If you think that you always have to do everything step-by-step manually to run your business, think again.Wondering if there are ways to make sure that your business and your employees are following the correct workflow and processes? It does not have to be that hard. With a few tricks and assistance from technology, you can achieve this goal. If you are looking for this kind of technique, you might want to check out Business Process Automation.
This can make sure that your work team does not miss any details, repeat unnecessary actions, or forget tasks they need to accomplish through the standard processes. Conformity and compliance to the business operation consistently can be achieved with the help of BPA.
But how does Business Process Automation (BPA) work?
It refers to the use of technology to automate routine manual processes that normally occur in your business each day. This is a tool that can help in codifying and programmatically incorporating a connected set of software applications so that it can immediately automate processes and show the workflows across various departments in your business. It greatly helps to streamline processes and the key elements that can be identified here is that it needs consistency, can be repeated, and should be of no errors at all times.
It takes less effort because it would not need an employee to manually control or interfere with this process. Instead of focusing on the individual works and tasks, BPA would automatically show you the complete and overall workflow process in your business.
This advanced technological process is a way for you as an entrepreneur to have your operations become more efficient and guarantee productivity. You can also save a lot of time and effort when you consider automation as part of your business technology. Everyone in the company gets to focus more on tasks and responsibilities that they should prioritize and focus on.
According to business leaders, 42% of them agree that process automation can boost the speed of your employees in terms of accomplishing work and productivity. This helps keep up the pace for your business. It will also cut back on costs and save a lot of time while reducing errors that humans usually commit.
They also believe that employees can even save up to 60 hours every month when they use process automation for tasks. As an entrepreneur, you can really cut down on costs and have them work on other things instead.
Areas that usually need business process automation includes these categories:
- Sales
- Finance
- Procurement
- Human Resources
- Product Development
- Tracking of Inventory
- Logistics and Delivery
- Education and Training
- Information Technology
- Email marketing and social media
- Data Analysis
- Time off requests
- Performance management
- Audits and compliance
Here are a few ways you can begin to automate your business!
1. Marketing Automation
– For emails, there is no need to manually type and waste effort on writing every single email you need to send out for marketing and promotion. Through this, you can immediately send emails to customers filling up a form, personalizing emails, segmenting based on content and data for groups of people, and many more.
A lot of email marketing tools are available online and you can start using this as a strategy for your business to increase your email marketing. Aside from emails, you can also do this for other types of communication! This works for SMS messages, social media posts, or allowing users to unlock new content at set intervals.
For your employees, you can view the lead scoring and qualification, immediately notify employees if conditions or actions are met, establish a connection between marketing and sales, and streamline multi-stage processes including content publishing or posting new marketing promotions.
2. Sales Automation
– With the help of sales automation, you can manage workflows better by reducing friction and increasing conversion rates. You get to monitor and organize schedules, identify the most sales-ready leads, analyze and collect data insights, sync the latest information, improve marketing, and reduce time on bad-fit leads. You can start with sales automation by looking into any built-in automation functionality that can integrate other apps and allow powerful workflows through automation in your business.
3. Data Automation
Looking for ways to manage data for your team? Save effort and time by letting automated data management control large data sets for you. By using this, you can trigger and create an action that will push data between apps, sync your contact data and make automatic updates, send all contact data for the centralized database, collate data from all your apps to make an integrated reporting dashboard, and automatically merge or duplicate the contacts in your database. Begin with optimizing the data in individual apps and eventually use software integration tools that will connect them.
4. Customer Care Automation
Your customers are important and you can be more efficient in your business if you allow automation for customer service. This allows you to optimize customer experience, create better and personalized interactions, and automatically make customer data available to your work team. If you are worried that human interaction is being eliminated in this process, it does not. It can help you make more time for them and give them a better experience.
You can also create automated customer satisfaction surveys which can call your attention if a customer needs assistance, reach out to more customers, introduce chatbots or built-in AI that can provide answers to frequently asked questions, or direct the customer to the best support representative that can address their concerns the best.
5. Management Automation
To oversee the work of everyone in the workplace, you do not have to manually do it with the help of automation. Instead, you can save time and focus on important details that need your attention.
Examples of these are having a notification for the team to prepare for meetings, monitor overdue work, follow up tasks, collaborate on materials for everyone, collect daily feedbacks on wins and blockers, report dashboards, and sync data and information. As a manager or team leader, you can use this to focus more on supporting your team and helping them solve problems.
Adapting to advancing trends and strategies that will help you run your business effectively is constantly developing, and as a business owner, keeping up with these can help you cope and increase your business productivity and efficiency.
You also help reduce waste in the environment especially if you go paperless and eventually skip paperworks that take up a lot of your time. This can be applied in terms of invoices and other data entry lists that are usually done manually in writing. Digital options which you can back up through different storage drives are safer than merely having printed copies. .
Doing BPA has several advantages for your business. It is also a way for you to establish that working hard is not the key, but working smart with the right tools is definitely better. Process automation increases possibilities and improves seamless virtual work and integration of digitized processes. But not everything should be done with it.
What Business Processes Do Not Need Automation?
- Tasks that need complex decision-making and critical thinking skills cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence or technology. Especially if you need to have decisions that need detailed and strategic analysis, automating processes can only work for simple approvals and rejections of certain simple conditions. It still needs the guaranteed evaluation and brainstorming of employees or team leaders, for instance.
- Automating processes cannot be substituted for work that need “human touch”. These are the ones that involve your emotions and consciousness. Examples could be changing of management, giving a detailed or difficult feedback,or certain activities that has to be specifically tailored for a person, service, or product.
- Not all processes are structured and go by a linear command. There would be tasks that constantly change and fluctuate from time to time, which will be difficult to be placed in a fixed process automation. If there are certain rules that are difficult to identity or there are complicated conditions needed, then it is probably best for employees to be involved with it rather than having it automated.
Despite these limitations and boundaries, it does not stop you to do business process automation as it can be applied in many ways in the different aspects of your business. You do not have to do a complete overhaul with it but simply apply it to tasks that you think you can entrust with technology. Especially if you are looking to decrease manual processes that could be pulling down your employees productivity, then go and try these error-free and swift process automation. It does
Does these tips work for you? Leave a comment to let us know!
If your business needs more information and business strategies, simply message us here at BuenoSchonig Consulting and we would gladly help you out.
