require minimal human intervention, provide automated reminders, centralize document storage, auto-fill forms to reduce errors, update statuses in real-time, ensure accurate audit trails, and integrate communication within tools, unlike manual processes that rely heavily on human input at every step.
- What are the main benefits of implementing BPA? Key benefits include time savings, increased profits, higher productivity, better efficiency, reduced errors, process standardization, improved audit readiness, enhanced compliance, better customer experience, and scalable processes.
- How can BPA improve compliance and audit readiness? BPA ensures that every step of a process is recorded, creating a detailed audit trail. This helps in tracking changes, maintaining compliance with regulations, and enforcing security controls like encryption and role-based access.
- Why is BPA important for customer experience? BPA allows organizations to provide faster response times and personalized services consistently across different channels, which enhances the overall customer experience and helps businesses stand out from the competition.
- Can BPA help in scaling business operations? Yes, BPA facilitates scalability by enabling machines to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, allowing businesses to manage increased workloads and demand without significant additional resources.
- What should organizations consider before implementing BPA? Organizations should thoroughly understand their processes, evaluate different automation solutions available in the market, and provide learning resources to help employees adapt to automated processes.
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