Almost every industry has been affected by automation, from banks to the food industry to healthcare systems. Nevertheless, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are elevating automation to an entirely new level.
According to the IDC’s “Worldwide Semi-annual AI Tracker,” enterprises worldwide will spend around 342 billion USD on artificial intelligence in 2021. This tracker also predicts that the market for artificial intelligence will accelerate in 2022, with an annual growth of 18.8%, and stay on track to reach 500 billion USD by 2024.
Importance of automation in business
Automation is of utmost importance for modern businesses, as it drastically reduces time and resource expenditures and allows personnel to focus on more vital, value-added tasks. It accomplishes this by simplifying standard corporate procedures, providing more stringent security limits, and facilitating optimal operational efficiency.
To be a successful business owner, providing your team members with the necessary benefits and critical business tools is essential. Your workforce will be more productive with high-quality tools, inventory-counting tools, and automated invoicing processing.
Top-level executives will have instantaneous access to critical performance measures, such as customer satisfaction scores and team engagement stats, with solutions that assist all corporate departments to work more efficiently to become more collaborative and coordinated. This enables businesses to make well-informed decisions, from pricing strategies for new customers to whether services require a complete makeover.
Automation tools every business should consider
The logistics of operating a business can be highly challenging. Business owners are aware that there are a variety of valuable software solutions that can make operations easier by enhancing the effectiveness of business procedures.
Below are three crucial business process automation solutions to help you operate your business more efficiently.
1. Human Resources
Human resource management systems can automate various HR tasks, including job application processing, interview scheduling, job offers, onboarding, payroll management, and benefits administration. These systems can also provide insights into workforce productivity by utilizing analytics. Bautomate helps to create customized workflows that enable organizations to automate HR-related mundane tasks with optimal efficiency. Once the workflow is established, all processes are automated with no scope of error.
a) Employee Onboarding
Automated employee onboarding is a structured process of training and guiding new hires without manual intervention. In fact, automating the process can reduce the strain on an organization’s human resources.
It aids in the documentation process by automatically entering the employees’ detailed information via an online form submission. Following that, the centralized data is made available for interdepartmental sharing of information about a candidate and approval of his candidacy.
Therefore, onboarding begins with streamlined procedures. It saves time, effort, and resources, resulting in smoother onboarding and employee interaction. The automation platform facilitates new hire training and induction.
b) Appraisals
Automation of the appraisal process enables the HR department to handle the large volumes of employees’ appraisals with core efficiency.
Once automated, the appraisal process enables the designated line managers and HR department to dig deeper into employee performance via analytics and verify whether the performance satisfies all predetermined goals.
In addition, the automated systems help to get rid of human error, bias, preferences, and subjective behavior. Thus, all the employees can feel confident that their appraisal is not affected by their equation with immediate bosses and that all are treated equally with focus on achieving goals and fulfilling all performance metrics.
It also helps to reduce attrition rates considerably as employees give support to automated appraisal systems.
c) Employee Offboarding
Like onboarding, offboarding should be totally automated. The HR department can save time and effort by streamlining the entire process.
All offboarding processes can be automated, from accepting resignation letters to blocking access to company data and apps to reconciling payments to providing feedback forms and final emails.
Organizations can optimize their productivity by automating the tedious process of offboarding and focusing on urgent tasks that require human involvement and intelligence.
d) Recruitment
Automating the recruitment process helps the organization screen the right candidates and streamline the entire process by enabling employees to focus on more relevant tasks.
The automation system enables organizations to select only those resumes that match with preset keywords and forward the selected resumes to designated departments.
With automation, companies can set specific conditions and rules for selecting a resume for further processing. It helps to relieve the HR department to smoothen up the recruitment process, starting with the selection of the best resumes.
2. Finance and Accounting
Companies can save time for essential tasks like analysis, strategy, and stakeholder collaboration by automating financial planning and accounting functions. For example, in accounts payable (AP) management, data capture is automated, invoices are automatically matched to documents, and approvals are routed automatically. Moreover, it helps to enable more efficient use of time and simplifies the tracking of cash flow, expenditures, and other crucial business data. It reduces data errors and aids in the prevention of fraud via background controls.
a) Invoice Processing
Invoicing software is a solution that automatically generates invoices for services and goods supplied. The application is designed to create lists of services and products with associated costs, which can be sent to clients as an invoice.
Typically, these invoices are prepared with the invoice software’s pre-built templates. The invoice automation makes it easier, faster, and more helpful for your business to send out invoices. Because of these invoice automation benefits, an increasing number of organizations each year choose e-invoicing software. In reality, invoicing automation platforms reduce the processing time and related fees compared to conventional paper invoices.
The cost and time savings are attributable to the reduction of postage and printing expenses, the accelerated receipt of payments, and the consolidation of all invoicing-related activities.
Research and Market report shows that the global digital invoicing software industry was worth USD 8.74 billion in 2021. The publisher anticipates the market will reach USD 29.68 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.5% between 2022 and 2027.
By taking advantage of the invoicing software features and examples, you will be able to improve your cash flow, have higher net profits and fewer losses, and save on your time and efforts. An invoicing software with a high level of security features ensures the safety of billing and invoicing activities. Thus, your invoicing software is secure against hackers and fraudulent behavior.
Even the most basic communication systems, combined with simplified management can help your organization remain organized and efficient when working on any particular project.
b) Account Reconciliation
Manual reconciliation of accounts is a long and tedious process, prone to inconsistencies and fraudulent activities. But automating the account reconciliation process can make the process well-ordered, and error-free. Moreover, any discrepancy can be reported immediately.
It saves time, relieves workers of repetitive, mundane chores, and keeps accurate data records. It also helps to improve transparency as all team members know about account reconciliation and can participate in making better financial decisions.
c) PO Automation
The purchase order process is usually time-consuming and a grinding chore for concerned departments. It is a long process that is susceptible to human error and delays as it involves various stages, departments and approvals. But automating the entire process can streamline the process with better transparency at each stage, and speeding the process further helps to improve the operational efficiency of the organization.
From generating purchase enquiries from different departments to creating requests, getting quotations, approvals for pricing, placing purchase orders, getting deliverables, and reconciliation, all processes get automated without any human intervention. It makes an organization work at its best operational efficiency, along with saving time and cost.
3. Sales Processes
Bautomate and other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools enable sales teams to spend less time logging deal-related activity and more time making the phone calls that close deals. Whether it’s qualifying leads based on their buyer journey, or creating data-backed sales forecasts, the tools can automate repetitive tasks throughout the sales process.
Grow your business with business automation
In the aftermath of the pandemic, the way business processes are handled has undergone a tectonic shift. To survive and thrive, businesses had to resort to automation, and it helped them to bear contingencies with precision. Moreover, businesses have been able to afloat new possibilities by automating their business processes.
How automation can help your business grow is an interesting question that needs to be answered with precision.
Firstly, automation helps to increase productivity by removing human intervention in mundane tasks involving repetitive actions. If processes are not automated, chances are there for errors, fraud, and manipulations. Additionally, human workforce effectiveness is enhanced with more focus on strategic tasks that bots can’t handle. It helps to bring out the best in each team member as their involvement is crucial for the success of the project at hand.
Communication lag plays a vital role in hampering the productivity of employees. With automation, accurate information is available to the right person at the right time, and processes are validated by required verifications. It empowers employees to know and understand vital processes and information that are required to accomplish a particular task or series of tasks in a process. After completing all stages, the process is termed “accomplished” by the automated system.
Bautomate is a powerful BPA platform that ensures speed, accuracy, ease of customizing workflows, and get precise information after the processes are accomplished. Once your business processes are automated, your highly-skilled workforce is free to focus on core business functionalities. They can utilize their skills to achieve business goals and derive beneficial long-term results.
With automation, business processes are streamlined, and the outcome is promising for the entire business organization. What makes automation more relevant to a business is that it helps to provide a detailed view of the complete cycle of the process. It enables the designated workforce to cross check if all the processes are required or can further be streamlined. This insight is very important for getting rid of processes that aren’t needed and paving the way for better operational efficiency.
Wrapping Up
To summarize, Bautomate can improve business process visibility, allowing for more informed decisions. Regardless of the size of the business, automation is required to maximize operational efficiency by focusing on data-driven solutions. It helps businesses stay ahead of the competition by intelligently optimizing even the most complex workflows, ensuring system integration, increased visibility, and a faster return on investment.
