Business Process Automation

Quality customer service and experience are always at the heart of a company’s success. Business process automation improves customer service, while simultaneously improving your company’s bottom line. Read on for information about the current technology-enabled automation available to improve your business productivity & service quality today.

How Business Process Automation Simplifies Your Business & Improves Service Quality

Business process automation (BPA) helps improve the quality of service your company provides. BPA also helps streamline and simplify your business in ways beneficial to both your customers and your bottom line. This is true despite the general naysaying and technophobic perspective among those resisting the nearly unavoidable reality of successful marketing in modern times. Compiled data and facts indicate approximately twenty-five percent more businesses are successfully transformed by Chief Information Executives (CIOs) who embrace technology-enabled automation than Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) who resist and refuse to implement it. How does BPA simplify and improve the service quality of your business?

First and foremost, companies where CMOs and CIOs work in tandem as opposed to against each other experience the most success. The preferred modern consumer experience is almost entirely digitized. A majority of your customers are engaged with some type of online media for over six hours each day. Most of your customers are also fully committed to the use of mobile devices for handling purchases, banking, investing and more. A pain point is defined as a problematic customer or business-related issue.

The biggest customer-related pain point is bad customer service/experience. The biggest business-related pain point is lost/decreased revenue. BPA replaces slower manual operations and obsolete technology. BPA also eliminates wasteful and time-consuming paper trails, which allows for better organization and consequentially faster decision-making processes. These beneficial aspects of BPA innately save you and your company money. They also improve the quality of service provided to your customers, which ultimately also increase your company’s revenue. 

Business Process Automation vs. Business Process Management

BPA is often referred to using alternate names and phrases. The most common of these names/phrases include business automation, robotic process automation (RPA) business process redesign (BPR) and digital transformation. One name to which BPA is not alternatively referred is Business Process Management (BPM). What are the differences between BPA and BPM? 

BPM analyzes your business’s overall and department-specific states of operational processes as they are functioning today. The analysis results are used to identify weaknesses/flaws in your business as a whole. They are also used to identify weaknesses and flaws in each department within your company. The discoveries and data are subsequently used to develop and implement better operational processes where needed going forward. 

While BPM is a more sizable process using a combination of manual and technology-based methods to achieve its goals, BPA uses advanced technology to replace inefficient, costly and otherwise outdated manual processes. BPA might even be used to replace the type of BPM used to analyze and improve your company. BPA executes recurring processes using automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and streamlined advanced coding/technology. There are human, integration and document-based types of BPM. BPA, conversely, is based solely on the use of advanced technological processes. For another example, BPM, while still essential, is coveted by CMOs resisting current and future marketing reality. BPA, conversely, is a coveted tool of successful CIOs.

The Importance of Streamlining Your Business Process

The importance of streamlining your business process cannot be underestimated if the goal is to market and operate a successful business into the future. This statement is also true for businesses operating in current times as well. Disorganization begets errors. Errors beget unhappy customers and internal conflicts. The latter two results both lead to loss of revenue. The sustained losses of revenue result in an inevitable failure. Streamlining your business process via automation-based technology increases efficiency, overall service quality, record keeping and overall administrative standards.

Benefits, Types & Uses of Business Process Automation

Automating certain human resources (HR) tasks, purchases orders, call center/helpdesk processes, payroll calculations and the launching of new products are just some of the many uses for BPA. Benefits include increased productivity, accountability and visibility to customers. Benefits also include reduced expenses, expedited turnaround processes and enhanced workforce dispensation. Two primary benefits are the reduction of human error and the ability of your employees to prioritize more important and profit-generating tasks.

Digital transformation is one type of BPA. It involves the conversion of business approaches from outdated manual tasks to automated technology-based processes in order to increase service and obtain a competitive market advantage. Additional types/uses of BPA include:

• Artificial intelligence (AI)

• Customer relationship management (CRM)

• Business process improvement (BPI)

• Business process re-engineering (BPR)

• Automated file transfers

• Automation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems

• Browser, cloud systems & email automation

• Automated claims processing

• Social media management automation through services such as Buffer or Hootsuite

Documented Business Process Automation Case Studies

There are documented case studies pursuant to the use of BPA. A transportation company increased its efficiency and reached hiring goals by converting from a manual to a BPA system. An information systems business streamlined its process and increased its client base by replacing obsolete manual tasks with error-free BPA systems. PerfectForms is a workflow automation software manufacturing company and has helped more than five hundred companies successfully convert to BPA systems. Additional case studies on the use of robotic process automation (RPA) are also publicly available.