Over the past years business process automation, or BPA, has become more accessible to each and every business, regardless of their size or capacity. Thanks so numerous plug-and-play software and applications that are readily available online, you do not even need a whole tech team to implement and maintain automation within your business,

Business process automation involves the use of technology to automate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and improve overall efficiency within a business. By leveraging software, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and other advanced tools, businesses can transform manual processes into automated ones, freeing up valuable time and resources for more strategic endeavors.

Yet, what are the exact benefits that we could expect from BPA?

1. Increased Efficiency – All manual processes are tedious, boring, and prone to human error. With the use of automation, these processes will be completed faster than before as well as with highly reduced instances of error. This freed up time will allow employees to better focus on more value-add tasks.
2. Cost Savings – With a reduction in manual process, comes a reduction in the need for manual labour, which allows businesses to have lower operational expenses. A reduction in human error also means a reduction in costs incurred due to errors, helping ensure there are less unexpected costs.
3. Enhanced Accuracy and Consistency – Human error has plagued many processes across businesses, as a lot of processes rely on good and sound information or data. If the data being entered is not accurate, then the outcome will not be desirable either (garbage in, garbage out). Automating your processes relieves this issue, improving both the input and output of data.
4. Increased Workforce Morale – Contrary to popular belief, automation does not necessarily replace human-held jobs. Instead, automation empowers your workforce to complete undesirable tasks quickly and correctly, allowing them to make better decisions and complete the jobs they were hired to do. Focussing on what they were employed to do also increases their ultimate happiness that they experience working in your business.

These are just 4 benefits out of many that we have highlighted for you, but as you can see there are plenty of opportunities to improve your business through automation.

Now, all these benefits are useless unless you understand which processes you would like to automate and what the desired outcome should be. If you are wanting to pursue BPA, your first step would be to identify the processes you want to automate. If you are new to automation without the support of a tech team, start with the smaller processes and build your way up after you gain confidence. Next, you must identify the different stakeholders within the processes to better understand their needs. Understanding needs will help ensure that your automation does not miss the mark and actually solves certain business issues that employees are facing. Finally, do not force automation where it is not needed. Forced automation can be more damaging than beneficial at times, and will end up reversing every benefit we mentioned previously.