Levi Olmstead
What Is Process Automation? Examples, Enterprise Benefits
- Published: November 3, 2023
- Updated: November 3, 2023
Organizations benefit from automation to achieve tasks faster, drive operational efficiency, achieve compliance, get a competitive advantage, and scale growth.
But automating tasks on an ad hoc basis is just the surface. The real benefits of automation are achieved when you streamline entire enterprise processes with business process management (BPM) and related automation-based digital transformation activities.
Process automation takes your employee’s productivity and enterprise workflow efficiency to the next level.
In this article, we explore the concept of process automation and how enterprises can implement it to remove bottlenecks, reduce errors, and improve efficiency.
What Is Process Automation?
Process automation is used to automate a process from start to finish. It performs repetitive, manual, rule-based tasks without the need for human interference or support. Process automation performs each process step according to formalized rules or sequences.
Business Process Automation (BPA) vs. Business Process Management (BPM)
Business process automation (BPA) is a subset of business process management (BPM). The goal of BPM is to optimize and manage all of the business’s processes, and BPA is one way to accomplish that.
However, BPM includes tasks like process modeling, design, and implementation. BPA only uses technology to make business processes run accurately and efficiently without manual labor.
Business Process Automation (BPA) vs. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a type of BPA. BPA is a general term that encompasses all process automation functions. RPA is a specialized form of automation that uses robots to perform repetitive and rule-based tasks, such as data entry or data extraction.
Examples of Enterprise Process Automation
The best tasks to automate are time-consuming, repeatable, and follow a formal set of rules or steps. Here are examples of enterprise process automation use cases:
- Collecting and logging employee onboarding data.
- Managing recruitment follow-ups, rejections, or interview scheduling.
- Processing payroll and invoice requests.
- Creating and managing workforce schedules.
- Replying to customer service inquiries.
- Routing customer support calls to the appropriate agent.
- Delivering and tracking employee training materials.
- Overseeing contract and form delivery and completion.
- Delivering email marketing and social media campaigns.
- Processing and fulfilling orders.
- Gathering data and generating reports.
- Approving, denying, and tracking employee time off requests.
Process automation examples like these are achieved with enterprise software, with technologies like CRMs, HCMs, ERPs, and more providing organizations with the application support to automate these enterprise processes.
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Benefits of Business Process Automation
In general, business process automation improves efficiency and helps teams be more productive by taking time-consuming, repetitive tasks off their plate. Here’s how it helps:
- Improved accuracy. Automation ensures processes are followed exactly every time, improving accuracy and reducing the amount of problems that need to be solved. This
- Faster time to completion. When automation can complete processes for you, they can run 24/7. Processes are done faster and completed around the clock.
- Enhanced data security. Removing human interactions from certain processes prevents data from falling into the wrong hands.
- Reduced compliance risks. Automation makes complying with regulatory standards and compliance requirements easier, reducing the risk of error or forgotten steps and enabling process governance.
- Improve scalability. Automation can be easily scaled up or down to align with changes in workload and increases or decreases in growth.
- Enhanced customer experience. Using automation helps deliver customer support, assistance, and attention faster and easier, creating a better overall experience.
- Improved employee satisfaction. Automation allows employees to focus on more complex and challenging tasks, helping them stay engaged and satisfied in their roles.
- Better allocation of resources. Automation frees up resources to be used where they can deliver more value.
How to Implement Business Process Automation
Here’s how to start implementing automation across your business process.
1. Determine your goals
Before making any significant software changes, you need to clarify what you want to accomplish. While business process automation can benefit your organization, tackling too many problems simultaneously can prevent you from seeing actual results.
Instead, focus on accomplishing a few key goals, such as:
- Driving team productivity.
- Cutting costs.
- Improving compliance.
- Reducing significant bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
- Creating a better customer experience.
Get specific about your goals, including how you will measure success. Understanding these metrics will make it easier to build a business process automation strategy that delivers results.
Remember: your business process automation goals should align with your larger business objectives. The changes you make to your business processes should benefit the entire business, not just that specific team or department performing the process.
2. Identify your automation opportunities
Once your goals are set, you can identify process automation opportunities that will bring you closer to achieving those objectives.
Here’s a simple process to help get you started:
- Identify the processes related to your goals. What business processes prevent your team from being as productive as possible or are too costly?
- Hypothesize on your automated solution. How would implementing automation change or improve these processes?
- Choose your digital transformation approach. Will you introduce automation to your business process by tackling the low-hanging fruit first, or will you start by transforming the processes that deliver the most value?
- Analyze and iterate on your automation processes. Build out a long-term plan for improving your business processes through automation. This includes scaling automation to related processes. It also involves analyzing your process automations to understand levels of efficiency to identify improvement areas.
3. Research BPA tools and choose a vendor
There are many different automation tools out there — but just choosing a solution based on what is cheapest or most popular isn’t always the right choice. Do proper research on your BPA tool options before investing.
Here are some common types of BPA tools to consider:
- Workflow automation tools: Use trigger-based rules to automate workflows and tasks.
- Integration tools: Connect software applications to move data between them seamlessly.
- AI and machine learning tools: Introduce AI and machine learning to your processes for more intelligent automation and decision-making.
- Business rules engines: Follow and apply rules for decision-making to automate complex business processes.
Ideally, you’ll be able to find one BPA vendor to cover all your automation needs. But this isn’t always the case. You may find that it makes the most sense to use multiple tools to achieve all your automation goals.
4. Incorporate a change management strategy
Implementing BPA is a significant change for your company and teams to adjust to. Support them through the transition with a change management strategy.
Your change strategy will help your employees understand:
- What goals and objectives are behind introducing the changes and new software.
- How automation will help improve processes directly related to their roles.
- What they can expect as new technologies and changes are rolled out.
- What is expected of them as business processes are adjusted and changed.
- Who is responsible for overseeing changes and who can answer change-related questions or concerns.
- What is the timeline for BPA implementation, including key milestones and dates.
- How success will be measured and evaluated.
- How feedback will be collected and delivered.
5. Analyze and monitor the effectiveness of automation on your business processes
How effective your business processes are will depend on the goals you initially set. Referring back to your original objectives, measure how automation can (or hasn’t) brought you closer to reaching your goals.
Monitoring effectiveness should be an ongoing endeavor. It might take time to see real results, so be patient as your team adjusts.
Challenges of Business Process Automation
Here are some of the biggest challenges of business process automation.
1. Many processes require a “human” touch
Not all business processes are good candidates for automation. Some perform better when completed by a human employee.
For example, specific customer support tasks technically can be automated, but customers may not find them as impactful. While automation may be able to tackle some of your tasks (like routing support calls or providing answers to common questions via chatbot), it’s not advised to automate all of your support tasks.
In addition to measuring BPA success, keep an eye on how employees and customers react to automated processes. If there is continued resistance to change even after proper upskill training and management, it might be a sign that the process shouldn’t be automated.
2. Analyzing, monitoring, and optimizing process efficiency and effectiveness over time
Automation won’t impact all processes equally. Some business processes will show immediate results, while others will take longer. This can make monitoring and analyzing effectiveness difficult.
Automation needs may change as your business grows and customer needs shift. New technologies and software can impact your automation strategy. Thinking your work is done after introducing BPA to existing processes can hold you back from fully scaling and reaching your goals.
You should analyze, monitor, and optimize your processes regularly. Look for new opportunities to improve how you’re using automation, or changing the processes themselves to be more efficient.
3. Setting up and mapping cross-functional processes
When processes span multiple functions and teams, they can become more challenging to map and manage. Adding automation can simplify these processes once established, but doing the prep work and getting everyone up to speed can be a real challenge.
Your process automation can’t exist in individual teams or department silos. Automating specific tasks and functions can create problems or complications for other teams.
When mapping business processes, consider your larger organizational goals and intended business outcomes from automating processes. Consider how different approaches move across business functions before making changes and ensure your BPA solutions deliver the results you’re after.
Analyze, build, and deliver more effective processes with Whatfix’s in-app guidance, self-help support, and analytics
Improving your processes with automation doesn’t need to be a complicated endeavor. With Whatfix, deliver process efficiency with in-app guidance, on-demand self-help support, and robust analytics.
With Whatfix’s digital adoption platform, enable your employees to adopt business processes with in-app guided Flows, Task Lists, and real-time Self Help that provide application end-users with the contextual performance support they need, in the flow of work.
Analyze your business processes with User Actions and Enterprise Insights to identify areas of process friction, monitor process adoption, map optimal process workflows, and achieve technology ROI by maximizing process efficiency.
What Is Whatfix?
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.
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