Search
Close this search box.

What Business Processes Are Best Suited for Automation?

What’s the key benefit of digital transformation? The opportunity to automate tedious tasks! In fact, automation is no longer an option, it’s a critical component of business relevance.

However, when it comes to implementing AI automation protocols, things can get a little messy. This is because of our natural resistance to change, but also because it’s not easy to figure out which automated tasks would have the most significant impact on your bottom line.

This article will explore the benefits of hyperautomation and figure out what business processes are best suited for automation and why.

Contents

Devise a Comprehensive Understanding of Processes

The best place to start your BPA journey is to gather information and formulate a better understanding of all internal business processes. It’s important because you need an in-depth understanding of the step involved in a process to streamline it.

However, because most enterprises must contend with a lack of complete visibility, sometimes this exercise might also identify several steps within the process occurring in siloes. The best approach here is to properly understand each siloed step and see if you can work around it without significant human intervention and without sacrificing quality.

The primary objective isn’t to replace humans with robots or algorithms. Instead, you want man and machine to complement each other and work more efficiently. When humans are free from mundane tasks, they can also concentrate on high-value or more challenging activities.

Key benefits of hyperautomation 

  • Enhanced customer experiences
  • Enhanced employee experiences
  • Improved productivity
  • Lower operating costs
  • Minimum human error
  • Standardized processes
  • 24/7 customer service

 

So, what business processes are ripe for Automation?

Business Processes Best Suited for Automation

1. Customer Service

RPA has already proven its worth in customer service verticals. Although humans play a vital role in solving problems through personal interaction, there are many who would rather engage chatbots or other AI automation systems.

For example, over 59% of consumers surveyed in a recent study rated interactions at least an eight out of 10. Think of it this way, would you rather stay on hold listening to music or would you rather engage a chatbot and try to find a solution while you wait for a human customer service representative? In most cases, smart algorithms and FAQs can help accelerate resolutions.

2. Accounts Payable (AP)

Automating accounts payable AP and invoice processing protocols help improve successful cash management strategies and helps business leaders formulate a better understanding of their cash flows.

Automating AP protocols also helps minimize human error and helps power more cost-effective teams. For example, your AP team can focus on value-added decision-making instead of tedious transactional tasks.

Automation is also key to accommodating today’s hybrid workplaces. According to Gartner, hybrid workers who come into the office at least one day a week or fully remote workers will make up at least 32% of the planet’s workforce. The U.S. will lead this trend with as much as 53% of the workforce working fully or partially remote.

Hybrid work environments introduce complexity, so it’s important to ensure that both vendors and staff are paid exactly what they are owed. In this scenario, businesses can leverage RPA to streamline AP processes like three-way matching, routing, and coding.

3. Expense Tracking and Accounting Reconciliation

At the same time, organizations can also take automate expense tracking and accounts reconciliation processes. In this case, your staff will be thrilled not to track expenses manually, and they will also be happy to find that expense tracking apps seamlessly with software like Quickbooks.

However, financial statements demand some human intervention to review and approve before they are sent out. This will help take some of the pressure off staff who exert an incredible amount of energy manually reconciling accounts. 

Automating accounts reconciliation is also good for the environment as it eliminates the need for paper-based manual spreadsheets. Automatically adding data to the enterprise resource planning platform provides extensive visibility into the whole process. Human accounting professionals can come in at the end to review and approve.

Are you looking to hire a software development company to help with your Business Process Automation Project?

4. Data Security

Automation is key to quickly identifying anomalies and data security concerns. For example, automation can ensure that only users with appropriate permissions are able to view sensitive data. It can also redact personally identifiable information (PII) from being loaded or viewed by specific users.

Automation in data management and security also helps accelerate fraud detection. By quickly trawling through oceans of data, intelligent algorithms can detect patterns and alert IT teams to potential fraud.

5. Onboarding New Employees

Recruitment is a challenging and ongoing exercise with the current tech talent shortage and the great resignation. As the hiring frequency increases every year, organizations have to regularly onboard new employees.

Hiring can be a long, arduous process, and with more employees jumping ship more often than in the past, the hiring processing is increasing in frequency. Many of the employees you’ll be hiring are categorized as Millennials, and beyond all the hype (both positive and negative), this group of employees has taught us a valuable lesson for the onboarding process.

Beyond efficiency, there are additional benefits to automating the onboarding process: 42% of employees are more productive when they have access to suitable onboarding processes.

Unlike the generation before them, millennials grew up with technology and information at their fingertips. So, they wouldn’t want to wait around for a senior HR specialist to make time and show them what to do. Instead, they would rather explore and learn for themselves using tools provided by the employer.

By automating different parts of the onboarding process, you can quickly send out a welcome email, have the new hire digitally sign a contract, set up new user accounts, and view the workflows and milestones set up for the coming weeks. This approach helps save a number of hours are helps boost the organization’s overall productivity.

Check out how we at rinf.tech helped a Global Bank automate their lending and deposit processes within just 4 months

Final Thoughts

Hyperautomation is already here, so you can expect more employees across industries to do more meaningful work. However, enterprises overcome some potential hurdles to reap the benefits. For example, there might be a negative response from staff who think they will be replaced by RPA. But with a little bit of education, training, and encouragement, we can expect BPA, RPA, and AI automation to transform industries in the months ahead.

Looking for a technology partner?

Let’s talk.

Related Articles