Some years ago, most business owners questioned if shifting to automation was even worth investing their time and resources. But today, it is evident that automation is crucial for a company’s growth. It can help boost employee productivity and efficiency, plus save costs.
Today, businesses worldwide are looking at automation and the perks they can get from using it. This article focuses on business process automation, its benefits, and which part of the business process should business owners automate to help you through the process. Also, we look at automation-driven tools that businesses can use to optimize their business operations.
What Is Business Process Automation?
Business Process Automation (BPA) is the use of technology to take care of repetitive tasks and processes. BPA can replace manual efforts so that businesses can eliminate manual interventions. This can help companies streamline their process, increase efficiency, and minimize operational costs.
Which Business Processes Should Organizations Automate?
Companies should look into automation solutions if the task:
- Involves multiple people to get things done
- Is menial, tedious, and time-consuming
- Needs to be accurate with little-to-no errors
- Requires to meet internal and external deadlines
- Needs employee compliance to meet the rules and regulations set by legal authorities
- Has a significant impact on operational processes
Some common examples of business process automation in companies are:
- Customer Support
- Data collation and migration
- Data backup and restoration
- Employee expense management
- Payroll
- Invoicing
- Time tracking
How Can Organizations Utilize Automation?
• Time tracking
Manual time reporting and tracking require a lot of manual data input. Employees have to stop between tasks and make the entry and ensure they have everything captured accurately. But even with so much hard work, there can still be errors. They can easily overlook internal work and miss billable hours, which can contribute to inaccurate tracking.
By automating time tracking with the help of time tracker such as actiTIME, employees can:
- Remove manual data entry errors and capture everything they’re working on
- Accurately record work activity with the use of time tracking tools
- Gain more productive hours by solving the need for manual interventions between tasks
- Simplify and expedite their billing and reporting process
• Expense management
Regarding expense management, the accounting and finance team must keep track of every employee’s expense documentation. This includes paper receipts, bills, invoices, and expense reports.
Finance and accounting teams have to go through each expense detail to check and verify if business expenses are within allowable limits and are compliant with company expense policies. The traditional expense management method can lead to delays, missing out errors, and a waste of time and resources.
But with automated expense management software, they can cut down on their expense management hurdles and challenges.
- Employees can simply take a picture of their receipts and upload it to the software.
- Organizations can automate their approval workflow. For example, once an approver receives an expense report and approves it, it is auto-routed to the next approver or sent straight to the finance department for reimbursement.
- The software audits expense reports in real-time while employees are reporting their expenses. Thus, increasing compliance and reducing errors and expense fraud.
- The finance team and management can have a 360-degree, real-time view of their entire expense management operations.
Benefits of Implementing Automation Tools
According to a study by McKinsey, “Half of today’s work activities could be automated by 2055,” and based on current scenarios, “automation could raise the productivity level globally by 0.8% to 1.4%.”
Additionally, automation can help organizations be more efficient and productive and free their resources to invest in innovative solutions. Here are four ways automation can benefit businesses.
1. Streamline processes and workflows
In an organization, manual processes can get chaotic, and employees can feel lost. Miscommunications can quickly occur, and there can be a delay in achieving goals and targets.
Automation can strengthen the entire workflow within an organization by streamlining processes and workflows. The team can create a workflow that follows their company’s hierarchy and input their company’s rules and regulations. This quickens and simplifies the entire process almost instantly.
For example, in an approval-based workflow, automation tools eliminate employees’ need to go from desk to desk seeking approval to get the paper moving. Their requests get automatically rerouted to the right person or department for approval.
2. Increase transparency within the organization
It can become difficult for both employees and managers to keep track of paper trails in a manual process. And even if they try to, it can consume a lot of time. Even getting updates on the progress of a task can take more time than it should. It takes extra time and effort from stakeholders, yet there is little to no transparency in operation.
But through an automation software, it can become easy to record changes and maintain a history of the process. An organization can keep a tab of the operation through a digital trail present within the tool. For example, if there is an error or delay, employees and management can go through the digital audit trail and track the error.
With transparency in place, it also becomes easier for management to estimate and calculate the time and resources a particular project or task can take. They can then take these learnings and implement them in future work activities.
3. Improve employee productivity and morale
Manual tasks are tedious, and even if employees focus on the repetitive task to omit errors, human-prone errors are bound to occur. These menial tasks can take away precious work hours from employees when they can be using them to do more creative and brain-stimulating work.
With automation, organizations can let technology handle all their mundane recurring tasks. This ensures quicker completion of tasks without the extra leg of human error or human intervention. This helps achieve consistency and accelerates performance and productivity.
Additionally, automation takes care of all the tedious and repetitive tasks so that employees can focus on essential business processes. This improves workflows and helps businesses achieve more with less effort.
Lastly, by allowing employees to participate in core business activities, they can feel more valued. By freeing their time, organizations are enabling employees to be more innovative and motivated.
4. Reduce operational costs
As companies grow, their operational costs scale along with them. An increase in transactions means more administrative work and chasing behind employees to get work done.
To keep up with these constantly evolving parts, some companies may turn to outsource services to help cut costs. But doing so can lead to a lack of control and poor visibility around operations.
But with automation, companies can handle the load without putting any extra strain on their internal resources. Tasks that took employees countless hours usually take seconds for automated tools to finish. By investing in a solution that can solve their current problems, companies can counter potential losses and even recover expenses!
Switch to an Automated Solution Today
Time is of the essence. In business, every second counts.
Gone are the days where companies and employees just had to deal with process roadblocks. Automation has a solution for almost every challenge. But the onus of picking the right software falls on the business. Ensure to pick an automation software that truly understands and addresses your business and employees’ problems.
We recommend you take the time to evaluate and match your business processes to different automation tools available in the market today. Additionally, ensure that you get a software that is easy to implement and use. This will lead to quicker adoption rates and faster results.
Your business can truly benefit from the use of such software. Most of these software tools also come with free trials or demos. Ensure that you use these opportunities to understand whether these tools are a perfect match for your business needs or not.
Lastly, pick an automation driven software that will help increase productivity and enable your business to save time, money, and effort.
