The Importance of Business Process Automation

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Staying competitive is the demand of the day and to meet that demand incorporating business process automation is essential. Business process automation means leveraging the ‘power of technology’. It increases efficiency and reduces the overall cost of running a company according to traditional methods. It is said in fact that by 2022 about 59% of businesses would be automated.

In this method software technology is used to automate regular tasks that are done by humans. The result is an increase in efficiency and humans are left to attend to tasks that cannot be done by machines. Tasks such as customer support, customer billing, inventory management, financial accounting can all be automated for greater efficiency. Some tasks are time consuming if done manually and are beneficial when automated as for example the daily attendance tracker or when calculating leaves of employees. Automation really does serve well.

Business process automation improves transparency and the accountability of a business by recording accurate data that can be accessed by people who are directly concerned and to be leveraged appropriately. So to have happy employees, growth in productivity and satisfied consumers, a business definitely needs to adopt business process automation.

Automation helps a business in many ways to improve its efficiency. For example when a company is recruiting there is a lot of paperwork involved, which can be easily avoided with automation, and employee productivity can be enhanced.

Recurring tasks are also simplified with automation. Purchase orders for example can be really complicated with manual form filling, approvals, scrutiny and budgetary constraints. However automation can wipe out all apprehensions and increase the overall efficiency of purchase orders significantly.

Amongst the benefits of business process operation are:

There is a huge cost reduction with automation. More man hours are available since machines do a lot of work which used to be done by men. So even if the workforce is reduced the output does not reduce and the focus can be on quality. Ultimately the whole cost of business operation reduces.
The workforce can be better utilised for tasks that are important and relevant. It thus leaves you free to be more innovative.
Human errors can be reduced with automation even though each and every arm of a business cannot be automated because software is not applicable at certain points and business process automation cannot be integrated.
Automation helps to better manage business information and analyse data. The larger the organisation the more is the need for automation. Problems also are identifiable easily and hence rectifiable.
This leads to better collaboration also amongst team members with proper flow of information. Automation helps to track projects at different stages, setting goals and tracking them as well as deadlines, and updating processes where required.

The importance of going in for automation:

It is the first step towards a necessary digitization.
It gives clarity to every aspect of business. Everyone involved is therefore able to learn from it. The advantage is that “The insights you gain from analysing an automated process can clearly show you the gap between your processes as is and as it should ideally be.”
By automation your processes are streamlined. You can get valuable insights, clear accountability, customizable notifications and a turnaround time that is faster and will enable you to be more productive.
During audit it is very useful because through automation all details of different processes are recorded and so can be presented easily when required.
It makes your business a trustworthy one because automation ensures standard outcomes and this increases reliability.
Customers are thus satisfied exceedingly because of your operational excellence and ability to meet their expectations.

One last important thing is to know which part of the business process should be automated. It can be used where:

A large number of people are required for a task
Where time is of priority.
Where the task is high volume.
For audit compliance.
For procurement of material
Call centre processes
Customer care
Push notifications and email
Employee leave tracking
Sales orders and invoicing.
Backup of data and its restoration.
Product launches and more.

We at Eunimart, feel that cloud based business automation tools are a boon in the process. It stores your data in a central database and you can access it at your convenience from anywhere and on any device. There is transparency and it becomes easy to monitor the entire business. Errors can be detected fast and resolved. Fewer manual interventions mean fewer errors as well as reduced costs. The entire process is based on the concept of continuous improvement and so efficiency of a business increases.

All these have a significant positive impact on a business. It is advised by Eunimart that business process automation be implemented by companies in order to have a significant growth, reduce overall costs and improve customer satisfaction. Boost in productivity and many more gains make the adoption of business process automation a necessity today.