11 Reasons to Automate Your Business Processes [2024]: Ignore #5 at Your Company’s Risk
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What is Automation?
Automation is simply the process of using technology to automate and streamline procedures and tasks that are typically executed by humans. From simple, repetitive tasks to sophisticated processes which may even require decision-making and problem-solving functions.
The evolution of automation systems over time has improved production, efficiency, and accuracy while lowering labour expenses and human error for business operators.
Advances in automation that might have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago, today, have become standard practice for many organizations.
Businesses are opting to automate their processes to increase productivity levels, enhance the customer or client experience, and properly allocate their most valuable resources.
Why is business automation important?
Automation is crucial in running a business today, as it saves a great deal of time and energy while allowing employees to concentrate on more critical, value-added tasks – may even help you cut down on unnecessary workforce.
It accomplishes this by standardizing common company procedures, creating tighter security guidelines, and promoting maximum operational efficiency.
Automation not only completes manual work more faster and with fewer errors, but it also consistently produces high-quality results that offer insightful information that could have gone unnoticed otherwise.
Business process automation is your first step toward a more effective, well-rounded workplace that puts the needs of both your customers and employees first.
Benefits of automating processes in your business or organization
Any business operator knows the importance of speed and efficiency in executing any given project.
The benefits of automating processes cannot be emphasized enough, and it’s far-reaching, from collaborating more with colleagues to streamlined compliance for your ongoing retention schedules.
And the best part? Almost all operational processes can be automated, which means your company can get 10x more effective, 10x more productive, and generate 10x more revenue.
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Better operational efficiency
You don't need to constantly monitor whether one task is moving on to the next because automation is mainly hands-off (i.e., the system does all of this for you).
Additionally, it can locate and fix faults or bottlenecks in your operations, which increases productivity and demands less work from your staff. And when your company is operating more efficiently because of these solid, automated processes, everyone on the team performs better.
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Better collaboration and result generation
These days, the most effective workplaces are those that have deliberately moved toward automation, streamlining their day-to-day and improving departmental teamwork.
Automating company procedures also allows you to notify the team of important tasks and issue reminders, which promotes employee participation. InfoLobby does this brilliantly by allowing you to assign roles to members of your team in workspaces.
Additionally, say you have a creative team, automation reduces frequent annoyances and frees up time for socializing and idea generation.
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Increased productivity
By transferring laborious or complicated manual processes to digital platforms, several tasks can be executed simultaneously.
For instance, digital forms with an automated records request and retrieval process are blazingly quick and can occur simultaneously, compared to a manual process of;
- making a records request and
- retrieving records, which could take weeks.
Your hardest and most time-consuming processes can be automated to finish work faster and with noticeably fewer errors.
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Tighter security
If your company still uses physical paper for its recordkeeping - regardless of how harmless it may appear, it might pose a security risk for your business.
Paper documents are much more prone to being stolen, corrupted, altered, as well as being ruined in a flood or leakage, a fire, or other unforeseen event.
That said, automating your business processes not only digitally saves your content, but also allows for extra security precautions to protect your most sensitive data – all in one system.
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Streamlined compliance
Compliance plays a vital role in the success of any organization, as it ensures you’re in line with regulations mandated by the body governing your organization. If your organization fails to comply with these regulations, such as retention schedules for particular documents, the consequences could be inconvenient and expensive.
Fortunately, the benefits of business process automation also extend to compliance measures.
By digitizing and automating processes you’re automatically creating a record of the details associated with the process while ensuring that your track record doesn’t get put into question by careless employee mistakes.
Having this information automatically stored is incredibly useful during potential records audits.
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Enhanced service delivery
Your clients/customers are an invaluable asset to your company, and by automating your business processes, you show that you care about their overall experience.
Because of this, you may now have enough resources to channel towards activities that give your customers a better experience as automation would have cleared your schedule of tiresome manual tasks.
With the help of automation software, your organization can consistently meet its service goals, and guarantee fast access to whichever products or services you offer.
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Save costs
Any business operator would probably leap at the possibility of reducing their company overhead expenses.
Fortunately, automating your business processes comes with a variety of financial benefits. This is because there is a high likelihood that your resources are being wasted when business operations are managed manually.
However, cost operations are significantly decreased with the efficiency of digital process automation (which therefore positively affects your profit margins, as well).
This is also the case for employees. A proper audit of employee functions in a manual business setting will quickly expose redundant positions in the company’s payroll.
Put differently, automation makes the best and most economical use of your primary resources.
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Limited errors
No matter how knowledgeable or experienced your staff is, they’re bound to slip up from time to time. To err is human, isn't it?
When maintaining records manually, errors, lags, and inefficiencies are all very common. Nevertheless, the consequences of these mistakes should not be understated.
Therefore, the risk of errors must be reduced to the barest minimum, and process automation tools are the most effective way to do this.
By Incorporating automation into your workflows, you dramatically decrease the likelihood of redundancies and costly missteps.
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Reliable insights
When managers can actively monitor the completion of a business process (and understand the required steps within that process), it’s considerably easier to make adjustments and secure better outcomes.
This is extremely difficult to do if you’re looking at a stack of sheets on your desk with no idea how to make sense of any of them.
By leveraging automation, company execs can dig into these processes to gain reliable insights and analyze data at a deeper level, to enable them to make better business decisions entirely.
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Boosts transparency
Through the use of customisable dashboards in general, automation software is great at offering visibility into your business processes.
For instance, you can easily track a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) for a particular project or task, giving you a better sense of office or departmental performance and revealing which areas need improvement.
When your team has access to that level of transparency, it’ll undoubtedly have a positive effect; employees can stay informed on their individual (or collective) assignments, and have more accountability for their progress.
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Heightened morale
This doesn’t get talked about a lot, but team morale is sometimes an overlooked advantage of business process automation, though its influence can be pretty big.
The workweek becomes much less monotonous thanks to automation, which also allows for a "friction-free" workplace where staff members feel more productive in their positions.
Similarly, automation speeds up approval processes – with just button clicks, rather than office errands and large documentation.
Additionally, studies reveal that teams' morale and retention skyrocket when they have more time to devote to the most fulfilling facets of their work.
How to automate processes with InfoLobby
Process automation, in general, is the use of software technology to automate repetitive operations that would otherwise require human effort.
Although there are other methods for automating processes, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model is always a wise investment. A SaaS solution offers a minimal entrance barrier, a predictable long-term investment, and an easy-to-use beginning point.
Business process automation using InfoLobby is a low-risk, high-gain option that gives your company quantifiable results.
To find out how this tool can speed up and make running and scaling your business a breeze, click here to get started.
