Tedious tasks have always been a nuisance to deal with. They appear through all levels of the corporate world and we can all agree that nobody likes them. But thanks to business process automation (we’ll call it BPA from now on) the tables are slowly turning in our favor. Gone are the days when an employee has to spend a whole day filling papers and performing administrative tasks. BPA is gaining more popularity in the past few years and if you too are wondering how to improve the quality of life of your employees, clients, business partners, and your business as a whole, then please be our guest and read kindly through. As always, grab your favorite refreshment of choice, and let’s swoop in.
What’s BPA and why should you care?
In a nutshell, BPA relies on technology for the execution of various tasks in replacement of manual human effort. Now, before you jump on the Technology-is-going-to-steal-my-job-and-make-me-redundant train let’s clarify a few things. BPA isn’t your enemy, in fact, its sole purpose is to assist you in dealing with mundane, repetitive tasks, so you’ll have more time to focus more on creative and innovative work. Think of your relationship with BPA as a cooperation and not as a competition.
Businesses tend to automate a portion of a particular process but there are cases where savvy businesses have completely automated processes from A-Z. An example we’ve all encountered is the chatbot in customer support. It can receive an inquiry, understand the issue and either offer a solution or connect the troubled customer to a customer support rep, which can then offer further assistance.
Benefits of BPA
You probably already thought of a few scenarios where automation can become your best friend. There are numerous cases where BPA shines bright. We are going to share a few of the benefits which BPA can offer if implemented.
Efficiency
By automating a process you ensure that it gets done faster and with fewer errors. The reason simply is the removal of “human” in human error.
Standardization
When the same process is every time is done in the same way you also ensure uniform, predictable results.
Customer satisfaction
We talked about how important customer satisfaction is for a business. When you combine efficiency and standardization it almost always leads to a happy customer. No missed deadlines, no mistakes, and no room for errors equal to a 5-star review.
5 Internal processes you can automate today
Digital transformation rarely happens in a day. Most of the time it requires a lot of time to set up, implement, adapt with employees, etc. But BPA is a whole different ball game. You can apply it to existing manual tasks and let it do its magic, under ideal circumstances, in a single day.
Hiring Process – recruitment is a very important and delicate process. Instead of sifting through a ton of applications manually, you can make use of automated hiring tools that will do it for you a lot quicker.
On-boarding – after successfully recruiting a candidate using your new automated hiring tool, you will have to onboard them too. Instead of giving them mile-long explanations and showing them what to do, you can provide them with the tools so they can do that by themselves.
Social Media Management – every business is expected to have at least one account on a major social media platform. Most of them have multiple and managing all of them can be daunting. To minimize that effort there are social media automation tools that can take care of business faster and better.
Sales/CRM Process – salespeople love to close deals and hate to fill in information in a CRM. Activities like prospecting and having meetings are here to stay, but processes like call logging, filing, and handoffs to the implementation team can easily be automated.
Auditing – a potential nightmare of a task. If your business deals with complex financial operations or major investments you can take off some stress from your employees and transfer it to an automation tool, that wouldn’t mind it at all and will perform the tasks a lot quicker with a lot fewer errors.
Conclusion
BPA is a friend, not a foe. Every business should take advantage of some form of automation tools. The key is to pinpoint areas of your business operations that can benefit most from automation and implement the right solution there. Not everything can and should be automated, so perform your research before deciding on automating any processes. BPA and automation in general will definitely shine more in the near future, so let machines take care of things they excel at and let employees use their talents to innovate.
