Most people will indicate the right strategy, innovation, and ability to hit consumers’ tastes. Without denying the above, often, when companies with similar profiles compete, the one that can simplify and optimize excessive economic processes wins.
Such an attitude can be described as streamlining business operations, which helps executives show better results at a lower price. How to reach a qualitative advantage and still stay cost-effective? The key is the intelligent use of business automation.
First, let’s define what business operations are all about. They combine a company’s activities to offer its products/services and make a profit. Hiring staff, handling orders, or adding new services to your value proposition are just a few examples of typical business activities.
But, even those duties can become challenging with manual planning and control of the workflow. Instead, managers can use intelligent automation tools that suggest the optimal way to streamline their businesses based on reliable data.
The words “business process management” reveal a colossal project involving every department, requiring months of preparation and a considerable budget. However, there is a different path. It combines precise and highly individualized automation that implements bottom-up initiatives to simplify and shorten bulk business operations.
Modern enterprises appreciate it, as the value of the global automating processes market is estimated to reach USD 19.6 billion by 2026.
The segment will show an annual growth rate of 13.1%. At the same time, impending crises have given many companies a clear sign that their operational plans in the automation field should be implemented as soon as possible.
Automation in business means entrusting the implementation of tasks that employees previously performed to machines. This statement should give you an idea that all repetitive activities can be automated and thus improved thanks to the use of appropriate algorithms.
The intensity and effectiveness of performing the same tasks by humans depend on many factors, including the level of their fatigue or mood. The more tired the employees are, the slower they work. In addition, the time of task implementation is extended due to breaks.
IT systems work faster than humans. They need much less time to analyze data, transfer documents or generate reports. Moreover, they always take the same amount of time to complete a given task.
Business automation is possible thanks to programs that perform specific actions based on collected, stored, and processed data. Many software solutions are integrated with other IT systems. Thus, business automation activities can often operate in real-time and multiply an immediate response to economic changes.
Solutions that streamline business operations relieve employees of the obligation to perform monotonous, tedious actions. Employees are free to give their full attention to complex or creative tasks. Most professionals prefer to perform slightly more complicated but interesting and important tasks that bring more value. They can use a work time app to efficiently track their tasks and manage their time, ensuring productivity and focus on high-value activities.
Automation in business enables more thorough control of all economic stages. In addition, such a systematized process is easier to analyze and catch some imperfections and the so-called bottlenecks. For instance, if your team uses Trello to track tasks and check progress, you can automatically export data from Trello to databases or analytics tools. It gives you a complete analysis of opportunities to find and deal with bottlenecks. Automation allows you to catch such problems and improve overall productivity quickly.
Programs work autonomously without wasting time thinking. They are designed in such a way as to avoid making any mistakes. In the case of manual processes, the risk of human error must be considered. Even when performing the same tasks many times, a person can sometimes make a mistake. The fault often results from distraction, inaccuracy, or carelessness of the person. In addition, an employee may need to remember some vital process elements.
Most errors occur during activities related to data transfer from one system to another. It is common for typos to happen when entering data by hand. The solution automates the process by integrating both working environments in a cohesive tool.
The program that performs tasks for a human allows the company to reduce the number of positions and thus save the costs associated with employee remuneration. Moreover, the machine can work continuously. Unlike humans, it does not need interruptions and continues to work with the same intensity, efficiency, and accuracy.
Initially, you must incur significant costs related to the streamlined solution implementation. However, it should be remembered that the investment will pay off after some time, and entrepreneurs can enjoy the savings. The possibility of reducing operating costs is one of the most common reasons affecting the decision to streamline a business.
Process automation increases the company’s market competitiveness. This is mainly due to the advantages described above, i.e., constant access to accurate data or shortening service delivery time. In addition, some entrepreneurs decide to lower the product’s price because they get additional savings by reducing the team pay.
Employees who have grown up with smartphones in their hands in today’s global society will now accept outdated interfaces, overly detailed task lists, and boring instructions. After all, your business must care about its reputation in customers’ eyes and how progressive and innovative it will be perceived in the labor market. You can conduct market research using survey tools to collect more data to help you make the right decisions.
There will always be something that can be improved with digitization and does not require constant human supervision. The specific examples of business automation include, among other things, the following spheres.
Whether it plans public events, social media activities, or content publications, the marketing department can successfully improve these processes with automation. The solution can include apps that generate ad images or various AI tools to help create original content, check it, or push new ideas. Other programs will schedule work for each employee, distribute tickets or highlight operational goals depending on their status. These are some of the possibilities that will make tracking progress and identifying problems with projects easier.
Automation can play a significant role at all stages of the sales process. At the moment of the first contact with the customer, it relieves the sales department and allows staff to work more on individualizing every offer.
Despite widespread marketing automation myths and misconceptions you may hear, bots relieve service departments from answering basic questions, allow for solving less complicated problems, and even suggest products or services selected individually based on an interview.
Finance and debt collection is another branch where people can work well with automation. Accounting teams perform many monotonous processes daily. However, the functioning of the entire company often depends on them. These tasks usually only allow employees to use their knowledge, experience, and analytical skills fully.
Processes worth considering in terms of transferring the scutwork to the algorithm include
Another way automation supports businesses is when it collects customer preferences. Of course, the customer can send them individually, but automation facilitates first contact and allows you to gather the information you need.
Streamlining improvements of business processes can also occur with subsequent customer service integrations. These include, among others: notifications about new inquiries, quick recognition of customer needs (especially helpful in “hot seasons”), or reminders about an active offer in the event of a long absence in the personal cabinet.
AI bot can browse the product catalog and match the selected ones to the interlocutor’s interests. It also takes over the ordering process, presenting the chosen delivery options, and then transfers the order to the appropriate department. It also works well in upselling and proposing the purchase of an additional service or product.
Thanks to automation, you can streamline the business operations of order handling, packaging, subsequent shipment, and after-sales communication (e.g., about the delivery stages, returns, or complaints). It helps to control and organize production and supports company resource management, as well as logistics processes. Furthermore, such software enables the use of free shipping label templates, which streamlines inventory management and packaging operations.
Automation of order confirmation is now a widely used solution. Employees will not waste time sending emails to customers with information about the accepted order. What’s more, the other part enabling order tracking is also automated. All status change information is sent directly to the client.
Training and onboarding a new employee is always time-consuming. It involves transferring all relevant data and labor instructions, collecting consent and signatures on many documents, assigning a mentor, and organizing several training sessions. The person responsible for onboarding must remember to provide some vital information or documents, thus the process backlogs.
Automation is the solution that increases the employee’s initial productivity and streamlines the onboarding process. A person can receive all the essential information and complete all documents electronically. In addition, some solutions have chatbots that answer all questions employees ask in areas such as, e.g., OHS, social benefits, or holidays.
Do any of your daily tasks seem more tedious than productive? Remember these things as you go through the business process optimization steps.
List all your business processes and verify which needs improvement first. These elements should stay the same depending on the situation, e.g., each inquiry from the form on the website must be sent to the sales department.
To identify critical elements, ask yourself the following questions:
And this is an approximate list designed to encourage you to see the possibilities of automation in everything.
If you have yet to deal with process automation, it’s worth focusing on simultaneously automating a few, but not all, processes. Start small, not necessarily business-critical processes. There are many workflow automation systems on the market. Choosing the one that meets your organization’s needs is essential, considering its scalability, the number of functionalities, or the ability to adapt to your needs.
What should you pay attention to so that the choice is successful? Most of all, to people. Remember that in every organization, the foundation is created by the team for whom implementing a new system is additional work and competency. Many processes are interrelated, e.g., the sales process with invoicing, the recruitment process with administration, etc. Therefore, look for a tool that will provide you with a wide range of possibilities with the possibility of individualization to suit your needs.
Seemingly obvious, but in the daily rush, we often miss our initial goal. Before automating, you need to understand what you are automating thoroughly. This will allow you to make the right choices and save a lot of time in creating and maintaining the product. Therefore, it is worth taking the time and asking some uncomfortable questions. For example, when creating automated tests, try to evaluate which tests are worth automating, which ones are better left to manual testing, how to spread the tests of a given functionality in the test pyramid, and so on.
The system you use may fail technically, be intensely dependent on Internet access, or be vulnerable to cyberattacks – no matter the situation, you must have a plan B.
The drastic change offered by automation may meet with resistance from employees, which is why it is vital to skillfully introduce employees to future changes by assigning new roles and responsibilities, handling ongoing communication, and explaining the new system’s benefits to the team.
Another important thing is to choose a business automation project contractor responsible for adequately integrating the selected tool with the company processes. Digital transformation means that some employees need to return to training. Analysis shows that nearly 90% of your employees may deal with tasks that could be easily automated. Inevitably, their work will be redirected towards diagnosing technical problems, solving them, and implementing changes using robotics or artificial intelligence, which can only be done with deliberate requalification.
Automation of business processes is a process that takes time. You must take into account constant monitoring of the system, KPIs, and making corrections. The date when the streamlining procedures will be finally completed depends mainly on the number of processes necessary to automate and their complexity. It is worth knowing that each element of the work of individual departments, which is to be taken over by the ERP software, must first be appropriately modeled and then configured directly in the automation tool.
Try to automate individual processes “in installments” – starting from the most crucial ones and ending with those least affecting the team’s work efficiency. Once the automated process is in place, continue using performance indicators and collecting data to meet your initial goals.
Just like any procedure, workflow automation has its drawbacks that should be taken into account:
Automation class systems are often presented as a “magic button” that will solve your marketing problems and guarantee economic success when pressed. However, technology is just a tool. For it to bring measurable results, a well-thought-out implementation strategy and motivated people are necessary.
As you can see from the examples, the automation of business processes is a very versatile field. You are limited only by your imagination and the awareness of what processes in your company can improve. A broad analysis of your organization and specific needs for given positions determines the right tool selection.
Putting on business automation certainly requires financial investment; however, as our article proves, it can provide your company with real, measurable benefits and savings to the economic balance. Effective streamlining in business is one of the best ways to survive difficult times and prepare for intensive growth when the situation returns to normal.
