Business Process Automation - Where to start

Business process automation, sometimes known as digital transformation is the act of changing manual, paper-based processes into automated digital processes.

If it’s something your company is looking into, or maybe you’ve even started the process, it’s good to know how and where to start and what options are out there for driving digital transformation forward.

Generally, business process automation starts with identifying the processes that could be eligible for transformation or automation. Depending on the analytics you already have in place, these can sometimes be tricky to spot, especially when processes have become habitual or people take processes into their own hands.

Here’s an example:

You finance team might have to capture, print, review, sign and file invoices on a certain day each month. Depending on how large the company is, this can be a hugely time-draining task and involves a lot of manual touch points.

With print analytics, it’s possible to identify when this process happens and then take steps to digitise the process and automate it.

This could be done with robotics process automation (RPA) by adding a system that captures, classifies and organises the documents, allows the finance team to review and sign the document digitally and then automatically files the document in the right place.

By taking out as many manual steps as possible, there can be a big time saving as well as a reduced paper usage and therefore a reduced printing cost.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA)

As well as identifying the processes that could be transformed and automated, you have to consider how you’re going to automate the processes. That’s where RPA comes in.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) can be used to automate repetitive, rule based business processes.

It is pivotal in joining the dots between disjointed business processes and it eliminates tedious tasks, freeing corporate workers to focus on higher value work.

RPA helps businesses achieve complete automation by automating tasks such as – migrating information from one system to another, validating information across various back-end systems, keying in information from excel sheets into business systems.

RPA is in many senses just one part of the puzzle when it comes to business process automation and there are a lot of digital solutions that can help you with you digital transformation journey.

RPA can be a big place to start but it’s likely to allow for the best results over time as the automation possibilities are practically endless.

If however, you’re still looking for a slightly more scaled down start and you want to focus on a couple of business processes, then here are some of the other processes and ideas to consider starting with:

Content Management - If you’re still filing paper away in a folder, look into Enterprise Content Management  - a centralised content management platform for paper and digital content.

Signing a document - Printing paper to sign in wet ink and scanning it back into a digital format is time consuming and a waste of paper - electronic signature is a secure, legal way of signing documents that doesn’t require printing of documents.

Ai Document capture - Automatically and intelligently classify documents for you, name them correctly and save them in the right location.

Data extraction - Remove the need for manual data extraction and use data extraction technology that helps capture and extract data from unstructured or poorly structured sources such as emails, letters, web forms and system generated electronic data.

These are just some of the ways you can start your business process automation journey and ultimately, it will always come down to identifying the core areas of the business that can benefit from digital transformation.