How automating business processes can put you back in control

Many people hear the word automation and think it involves loads of complicated software and a lot of extra costs. But while there are certainly some elaborate and expensive solutions on the market, automation isn’t all that complicated and doesn’t have to cost the earth.

Plus, the time it saves your teams, the increased efficiency within your business and the improved customer experience it provides means automating your business processes can actually boost your bottom line.

What is business process automation (BPA)?

BPA is the use of software to streamline repeatable multi-step tasks. This often involves automating processes that require input from several departments or individuals.

Almost any business process with repeatable steps can be automated, including processes within:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Finance
• Customer Service
• H&S
• Asset Management
• HR
• Administration
• Reporting

By automating processes, you streamline your business, making it more efficient, freeing up time, reducing human error and delays, and improving the customer experience.

BPA gives you back control

In small teams, it’s possible for owners or managers to know everything that is going on in the business from one day to the next. But as a business grows, it’s harder to keep track of every order, every new customer, every complaint or every error.

Having well-integrated, automated systems and processes can help you regain visibility over every business area and feel more in control.

You can access real-time facts and figures, check the progress of any orders or enquiries, pull reports, and have full transparency of crucial information, enabling you to make better business decisions.

BPA increases efficiency and frees up time

Many businesses underestimate the time saved through automation – a task that takes five minutes might not seem worth automating. But if ten different employees are doing that five-minute task ten times a day, that’s over 40 hours a week you could reclaim – equivalent to having an additional full-time employee.

And how many other five-minute tasks could be automated? Ten, twenty? One piece of software could easily streamline twenty different five-minute tasks and would be far more cost-effective than hiring an additional twenty employees.

Automating those tasks frees up capacity for your employees to focus on the more profitable, sensitive or important parts of their role. They aren’t spending hours doing repetitive admin tasks, sending the same emails, or updating old-fashioned spreadsheets.

BPA reduces errors

If a sale doesn’t get processed correctly, and the customer doesn’t receive their order on time, what impact does that have on your business? Best case, you have a frustrated customer. Worse case, they demand a refund, decide never to do business with you again, and leave a bad review for all to see.

And what impression does it give a new employee if they spend their first day twiddling their thumbs because nothing is organised? They have no email or system log-ins because the HR or IT person has been on holiday for two weeks, and nobody else has arranged anything. How much easier would it be if your onboarding process was automated?

When a process relies on people completing multiple steps, there are multiple opportunities for error. Steps can get missed or completed incorrectly, impacting the entire business.

Automation makes your business run smoothly. Less chance for errors. Less chance for important details to get missed.

BPA improves customer experience

Customers don’t want to spend an hour on hold trying to place an order. They want to speak to someone straight away or, better still, be able to place their order online.

They don’t want to fill in endless forms, inputting the same information over and over every time they want to book an appointment with you. They don’t want to repeat themselves every time they call with a question or query.

And they don’t want to wait weeks or months for something they can get elsewhere in days.

Why do you think Amazon is so popular? It’s not because the service is personal or friendly. It’s because it’s convenient. You can place an order and get it the next day.

People don’t mind waiting – they understand not every business has the budgets or resources of Amazon. But they do have a limit on their patience, and if your processes are particularly slow or unnecessarily cumbersome, they will start to look elsewhere. Give them an efficient service.

Automation doesn’t mean you have to lose the personal service. It means you streamline the parts of your business that don’t require a personal touch so you can spend more time on the bits that do.

BPA is made easy with :Automate

:Automate makes automation easy through bespoke solutions that can integrate with your existing systems and streamline your workflows.

Our packages have been designed to make BPA accessible, affordable and straightforward for SMEs.

Rather than trying to automate your entire business in one go, we break it down into simple, manageable projects with a scalable pay-as-you-grow system. We help you determine which of your processes can be automated and create the workflows to do this.

Our mission is to create measurable value by reducing your operational costs, improving productivity and enhancing customer and user experiences.

Every workflow is custom-built so you aren’t paying for off-the-shelf software features you’ll never use. And, unlike other software solutions, our packages aren’t priced per user, making us a cost-effective option for businesses who want flexibility and scalability.

Why :Automate?

• Free no obligation discovery meeting to explore opportunities

• Every process flow is custom-built for your organisation

• Flexible pay as you grow options to automate at your own pace

If you’d like to discuss your options, book a free discovery meeting to find out how we can help you.