Business Process Automation: why is it critical for your business?

Let’s start with a business process definition.

A business process typically spans multiple departments and begins with an action or trigger. For example:

• Payroll.
• Invoicing.
• New Employee.
• Holidays and Time Off.

Maybe you use third-party tools, maybe the process is done manually. Regardless of how your process evolved, in most cases a part or potentially all of the process can be automated. But how do you get started, what steps do you need to take, and what positive impact can it have on your business?

The first part of automation starts with the team at Onyx understanding the process, determining what steps are being taken, documenting the time spent on the process, and finally identifying solutions that can make a positive impact on your business, such as:

• Improved Efficiency
• Reduced Cost
• Increased Speed
• Reduction in Human Error

Why is it important to automate your business process?

It's simple: you'll save time, improve your employees' work experience, can increase customer satisfaction, and in theory save you money, assuming it is adopted correctly by your team.

Not all processes can be easily automated, but a lot can, particularly as the market for solutions has grown significantly in recent years. Since 2014, the use of business process automation has increased by 275%, according to Gartner, giving companies that have adopted it productivity gains of 30% to 40%.

You may not know where time and efficiency are being lost in your business. What may seem like a small thing can add up to a huge loss of time over weeks, months or years.

For example, a financial admin spends 30 minutes a day taking data from one program and inserting it in another, that adds up to two and a half hours a week, or 100+ hours a year. That's the equvalent of £1,500+ per year spent on data entry. This is not an investment that will yield a return, but a function of your business that can be automated for much less when compared to the time lost each year on such basic task.

Look at your business this way, consider where you are losing time, and calculate the rough costs as shown above. You may never have thought about it this way before, but there is time to be saved that can be put to better use elsewhere in your business.

According to a recent report from SalesForce, 57% of IT executives say that automation technology saves departments between 10 and 50% on costs previously associated with manual processing.

Extra Benefits of Business Process Automation

Saving time is great, but improving efficiency, productivity, customer satisfaction, and freeing employees from mundane tasks is the real benefit to your business. For instance:

• Deliver your product or service faster than your competition.
• Invoices are issued and collected on time.
• Reduce dependency on individual employees
• Allows employees to focus on more important tasks.
• Reduced staffing levels as automation replaces manual tasks.
• Automation works around the clock, it is not limited to office hours.

Want to know how your business can benefit from Business Process Automation?

The first step is to speak with Onyx and schedule a BPA consultation. We will work with you to understand your business, identify the areas that can be automated, document the process with key personnel to ensure the process is working the way you want it to, and finally identify the solutions that will deliver efficiency, productivity, and a reduction in the time associated with running those processes.

If you want to take advantage of automation, let us get started.