Business Process Automation: Major Benefits, Examples and Applications
Modern businesses are more interested in keeping up with technological changes that are constantly evolving and growing exceptionally fast to stay competitive in the market and, more importantly, be more efficient and productive. One way to be efficient is by optimizing your business processes with business process automation.
To have the edge over your competitors and stay efficient in the market, delve into our guide to gain a deeper understanding of Business Process Automation.
What Is Business Process Automation?
According to recent data, around 80% of businesses are accelerating their business process automation efforts. Many of them aim to automate their daily recurring tasks, which take time. This indicates a trend towards adopting automation across various industries. So, what is it really?
By definition, Business Process Automation (BPA) uses software and other digital tools to automate organizational processes. Businesses can leverage BPA to significantly boost their efficiency and productivity by converting daily manual tasks into automated processes. This frees employees from these mundane tasks and allows them to invest time in real work to achieve business goals.
Business process automation aims to help organizations reduce errors, increase operational efficiency, and save time and money.
Explore: 10 Business AI Tools By ABC-Media.Net To Automate Business Processes
How To Get Started With Business Process Automation?
According to resources from a management consulting company, businesses can automate more than 30% of tasks across various occupations, and 60% can also be automated.
Besides, most companies start with small automation. This way, they can streamline existing processes and business process workflow automation within a specific area. However, most companies start small, but the true benefit of BPA is its scalability. Thus, you need to implement BPA across your organization to amplify the benefits.
Despite the initial small approach, if you want your BPA to be a success, you need to have support from top management and stakeholders to ensure resources and commitment for wider implementation.
Also, if you are a business looking to hire a perfect solution to automate your business operations, Cognitive IT Solutions offers robust automation services, including process automation, AI automation for businesses, and Workflow Automation, so your business can enhance its efficiency and productivity.
Examples Of Business Process Automation Include:
Following are the major Business Process Automation examples:
👉 Customer support: Chatbots can reply to customer inquiries and requests, improving customer service and reducing staff costs.
👉 Invoices: Software can automate the process of processing invoices, which involves manually reviewing each invoice, verifying the information, and entering it into a spreadsheet or accounting system
👉 Email automation: Software can tailor email parameters and set them to run automatically, such as when an email about adding a new contact is sent.
👉 Claims processing: Insurance agencies can use automation to manage and process claims, including tasks like claims intake, assessing damages, sending out settlement notices, and processing payments
👉 Inventory management: Automation can help maintain accuracy, keep costs in check, and ensure optimum spending on inventory
👉 Social media management: Software can schedule posts for automated publishing, deliver reports, and integrate all the business’s social media profiles into a single platform.
Major Benefits Of Business Process Automation
BPA possesses many benefits. You must implement BPA throughout your business processes if you want greater efficiency. Let’s take a look at some of the major benefits of BPA so you can have an idea of the power of using automation tools:
1. Streamlined Workflows and Reduced Redundancy
📌 Elimination of Manual Tasks: Machine Learning in Business Process Automation can automate repetitive tasks, reducing the need for manual intervention. This frees up workers to concentrate on more strategic and intricate work.
📌 Improved Efficiency: By identifying and removing redundant steps in workflows, BPA can significantly enhance operational efficiency.
📌 Real-World Example: PNC Financial Services Group reduced its manual loan application review workload by 80% by automating its processes.
2. Enhanced Communication and Collaboration
📌 Reduced Communication Bottlenecks: BPA can automate communication processes, minimizing delays and misunderstandings.
📌 Improved Collaboration: By streamlining communication, BPA fosters better collaboration among teams and departments.
📌 Time Savings: Automating communication tasks frees employees’ time for more productive activities.
Learn more: Implementing Digital Process Automation in Enterprises and Its Impact.
3. Accelerated Time-to-Market
📌 Faster Process Completion: BPA can majorly lessen the time it takes to complete various business processes.
📌 Improved Product Launch Times: By streamlining operations, BPA facilitates firms in bringing products and services to market more quickly.
📌 Competitive Advantage: Faster time-to-market can give businesses a competitive edge.
4. Increased Accuracy and Stability
📌 Reduced Errors: Automation can minimize human errors often occurring in manual processes.
📌 Consistent Results: BPA ensures processes are executed consistently, leading to more reliable outcomes.
📌 Real-World Example: Carlsberg Danmark, a famous Danish drink company, reduced order processing time by over 90% and virtually eliminated errors through BPA.
Some Major Applications Of Business Process Automation
Following are some of the major applications of BPA:
1. Human Resources Automation
Human Resources in every firm involves many time-consuming tasks. It is more of a compilation of chaotic processes and involves issues such as never-ending paperwork, missed tasks, employee dissatisfaction, and less productivity. However, businesses can automate HR tasks such as data entry, employee onboarding, time tracking, payroll, and performance management.
By automating HR tasks, the manager can focus on more strategic initiatives, improve employee experience, and ultimately improve overall business efficiency by reducing manual errors and improving data accuracy.
2. Sales & Marketing
Another major application of BPA is sales and marketing. Businesses can find, engage, and convert customers by combining sales and marketing automation tools. The goal is to increase efficiency and improve customer engagement. Sales automation tools help streamline sales processes, such as:
👉 Identifying qualified leads
👉 Personalizing outreach
👉 Invoicing and processing payments
👉 Tracking sales
👉 Sending proposals
👉 Evaluating sales performance
Marketing automation tools help businesses plan and run marketing campaigns, such as Generating leads, Nurturing leads, Scoring leads, Measuring campaign ROI, and Automating online marketing campaigns.
Thus, Sales and marketing automation can reduce costs, save resources for high-level tasks, and improve customer experience. However, many companies start with time-consuming tasks that don’t even generate revenue.
Read more: How Does Optimized Workflow Automation For Small Businesses Boost Efficiency?
3. Automate Purchase Order
Purchase Orders (POs) are essential documents that initiate the procurement process. They outline terms and conditions for the purchase of goods and services. Traditional and manual approval techniques can be time-consuming, leading to delays as you must fill out and send the forms to the purchasing team for approval.
Furthermore, it has other issues, such as incomplete records, errors in POs, and delivery delays due to the lack or inaccuracy of information.
Thus, BPA can help you automate these tasks by tracking the progress of each PO, ensuring accountability and transparency. More importantly, a Business Process Automation strategy and tools can automatically store and capture PO data to decrease the risk of errors and streamline the communication between departments and suppliers, ultimately leading to orders being delivered on time without causing any issues.
4. Accounting And Finance
Accounting and finance are yet another departments that require manual data entry, and there are errors when there is manual data entry. A firm’s Accounting and finance department can also face many other issues, such as manual bookkeeping, poor cashflow management, lack of accurate and on-time financial reports, and, most importantly, higher costs and potential complications during Audits.
Companies can automate their accounting and financial processes using the BPA tool to mitigate these issues. It will help the company to increase efficiency and accuracy and reduce errors. Some benefits of accounting and finance automation include:
👉 Reduced errors: Automation can reduce errors caused by manual data entry and calculations.
👉 Improved compliance: Automation can assist companies in complying with financial regulations.
👉 Cost savings: Automation can lower labor costs and free up resources for other endeavors.
👉 Better decision-making: Automation can help business leaders make better decisions by providing accurate data more quickly.
Conclusion
Businesses must use BPA tools to increase efficiency and productivity in this digital landscape. By providing BPA core benefits, examples, and applications, we have given you an overview of the possibilities of automating your business processes. If you are searching for Cognitive digital solutions, look no further than Cognitive IT Solutions.
Cognitive IT Solutions has been vigorously working to provide its customers with successful automation, whether it’s Workflow, Process, or Artificial Intelligence. So, if you want to save cost and automate monotonous tasks to ensure your employees invest time in more important work to achieve business goals, consider this leading IT Company Karachi for Pakistan’s best process automation services.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is another name for business process automation?
Another name for BPA is Enterprise Process Automation. Enterprise automation platforms integrate various technology systems to automate business processes and pass data.
If you are unsure about implementing BPA and looking to leverage those to automate your business, we suggest Cognitive IT Solutions, a prestigious IT company Karachi, offering robust Automation services to boost your business efficiency and productivity.
Does Amazon use BPM?
Yes, Amazon uses Business Process Management (BPM) software to automate financial processes. Amazon uses the Appian BPM Suite to automate tasks such as handling invoices for accounts payable. You can even leverage Automation services from an IT company Karachi that offers cutting-edge Business Process Automation software development to stay competitive.
What is the difference between RPA and BPA?
Robotic process automation, or “RPA,” and Business Process Automation (BPA) are software technologies businesses use to improve efficiency, accuracy, and speed.
