How Automation Improves Business Processes

10:24 26 September 2019

Many processes in today’s workplace are repetitive and consume time, leaving employees little to no time to focus on improving efficiency at an organization level, departmental level and personal level.

Studies show that a company can shave off up to 10-12% of their total costs by investing in a robust automation technology that is designed to improve business processes. Known as Business Process Automation (BPA), this sort of technology gives businesses the luxury to focus on the research, strategy and development aspects of business, which is paramount to a business doing very well in the long term given today’s cutthroat competition.

A few years ago, automation was meant only for big businesses and corporations to venture into. Thanks to the internet and constantly evolving technology, even small businesses are now able to reap the benefits of automating things.

Let’s look at how automation improves business processes with a few examples. Automating certain tasks and processes can positively impact several areas of business but we’re going to look at some common applications that any business could benefit from.

Invoice Management- Save Time and Improve Communication

Automation has a place in improving the operational efficiency of finance teams, particularly invoicing.

Here’s an example of how a leading property advisor in the UK, which found it found it hard to manage the increasing amount of documentation coming into the business, automated its processes to good effect.

The company had a process in place which was largely paper based, and it meant the employees often had to go through the arduous and time-consuming task of filing them in cabinets, sending them around to the relevant persons at a certain property for approval, and pulling them out from a pile of files in the end of the year.

To keep up with the growing needs of business and maintain their standards, the company decided to invest in an automated workflow solution that would help its team keep up with the increase in number of invoices, collate and organize them in a better manner, and search and retrieve them as and when needed. The workflow solution implemented proved to be quite useful by simplifying the entire process, and as a result the employees find it easier to handle the growing number of invoices, process and authorize them in a much quicker and efficient manner than before. Communication with clients improved significantly as the automated solution eliminated the need for constant follow ups by the clients, and also reduced processing time for invoices.

By making machines do repetitive, mundane tasks the business has been able to save time while improving workplace productivity and efficiency by a considerable margin. The firm has clearly set its eyes on growth knowing for sure that the automated solution it implemented would allow it to grow at scale.

Job Management- Better Transparency and Cost Reduction

A few years ago, job management was an area of business that was ripe for automation. Businesses neither had the time nor the wherewithal to think about automating their processes with respect to managing jobs. They had to simply rely on spreadsheets and manual data entry to keep track of things, which was rather pretty laborious and cumbersome.

Enter cutting-edge automation technology, and the scene has now changed.

Job automation software is now a fully automated area of business. With proper workflow automation businesses can do a lot more, whether it be sending quotes and communication to customers or providing instructions to an engineer on site.

The software can help service personnel get more systematic about their work by having them log job details as to what was done on site, parts used, etc. In addition, the software lets managers schedule jobs in a way that engineers can see all the scheduled jobs coming up next and plan their work accordingly. One of the industry-leading business managers, WebFletch Job Management Software, helps companies run their business smoothly by allowing them to share quotes with customers for a job, get notifications whenever a customer opens a quote etc. Further, the software makes it easy to generate job sheets and send them over for customers to sign, track when customers have viewed the job sheet and send invoices promptly etc.

More suited for companies that run service business, automation software such as WebFletch can also help businesses increase the speed at which they operate and respond to customers in a better and efficient manner. For instance, it can help an IT business automate all stages of application development, right from feature request to deployment of feature in a production environment. And the result? Significant reduction in cost, better operational efficiency and less time to market the product. Since the development and deployment time will be reduced significantly, developers will be able to put all that freed up time towards more productive tasks.

Supply Chain Management: Better Forecasting and Improved Efficiency

Automating manual processes that are imprecise and absorb much time is very important for a business that needs to stay ahead of its competition and be profitable. And, it often spells the difference between a great quarter and decent quarter for companies that are into retail business.

Many retail companies in the UK that strive to be competitive in the market are looking at automating business processes as a means of achieving better growth particularly through better inventory management practices. They believe that a good automation software can help them create an accurate forecast using demand data, translate that forecast into a realistic, accurate and economically optimized inventory ordering plan, and share all that data with key decision makers on a real time basis for them to base their decisions on.

Taking a swift approach to inventory management in general, they believe, will help their team spend less time on manual tasks that have less value and center all their attention on key tasks with more value like negotiating with vendors or buying deals which are likely to have a great impact on profitability, collaborating with suppliers externally on enhancing fill-rate performance and with merchandising internally on promotions, analyzing cost and effect of different strategies etc.

What this means is that your inventory planning and purchasing team will not merely be taking orders and fulfilling them anymore. They will be able to manage inventory on their own and do more to help push up the odds of your business turning a profit.

Conclusion

There you go. Automation can improve processes at various levels of the organization across different functions of business and sectors. If latest studies are anything to go by, investing in automated solution is proving to be a great investment for many businesses. So, as a responsible business owner, it is up to you to find a way to identify how your business can get on the juggernaut and fully automate the inaccurate, manual drudgery that your staff is bogged down with. You’ll be amazed at the amount of time and resources you’ll be able to free up with the right automation software, and all that means is that your team will be able to be more productive than before and become key growth drivers for your business.