- Here are five simple guidelines to help you realize it may be a good idea to automate a business process.
Business owners are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and decrease costs. However, many businesses don’t realize they’re wasting time on a process that can be automated before it’s too late.
Workflow automation is a system that uses defined business process workflows to automate tasks in everyday business processes. It usually automates sequences of steps, routing data specified by the flowchart, or a logic diagram created for it. Automating your company’s workflows will boost efficiency and productivity while eliminating human error–making life easier on you!
But how do you know when your business needs automation? Here are five signs that should prompt you to automate your process.
1. You are doing all the work yourself
Do you ever feel like you’re endlessly moving information around? Indeed, what you’re doing is necessary, but it’s not at all essential that you should be the one doing it.
Somewhere in your day-to-day routine, some tasks could use an automation boost to free up time and focus on what matters most. For instance, copying and pasting are the greatest of all time-wasters, which means you need to use workflow automation. Plus, where humans work, mistakes are a sure thing. Fatigue can cause incorrect data input or data loss and even compromise security in some cases.
One significant benefit of automation is that it will free you from doing repetitive tasks. If this process always turns out the same, then automating things could save you a lot of time and money. For example, full-time US workers spend an average of 520 hours per year on manual labor that can be automated.
Also Read
2. Poor customer service
The truth is, consumers want prompt responses. Around 82% of people expect a response within five minutes when engaging with your company on social media or email and in-person meetings if they’re available.
This means that it’s essential to provide the highest level of customer service possible for them because word will spread quickly about how you treated their needs. Automation can help you respond faster to your customers. No matter how many inquiries you get, your team can stay in sync by workflow automation.
For instance, many project management apps notify you of task creation and management to ensure that no messages are missed.
3. The process is not documented correctly
When it comes to being creative, there’s a fine line between anarchy and order. Telling your team precisely what their job responsibilities are and going the extra mile in preventing confusion about who is responsible for a particular task.
Documenting processes will help keep things in order and ensure each individual knows what’s expected of them. Therefore, there won’t be any more confusion or neglectful work-ups on your part.
Having a clear understanding of the processes in place at your company will help you identify areas where you can do some cost cutting and optimize what’s going on. This is particularly important if some of these processes don’t make sense, as workflow automation could be just the thing for fixing up any issues before they get out of hand.
4. You are getting inconsistent results
Does your business rely on accurate and timely data for decision-making purposes? If yes, then building rules into an automated solution will help ensure consistency remains in place regardless of who completes the work.
An effective way to get desired results is by using the DMN (Decision Model and Notation). It is an exciting and intuitive modeling language that can be read by a diverse range of people with different skills. DMN changes the way decisions are made on behalf of enterprises, giving them more control over their processes without sacrificing pace or agility.
A business analyst can use a decision engine to make sure the rules they create are understood by everyone involved. The integration of this system is easy and quick, making it perfect for any environment with rapid changes in production.
5. There’s a lot of miscommunication
Miscommunication is a hazard to any business process. For instance, an analyst sends the marketing head their budget plan via email, and it gets lost in her overflowing inbox. This leads to miscommunications later on about what was agreed upon when they communicated earlier that day or week.
As a result, it leads them back-and-forth for months before finally settling on something new together because of their disagreements. Automation helps you stay on top of all the requests that need to be done.
This means you don’t have to worry about forgetting something or not knowing what’s up next; the technology will keep track of all your requests and thoughts.
