Business Process Automation

Business Process Automation

Streamlining manual processes helps companies of all sizes become more efficient and competitive.

Increased automation helps businesses become more innovative, productive and prosperous, but there’s a tendency to think that only the largest corporations have the money and manpower to effectively leverage these tools. In truth, many small and midsized businesses (SMBs) are realizing the benefits of automation.

Eighty-eight percent of SMBs say automation enables their company to compete with larger businesses, according to one recent study. Most say automation has helped them increase agility, lower costs, improve productivity, reduce delays, minimize errors and improve customer satisfaction.

Business process automation (BPA) solutions are particularly valuable because they allow companies to orchestrate and automate a variety of repeatable, multistep business transactions. This, in turn, allows SMB managers to shift their focus from managing tasks to solving problems.

“Small and midsized businesses that unburden their teams from time-consuming, repetitive manual work can instead focus on creating employee experiences that enhance business outcomes,” said Jess Griffin, vice president of product management at UKG, a leading provider of business.

Eliminating Errors

A business process generally involves a set of structured tasks that must be performed to achieve an organizational goal. For example, the employee onboarding process can involve dozens of separate steps, including collecting information and documents needed by human resources, granting system access, setting up accounts, assigning IT assets and scheduling training and orientation.

A typical business might have hundreds or even thousands of such processes that involve multiple IT systems. One study found that a single business process spans an average of 35 different systems. With so many different touchpoints, mistakes are practically unavoidable. One study finds that 25 percent of SMBs experience frequent errors in critical administrative and operational processes, including payroll and project management.

BPA software reduces the risk of such errors by combining all the steps of a business workflow into a single, automated process. Using artificial intelligence, BPA software ensures that processes are carried out according to policy-defined parameters, without the need for human involvement. This ensures a consistent, best-practice approach that improves accuracy, saves time and enhances efficiency.

Here are five examples of common business processes that SMBs can automate:

Payroll. Payroll processing is one of the more difficult human resources functions for small businesses. Even small errors can have a cascading effect. For example, miscalculating withholding can result in major complications for employees during tax season. BPA software eliminates such errors. It also handles many other functions such as making adjustments for raises, overtime and holiday pay, processing direct deposits and generating payroll reports.

Purchasing. Creating, submitting and approving purchasing orders has traditionally involved paper documents and manual data entry, but the process is prone to a variety of errors such as duplicate orders, lost paperwork and delayed approvals. BPA reduces errors by digitizing the paperwork, integrating it with accounting systems and automating routing to the appropriate manager for approval.

Order fulfillment. Fulfilling a sales order involves processing the order, picking, packaging and shipping the product, creating an invoice, and processing the payment. BPA software streamlines the process by syncing with sales, inventory management, distribution and accounting to ensure a smooth customer experience. It can also ensure that customer profiles, calendars and account information are updated automatically.

Social media management. Most companies use their social media presence for marketing, but manual marketing efforts often wind up being inconsistent. If you go weeks or months between posts, your whole marketing strategy can lose momentum. BPA tools can be used to format, schedule and send posts to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media platforms on a consistent basis.

Email responses. Most companies have a “contact us” email address listed on their website. However, manually reading and replying to all incoming messages can be an overwhelming task for an employee. Studies show that waiting even an hour to respond significantly decreases your chances of qualifying a lead. Automation software can promptly send a “thank you for contacting us” message and assign the message to a team member for follow-up.


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