According to McKinsey, 57% of company representatives have initiated business process automation at their organizations and intend to focus on scaling the effort further. Also, according to results, larger organizations (40 percent) lead the way with automated business processes compared to small companies (25 percent).
Even if you have a small company, business process automation will help you automate repetitive tasks that take a lot of manual work. For instance, employee onboarding, file transfers, generating and distributing reports, approval processes, and more. Read our article to find out how to take your business to the next level by automating most processes.
What Is Business Process Automation
What is business process automation? Business process automation involves using the technology to automate and increase the efficiency of repeatable day-to-day tasks. Before choosing what process to automate, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the process require consistency across the organization?
- Is the process repeatable?
- Does the process need to be free from errors every time?
The main goal of business process automation is to minimize costs, increase efficiency, and streamline business process automation services. The main benefit of this type of automation is that almost every process consists of well-defined and repeatable tasks. They can be automated, especially when it comes to paper-based processes that don’t require cognitive efforts.
From the sales to the accounting department, almost everyone in the company has a daily routine that consists of repetitive tasks. And according to a McKinsey report we have mentioned above, 60% of occupations could save 30% of their time with process automation services.
The examples of business processes include:
- KYC checks
- Employee onboarding
- Contract management
- Invoicing
- Document approval
Business process automation strategy helps to get rid of different bottlenecks, increase productivity and compliance, and improve customer experience and stand out among competitors.
Main Benefits Of Business Automation Strategy
Here are the most prominent business process automation benefits:
Operational Efficiency Improvement
Business process automation makes it easy to identify and get rid of errors and bottlenecks in the workflow. It helps increase operational efficiency as you don’t need to personally ensure that one task is progressing to the next.
Costs Optimization
A lot of companies waste many resources when executing all the business processes manually. Automation also helps businesses manage vendor contracts efficiently and renegotiate terms favorably. Business automation helps to minimize the cost of operations and increase profit margins.
Better Document Management
A lot of companies deal with large sets of data that are processed and organized manually. It’s not only time-consuming but also results in several errors. With the help of automation, companies can streamline the document management process and make it almost effortless. It will also result in better data security and increase employee productivity.
Transparency Of The Internal Processes
With the help of process automation solution, the members of all departments will get full visibility over the main KPIs and reports via the customizable dashboards. The team will be better informed about the workflow and status of the tasks, as well as it will be easier to track which business processes need improvement.
“With automation, information can be disseminated without any unnecessary obstructions. Automation tools don’t merely collect information. They can go a step further by providing actionable insights via bullet points on dashboards and reports so you have the information you need to make informed decisions. There is nothing getting between you and the data you need to improve your business.”
— Neerav Parekh, Founder and CEO of vPhrase – an artificial intelligence (AI) software company known for having produced Phrazor, a reporting automation and business intelligence platform.
Examples Of Business Process Automation
To better understand the concept of business automation, let’s review the most common process automation use cases and business automation solutions.
Onboarding Of Employees
According to the statistics, 58% of organizations say that their onboarding process is full of paperwork. That’s all because employee onboarding includes multiple tasks such as filling out employee information forms, setting up induction sessions, arranging training sessions, setting up bank accounts, collecting relevant documents, and assigning mentors.
It usually leads to endless paperwork, low productivity, and dissatisfaction of employees. Business automation helps to achieve smooth transitions from one task to the next, keeping employees posted and providing visibility into the status of the process.
Employee Analytics
With the help of business automation, companies can have an overview and detailed breakdown of employee productivity and performance. In such a way, managers will see who’s performing well and who would benefit from corporate training. Automating performance management processes will remove bias-based processes and help record employee performance in a timely and accurate manner.
Sales And Marketing Automation
Sales automation plays a major role in the sales process as it automates many manual tasks that salespeople currently carry out. Most business leaders look into the automated business process because they want to streamline their sales management processes.
Sales automation will help companies close more deals by freeing up all the time spent on routine tasks and spending it on activities that bring revenue and boost the company’s efficiency.
Examples Of Automation Software
Before choosing the tool for business automation, you need to understand your goals first. Ask yourself: What do you want to achieve?
- Acquire new customers
- Build lasting customer relationships
- Nurture leads
- Improve conversions
- Expand social reach and brand visibility
After you’ve defined your main gaps, you can choose business process automation tools that will help get rid of them.
Zapier
Zapier is an all-in-one tool that automates your work and unlocks the full power of automation with the app interconnections. It comes with predefined example templates that help you create these workflows and automation with ease for your small business.
IFTTT
IFTTT stands for If This Then That, is a service that helps connect different apps that you love to work together. For example, you can automatically add all email attachments to Google Drive or other tasks like that.
Active Campaign
Active Campaign software that combines the standard CRM enterprise and advanced marketing features. It has various functions that automate an entire customer experience and offer CRM tools, automation services, and email marketing services.
Kissflow
Kissflow is a BPA software that provides a simple, optimal, and efficient platform to manage and track all of your workflows. It automates repetitive, rule-based business processes and helps to automate real-time data.
- Process management
- Case management
- Project management
- Collaboration
- Analytics
- Integrations
- Digital workplace
“Covid-19 and the recession it engendered have reminded us (again) to keep an eye on expenses. Technology helps your people focus time and effort on their areas of strength and adds more value.”
— Sayer Martin, Director of Product Management at Conga.
Sales Automation Benefits
The profit of your company directly depends on the efficiency of your sales process. When automating all the processes, sellers will get a holistic view of every customer and understand where they reside and the most effective channels. Sellers will be able to view all customer touchpoints and gather the right insights at the right moment. Automation also helps to:
Save time and increase efficiency
You can relieve your salespeople of some manual tasks, so they can concentrate on just selling. For instance, if your salespeople sell by phone, they don’t have to spend time crafting emails.
As an alternative, you can offer them tested templates and set up email automation. With the help of automated sales software, it’s possible to dial phone numbers, drop prerecorded messages when appropriate, and track every detail of your company’s phone activity. Reducing manual dialing increases reps’ productivity and helps close the deals faster.
Automate lead scoring
Your sales team should focus on high-quality leads. If your salespeople still manually sort through prospects to score each lead manually, it may be time to change it. When everyone in your team knows how a qualified lead looks like (think of factors like industry, number of website visits, if they’ve filled out a form, etc.), it will be easier to define who is your perfect client and don’t waste time on nurturing those, who are not interested in what you offer. In such a way, sales reps spend time on the right leads and make their messages to different types of leads more personalized.
“Optimizing each part of the business process often results in more sales, more effective workflow, more loyal employees, and higher profit margins. Automating these processes takes two things: the right software and the desire of you and your team to make the best use of the software.”
— Vlad Medvedovsky, CEO at Proxet (ex – Rails Reactor) – a custom software development company.
Improve analytics
Most sales process software provides built-in analytics tools to keep track of the system, understand how productive and efficient your sales process is and make forecasts. In such a way, you can predict how well your business will run in the future and make decisions that would improve sales and increase revenue. Automation tools will also help gather Information and regular reports to refine and improve the sales process and make your system more efficient.
If you wonder how to automate business processes, partnering with a business automation company is a great way to fill gaps in your organization’s capabilities and improve the workflow. These companies provide their own technical specialists, sophisticated analysis tools, and experienced professionals to bear on any business problem you have. They know what business automation tools to use.
At Proxet, we take great pride in helping our partners identify what business processes they can automate how they can best use insights gained from it to boost their business. If your organization has a workflow challenge it needs help solving, please get in touch.
