BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION
PROCESS AUTOMATION CONSIDERATIONS
As your business scales, so do repeated day-to-day tasks for your team. Your answer to tackling the workload is to either scale the team, which can be expensive and time consuming, or automate the processes through technology where possible. This is where Process Automation comes in handy.
What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?
BPA is technology, typically software, to tackle complex, repeatable, multistep business processes through automation. The automated solutions can be custom tailored to your organizational needs and connected or integrated with existing systems.
When should you consider Automation Solutions?
A business should seriously consider BPA when day-to-day tasks begin to overwhelm team members, you are in the early stages of scaling up the business, you discover consistent bottlenecks due to process, keeping track of paperwork and files is getting difficult, and repeated tasks involve potential for human error that could put the business at risk. Let’s explore what types of processes are ideal for automation, how to identify and prioritize them, and possible solutions.
HOW TO IDENTIFY & PRIORITIZE PROCESSES TO AUTOMATE
As tempting as it may be to automate as much as possible in your organization, you should be strategic about what and when to automate. Consider this guide for identifying and prioritizing the processes you’d like to automate:
- Identify functional areas of your business that have opportunities for improvement in efficiency. Write them down.
- Task leaders in each of these functional areas to draw up SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for “how” the jobs are done. Writing SOPs isn’t fun and can often be something overlooked in small and growing organizations, but this step is essential.
- From these SOPs, hone in on tasks that have any combination of the following traits:
- highly repetitive
- manual
- high risk and/or business critical
- high ROI potential
- time sensitive
- impacts other systems and processes in the business
- could cause bottlenecks
- At this point you likely have a decently sized “wish list” of processes your team would like to automate, but you can’t do it all. Now it’s time to force rank, group where possible, and prioritize. It may be useful to use a scorecard framework for this. Consider the following when prioritizing:
- What is the impact on customers and employees if we do this? If we don’t?
- What could a manual error in the process cost the business in financial terms? How about the customer satisfaction cost?
- Factor in employee costs, such as burnout and retention rate, due to job satisfaction.
- Now that you have a Prioritized List of business processes you want to automate, it’s time to dig into finding SOLUTIONS.
COMMON PROCESSES TO AUTOMATE
- Employee Onboarding
- Order Entry & Fulfillment
- Billing & Invoicing (Case Study)
- Database entry and record-keeping
- Data analysis and reporting
- Appointment scheduling
- Task management
- Procurement
- Record-keeping
- Payroll
- Project Management
AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS
You have several directions you could head from here. Let’s discuss the Pros & Cons of each:
Outsource the Process Entirely
- Pros: Cost-savings, especially if you can use an offshore solution
- Cons: Variable quality control, often not suitable for business-critical processes
Off-the-shelf Software Solutions
- Pros: Reduced upfront costs vs custom solutions, already tested and refined
- Cons: Sacrifices in desired functionality are likely, locked-in contracts, can be difficult to scale and migrate, may not easily integrate into your existing systems
Custom Software Solutions
- Pros: You choose exactly what features you want and what you don’t, you own it and you aren’t beholden to another company for updates and feature migrations, built to integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, often lower long-term investment
- Cons: Larger upfront time and financial investment
LET'S TALK
Haystack is a certified Minority-Owned Business (MBE) that provides reliable software solutions for websites and web-based or mobile applications. Our US-based team’s expertise and customer service is unparalleled, serving small businesses, nonprofits, and enterprise clients across the country. Contact Us
The Heartland (IND)
735 Shelby St
Suite 35
Indianapolis, IN 46203
+1 480 331 1060
The Valley (PHX)
2801 E Camelback Rd
Suite 200
Phoenix, AZ 85016
+1 480 331 1060