Your Business Process AutomationCheat Sheet

If you run a business, you understand well the need to keep costs down, revenues up and help your employees be more productive and efficient in their daily work. It’s a no-brainer right?

One of the best ways you can do these things is to reduce the amount of routine and repetitive work your employees do and allow them to focus their time and effort on high-value work activities.

Business process automation is your answer to achieving efficiencies in cost, resources, and investment. It’s about combining the advantages of technology with the knowledge of employees to support customers quickly and properly.

But what is business process automation (BPA) exactly? We’re glad you asked.

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Don’t Get Caught Without It

Business Process Automation DefinedFirst, so we’re on the same page, let’s define what a business process is.

A business process is a set of repeatable tasks or activities that together

accomplish a business goal. Some examples of a business process include

an application for house insurance, managing clinical trials in healthcare,

mortgage applications, and so on.

Business processes typically follow predictable patterns and have a number

of repetitive tasks. Business process management is the overall management

of business processes, including both structured and ad hoc tasks, and

it takes advantage of business process automation wherever possible to

improve the management of structured tasks.

Your Business Process Automation Cheat Sheet 2

The research firm Gartner Group defines business process automation as:

“... the automation of complex business processes and functions beyond conventional data manipulation and record-keeping activities,

usually through the use of advanced technologies. It focuses on “run the business” as opposed to “count the business” types of automation

efforts and often deals with event-driven, mission-critical, core processes. BPA usually supports an enterprise’s knowledge workers in

satisfying the needs of its many constituencies.”

Sounds straightforward right? Well, maybe not so much. So let’s break this definition down into more understandable ideas.

1. It’s the automation of business processes: There’s a lot of work involved in running your organization: a lot of processes to follow

that can involve many employees, systems, information and decision points. BPA makes the management of those processes easier by

automating as much as possible and allowing employees to focus on the high-value tasks that can’t be automated.

2. It leverages technology: BPA solutions enable you to manage your business processes from end-to- end. BPM automates the routine,

ensures the right people follow the right workflow, and that there is transparency of the full process.

3. It supports knowledge workers: These are the people who do the work. BPA defines ownership and accountability of different stages of

a business process, streamlines communication, and improves efficiency and productivity.

Why You Need BPA

The need for BPA is clear. Customers demand great customer service and are very willing to go

elsewhere if they aren’t happy with the quality and speed of service you provide. Whether your

business processes are directly customer focused (filing an insurance claim or applying for

a loan) or are internally focused (biomedical research or asset procurement), the speed and

efficiency at which you handle the process affects how well your organization can operate and

meet the needs of customers and its constituents.

BPA ensures the management of structured processes from initiation through execution and

completion by:

• Helping automate repeatable and repetitive tasks, so they are done quickly and without

the need for human intervention.

• Reducing the possibility of manual errors.

• Defining the approval hierarchy for a business process and outlining clear accountability

and ownership of the process and its different stages.

• Streamlining communications by keeping track of all information and data in a single

location.

• Increasing transparency of the entire business process so you can easily see what stage a

process is in and who has worked on it at any point in time.

• Providing insights into any potential bottlenecks, identifying where more assistance might

be required or process adjustments are needed.

• Offering regular reports on the performance of processes, thus allowing you to track the

efficiency and productivity of your employees and the overall process.

Not every process can be automated. Some processes can’t be automated at all, and

others have specific tasks within them that can be automated. First and foremost, it’s

important to understand your specific automation goals. Next, see what tasks and

activities within a business process you can automate to reduce costs and achieve

greater efficiency.

Talking with the employees involved in each process is critical. They can help

understand how the process works, and where automation can reduce their workload

and enable them to spend more time on important tasks. Look for processes, or tasks

and activities within a process that are time and resource-heavy but are repetitive,

following consistent, repeatable patterns. These are best suited for BPA.

Once you know the right processes to automate and implement automation, ensure

you properly train your employees on their new/adapted role in the process. It may take

some time to get employees working with the new process properly.

Know Which Processes to

Automate

Your Business Process Automation Cheat Sheet 3

Your Business Process Automation Cheat Sheet 4

Managing Business Process AutomationDon’t assume that you can automate your processes and then forget

about them. Business changes. Business processes change as well.

Plan to regularly check to ensure the process is working as expected

and achieving the desired results. Ensure that as business rules

change your process is adapted to apply them.

Look for bottlenecks in the process that automation is either causing

or isn’t solving. Be prepared to adjust the process, change the

approach to automation or remove the automation altogether if the

process dramatically changes.

You may also decide to automate only certain tasks or activities of

a process to start, measure the performance and then add more

automation over time. The key is to monitor regularly and measure

to ensure they are meeting expected goals efficiently based on time

and resource expectations.

As long as you understand your business goals and align automation

goals accordingly, then continually measure and improve

performance, business process automation will help you achieve the

cost, resources and investment efficiencies you are looking for.

Monitor the process once it’s automated and up and running. Define the expected performance improvements and then measure the results

to see if automation has been beneficial based on your expectations.

Automation is not free, so if an automated process is not bringing the performance improvements you defined then consider stopping the

automation of the process or activity and look for other business processes you can improve through automation.

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About Everteam

Everteam brings over 25 years’ experience and innovation to the field of Enterprise Content

Management. In an ever-increasing legal and compliance environment, Everteam’s range

of products support the improvement of content –driven processes, and enable enterprise

customers to easily monitor and align their content strategies for overall organizational

efficiency and effectiveness.

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