The modern business environment is more demanding than ever before, especially for small business owners. The competition is fierce, customer preferences are changing, and operating costs are higher.
On top of these challenges, we are in the midst of digitalisation and many businesses are adopting technologies to streamline their service delivery, internal management, and communication processes.
As a small business owner, you may feel there isn’t enough time in the day to cater to all these different priorities. Priorities that include managing internal processes, meeting customer expectations, and improving your business to achieve growth despite cutthroat competition.
That said, there is a way you can manage all these things and more, and that is business process automation (BPA).
With the right tools, you can automate repetitive processes in your business, improve service delivery, reach a wider audience, and enjoy greater profits—all without having to stretch yourself thin and spend extended hours working.
In this post, let’s explore why you should consider automation, what you can automate, and how to automate business processes using different software tools.
Why should you consider business process automation?
- Leverage digital transformation
The modern business landscape is becoming increasingly digitalised as technology takes the lead in augmenting the efforts of human resources. This trend will only escalate in the future.By adopting digital tools to automate your business processes, you ensure the digital transformation of your business and stay ahead of your competition.
- Alleviate the burden on your teams
As we mentioned earlier, the current business environment is more competitive than ever before and this can place a significant burden on your teams, which leads to burnout, loss of engagement, and ultimately inefficiency.With BPA, you reduce the burden on your teams by automating repetitive and time-sensitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more important activities that contribute to accelerated business growth. This leads to increased productivity and employee engagement.
- Save time and financial resources
Time and finances are finite resources. With automation, you ensure these resources are invested in value-added activities to improve your business processes.Research suggests that BPA can reduce operating costs by up to 90%.
What processes can you automate?
Although BPA may be the solution to many issues in your business, it won’t solve all your problems.
There are certain activities, like on-site customer interaction, where you may see better results with hands-on human interaction. Understanding the viable applications of automation is, therefore, a key step in learning how to automate business processes.
Here’s what you can automate:
- Off-site customer interactions
- Time-sensitive activities
- Business documentation
- Email and social media marketing
- Compliance workflows
How to automate your business processes
Before implementing automation, you should consider if your business is a candidate for BPA. Will automation help your business achieve its objectives? Is your business ready for automation?
Implement the steps below only if you’re convinced that business automation is a viable option to grow your business.
- Identify what tasks need automation
Your business will have specific workflows and processes that help you deliver services to your clients—consider them all before identifying the tasks that would benefit from automation.
- Establish business goals
Once you identify tasks that can be automated, assess your current performance in these tasks, and establish a goal you want to achieve through automation. This helps in measuring the effectiveness of automation.
- Select the right tools
There are more than 7000+ automation tools that span areas from marketing to compliance. You need to select the most appropriate tools that meet your specific requirements.
- Change management
After you’ve introduced the right tools into your workflows, it’s important to train your teams to properly leverage these tools. This increases the effectiveness of the implementation.
- Monitor and measure
Finally, assess the success of BPA by measuring your KPIs and comparing them to your goals.
Embrace business process automation to face contemporary business challenges
Implementing automation is a great way to transform your business processes to adapt to the rigours of the modern business landscape.
Consider what we’ve discussed about how to automate business processes when integrating automation into your workflows.