Business Process Automation is the task of taking manual computer tasks necessary for the function of your business and automating them. From the day we started in the IT industry we started Rede Software, we saw the same frustrating pattern over and over again. Businesses were relying on their IT solutions in order to succeed. Yet often it seemed like people were working for their IT instead of their IT working for them.
Here is a list of business processes that in our opinion should be automated:
Process - Description of automation
- Data entry: Entering data received via an electronic medium into an application
- Data access & manipulation: Accessing data (e.g. From a database) and using or modifying it as appropriate
- Information Gathering: Gathering information to be displayed for staff
- Information Distribution: Distributing gathered information to required stakeholders or clients
- Report Generation: Generating reports (e.g. end of day results)
- Report Gathering & Distribution: Collecting generated reports and organising them; then redistributing as required
- Backup: Backup off-site over the internet
- Web Crawling: Crawling through known internet sites to collect data
- Integration: Integrating multiple applications to work together and produce any of the above results and more
The biggest reason to automate tasks that are taking so long to finish is that it allows you to refocus your time and energy on things that are important to your business. Imagine if all the man-hours wasted on mindless & repetitive tasks could instead be used on areas of your business that need it most. Instead of Staff having to click away pointlessly on the screen they can be re-allocated to parts of the business that could use them.
Imagine then a staff member who's job it is to mindlessly copy data from one application and input it into another, a task that could potentially take hours at a time. How would they feel about their job? How would they feel about their employer? How would they feel about themselves? Imagine if instead of doing that they could click a button and load up a program that does all that work for them. How could this staff member be better utilised? Could they be assigned tasks that improve customer satisfaction or generate more sales? How much better would they feel about themselves for having a more challenging and less repetitive job? Automation software allows people do their actual jobs instead of a task that could, essentially, be assigned to a robot.
On top of that, there would be no need to hire additional people simply to help with these tasks. Instead of spending money on staff that do nothing real and material, money could be spent improving marketing, sales, support or customer service. There would be no more need to hire temps or seasonal staff to take care of sudden influxes of repetitive tasks.
Business process automation is important for every aspect of business in today's IT driven world.