Driving Agility and Resilience: Decoding the Strategic Role of Business Process Automation

Long gone are the times when businesses could rely on traditional, manual processes to enhance efficiency, foster innovation, and compete effectively. Plus, the scarcity of skilled human resources is another challenge that adversely impacts an organization’s growth. Limited by human capacity and the inherent inefficiencies of manual processes, a productivity crisis gradually surfaces across the organization. Instead, modern problems require modern solutions. This is where automation steps in, not as a replacement for human ingenuity, but as a powerful tool for unlocking exponential business growth.

Automation, which first surfaced in 1940s, has evolved from a cutting-edge to a well-established technology today. Business process automation, particularly, offers exciting opportunities for companies across the globe in terms of incremental efficiencies, bolstered productivity, and significant cost savings – accelerated digital transformation comes as an added advantage.

Compelling Reasons for Investing in Business Process Automation

Not to be confused with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Automation (BPA) primarily minimizes manual intervention. BPM provides a framework for managing and improving business processes, BPA focuses on automating entire workflows, and RPA targets the automation of specific, rule-based tasks. Simply put, companies can automate some parts or overall processes to streamline operations and standardize workflows. BPA is commonly called workflow automation for this reason. Understanding these distinctions helps organizations choose the right approach for their automation and process optimization needs.

Though the list is lengthy, some of the compelling reasons why organizations should consider investing in business process automation are listed below:

• Optimized Operations
  Workflow optimization is one of the primary benefits of automating business processes. As mentioned already, organizations can use BPA to automate specific steps in a process or even the entire process. In either scenario, BPA can determine the most effective way to operate a workflow and execute it efficiently by applying business rules and logic to both structured and unstructured data sets.
• Enhanced Productivity
  Tasks like data entry, invoice processing, report generation, scheduling, email sorting, etc., are non-core but important and eat up valuable time. Such ancillary tasks can be automated using BPA; thereby, freeing up human resources for more strategic initiatives. Automating such repetitive, no-brainer tasks prevent employee burnout and maximizes productivity, which ultimately drives company growth.
• Cost Savings
  By minimizing manual intervention, streamlining operations, and boosting productivity, BPA automatically helps with cost savings. In fact, a recent report from Deloitte states that process automation is helping organizations decrease costs by 59%, while improving quality and accuracy by 90%.
• Greater Accuracy
  Even with the best intentions, mistakes are inevitable for every employee. While some errors are very insignificant and harmless, others can pose a serious threat to the company. On the other hand, human error can’t occur when business processes are automated. Thus, process automation is a cost-effective and failure-proof way to increase the efficiency and accuracy of the workflow. This is particularly important for industries such as finance, logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, etc.
• Assured Compliance
  Process automation comes as a savior for companies operating in highly regulated industries like financial services and healthcare as it lets them automate the components of their compliance program. Furthermore, automation reduces the possibility of human error, which could compromise compliance, and frees compliance officers to focus on more pressing concerns that can adversely impact the company. Examples of automated workflows include third-party onboarding and complaints analysis.
• Accelerated Auditing
  By using BPA, organizations can automate a variety of auditing processes, including detail testing, internal control testing, and reconciliations; thereby, freeing up auditors’ time for more difficult tasks. By reducing demands on auditor’s time, businesses can streamline the overall process as well as improve audit quality.
• Increased Customer Satisfaction
  Customer satisfaction is a crucial point of differentiation in any industry. Enhanced bottom-line efficiency translates to a superior overall customer experience as employees can better focus on customer-centric activities, including one-on-one interactions, responding to requests quickly and more efficiently, ensuring quality services, and more. Remember, customers are more likely to return to a brand where promised standards are met.

Identifying the Right Automation Opportunities

Though the potential benefits of business process automation are significant, determining which processes to automate is the ultimate challenge. That said, a workflow may be a strong candidate for automation if it fits into one or more of the following categories:

Best Practices for Using Business Process Automation

• Set Clear Expectations and Goals
  Defining goals and expectations serves three main purposes: first, it proves the feasibility of BPA as a business case, which in turn justifies the investment in BPA technology. Secondly, it serves as an endpoint from where stakeholders can develop a strategic plan of action for their business process automation project. Thirdly, it helps in assessing the effectiveness and ROI of BPA project, which brings us to our next recommended practice.
• Analyzing the Outcomes Achieved
  When setting goals for BPA initiatives, specify the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to monitor the progress. For instance, if a company is trying to save costs or accelerate the time for a business process, then the results should be actively monitored to check if automation is delivering the expected value.
• Understanding Compliance Requirements
  When creating a business process automation strategy, it’s crucial to consider potential needs, constraints, and limitations – regardless of whether a process (or processes) is within or outside the compliance program.
• Keeping a Record of Everything
  Ensure that every facet of the business process automation strategy is well documented, with access to all the relevant staff, starting with the changes to be implemented and ending with the modifications made to the current workflow. Establishing this single source of truth will help avoid any confusion and ensure that the new procedure is adhered to consistently.
• Spending Money on Staff Training
  In addition to outlining the modified duties and responsibilities for staff members and how the new process will operate, training materials should also provide a justification for the change. Encouraging staff members to understand the rationale behind business process automation is a crucial aspect of change enablement, as it enhances the chances of user acceptance and the general prosperity of BPA projects.
• Scaling from a Small Start
  It is better to identify three to five processes that can benefit from automation and move forward, rather than trying to automate everything at once. In due course, it will become evident whether business process automation produced the desired results based on the objectives and key performance indicators that were established previously. If the BPA initiative is successful, management can scale it up to cover more processes; if not, business leaders can use the gathered information to pinpoint possible weak points and areas for development.

Bottom Line

Business process automation is a game-changer for companies trying to improve productivity, increase efficiency, and streamline their operations. Additionally, companies can improve revenue lifecycle efficiency, optimize expenses, and reach higher accuracy levels, which ultimately propel their growth.