Everything You Need to Know About Business Process Automation

She continues:

• Strip the process — i.e., remove unnecessary or redundant steps. Start back with the bare bones.
• Simplify the process. Look for ways to merge steps, minimize steps, or optimize the overall process.
• Standardize the process. Make the process repeatable (and hopefully autonomous), and document the best practices.
• Sustain the process. Keep going and improving, because there is no such thing as a perfect process!

Roberts notes, “Streamlining processes is my expertise, so I have a lot of experience here. Here's one high-level example: I worked on a technical risk management process that involved process streamlining and troubleshooting. Process upsets were two to three times more than plan. Staff satisfaction was poor. Annual business targets weren't met. After automating and streamlining that process, the process upsets were reduced to within 10 percent of plan. Staff satisfaction increased 20 percent. The business started meeting targets and saved over $3 million from efficiency gains. Talk about some serious results from automating!

“As for the future of business process automation, I see businesses tending more toward computer-based automation to eliminate human action as much as possible. Human intervention will be needed only for complex troubleshooting, higher-level analysis, oversight, and strategic thinking.”

“I use Zapier to automate my outreach and collect user stories to feature in blog posts. After compiling a list of users to reach out to in a Google Sheet, I set up an automation between my Google Sheets and my Gmail. Then, every time I update a row in my Google Sheet, the system sends a personalized email to the user using a template I created. The email has a link to a Typeform survey with a couple of questions. After users submit the survey, their answers are automatically routed back to the Google Sheet. With this automation, I can spend more time crafting a piece of content and less time manually compiling the information I collect.”

“The best way to optimize marketing automation is to connect it with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. If your business brings in revenue by combining marketing and sales campaigns, then your system should be integrated. Connecting your marketing automation platform with your CRM will help marketers on your team connect crucial campaign strategies with the financial outcomes. This will provide your salespeople with better visibility into prospecting and leads. It also allows your marketing team to hand leads over to sales without manually exporting anything.”

“I’ve worked with many clients to improve their business process efficiency. The main way I achieve efficiency is through the integration of financial and operational applications. There are many ways to use cloud applications to get rid of redundancies, reduce data lag/availability, and — by eradicating human intervention — improve accuracy in the collection of data. You will often observe that a human entering or moving data through a process is susceptible to inaccuracies and the delays of office life. By automating these processes, you reduce or eliminate the inaccuracies and can significantly cut down on the time it takes to get actionable data.

“For example, one process automation involved a distribution company that sold primarily to big-box retailers. In its old state, the organization had no window into what customers were ordering until after the warehouse fulfilled it. In addition, they would get a report once a week, which required someone to manually manipulate the data and import the data into the accounting software.

“在新的状态,每次客户的地方order, it is instantly created in the accounting software. It is then sent to the warehouse to be fulfilled. Once fulfilled, it is automatically converted to an invoice that can be sent out to the client. This gives the executive team real-time visibility into what has been ordered, what is unfulfilled, what has been shipped, and when the company has been paid. All of this data is available on any internet-connected device and requires zero human intervention. Needless to say, the executive team loves the new insights!

“I think we are going to see BPA take a different shape in the near future. We are going to see a more mainstream adoption of AI that will allow for deviation from a binary process. There are applications out there now that can handle a lot of these tasks. However, due to financial constraints, the adoption at smaller companies is extremely difficult. As the technology becomes more developed and the cost comes down, artificial intelligence will be far more mainstream.”

“We help our customers address the technology issue. Once they have their automation processes identified, we let them implement those processes on top of the cloud systems they use. For example, automating marketing across email, social, and mobile channels to engage prospective customers, automating the sales process on top of the customer’s CRM, implementing collaboration software, and using documents to shorten the sales cycle and convert more prospects. From a technology perspective, there are a lot of BPA enablers: AI, bots, and automation/integration tools (like ours). There was a lot of buzz around the same in 2016. This will make it increasingly simple to achieve BPA once the people and process parts are taken care of.”

“So I ask myself the question:What happens in a consumer-based society when the consumers are progressively displaced from the job market by AI-driven technology? And the corollary: Who is working on that end of the equation as fast as the evolution of the displacement? In other words, Where are new jobs being created at a rate that even remotely approaches the losses?现在我们看到的是,工资低,部分- - - - - -time gig economy, and service-industry jobs are replacing careers.

“Unfortunately, nobody, at least as far as I can see, is addressing this fact. Fewer and fewer people are required to provide goods and services for many. Extend this trend out a decade, two decades. See what you come up with!”