Business Process Automation (BPA) offers organizations a powerful way to streamline operations, reduce expenses and free up employees to focus on more strategic work. However, integrating new automation technologies can seem complex if you don’t know where to begin. This blog walks through 5 simple steps any company can follow to start implementing BPA.
We’ll first explain the key benefits of automation and what it involves. Then we’ll cover identifying automation opportunities, setting objectives, selecting tools, planning change management and ongoing monitoring. Following this proven framework can help simplify your journey with business process automation.
What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?
Business Process Automation (BPA) involves configuring software, robots or other technology to perform repetitive, standardized business processes and transactions automatically. The key goal of BPA is to simplify and streamline an organization’s operations by handling routine tasks that previously required human involvement and manual effort.
By automating qualifying administrative activities like data entry, form filling and basic calculations, companies can significantly boost staff productivity while reducing costs, errors and processing time. BPA improves accuracy by removing human error from repetitive tasks and ensures consistency by having robots follow set procedures exactly as programmed.
BPA also provides an opportunity for organizations to refocus their workforce on more strategic, creative efforts that leverage human skills like problem solving, critical thinking and decision making. Fundamentally, BPA is about using technology to enhance business efficiency.
Steps to Implement Business Process Automation
Here are the 5 easy steps to implement business process automation
Identify Tasks to Be Automated
The first step in any successful business process automation project is to carefully identify which tasks are best suited for automation. To do this, you’ll need to audit your current business processes and manually performed tasks.
Look for activities that are repetitive, rule-based, and standardized that employees currently do through manual data entry, form filling or basic calculations on spreadsheets. Some common examples include processing invoices, transactional data entry from various systems, document routing and approval workflows.
Avoid complex tasks requiring human judgement, problem solving or those with high variability. For each potential task, document the step-by-step process along with the time and resources currently required. Quantifying metrics like time spent per task or error rates can help showcase automation opportunities. Prioritize 3-5 high impact tasks to start in order to prove the value of automation before expanding to additional processes.
Outline Business Goals
Once you’ve identified the tasks that are ripe for automation, it’s important to define your organization’s overall goals for the initiative. Outlining clear business goals at the outset will help guide your tool selection and ensure automation efforts are well-aligned with strategic objectives.
Are you primarily looking to cut operational costs, improve accuracy or free up employee bandwidth? You may aim to reduce processing time for invoices by 50% to boost cash flow. Or automation could help ensure 99% accuracy for regulatory reporting to minimize risks. Quantifying targets demonstrates anticipated impact to stakeholders approving budgets.
Beyond metrics, outline how automation enables your workforce, such as redirecting tasks no longer handled by employees. Communicating a clear vision of how automation helps achieve broader goals keeps all teams focused on driving value. With goals in hand, you’re ready to evaluate potential solutions.
Select the Right Tool
When it comes to selecting a business process automation tool, it’s important to choose a solution that best fits your identified tasks and goals. Start by researching the various options available, including both Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and optical character recognition (OCR) software.
Consider each tool’s capabilities such as workflow building, data capture abilities, and integration with your current IT systems. Tools that provide pre-built components and drag-and-drop workflows will help speed up initial deployment. Look for support via online forums and documentation as well as professional services.
Once you’ve narrowed down a few potential tools, request demos so you can test the user experience. A pilot or proof-of-concept is also wise to confirm the tool can perform as needed. Evaluate factors such as ease-of-use, reporting features, and total cost of ownership. With deeper understanding of functionality and feasibility for your unique needs, you’ll be able to select the right automation platform to successfully start your journey.
Change Management
When implementing new technologies like automation tools, change management is important to set up employees for success. With some tasks now handled by software robots, staff may feel uneasy about changes to their workflows and responsibilities. To ease this transition, develop a change management plan with training, communication, and support elements.
Provide training on new systems so employees understand how and when to use automation to their advantage. Clearly communicate how automation benefits workers by freeing up time for higher value work. Address concerns about job security early on by emphasizing new opportunities. Appoint select employees as champions of the automation project to help answer questions from colleagues.
Maintain transparency around process changes with status updates. Monitoring sentiment and feedback will help determine if additional support is needed. With proper change management, staff will embrace automation as a value-adding initiative.
Monitor and Measure
After selecting tools and implementing automation of prioritized tasks, it’s imperative to continuously monitor results and refine processes based on data. Set clear key performance indicators (KPIs) at the start to benchmark impact over time and evaluate progress towards goals like cost savings or productivity gains.
Automation software should be able to generate detailed reports on metrics such as processes completed, average time per task, and error rates. Meet regularly with stakeholders to review dashboards and analytics so immediate adjustments can be made if needed. As tasks are reassigned or new ones added, flexible reporting helps ensure automation objectives remain aligned.
Periodically survey employees to understand evolving experience and pain points to address. This ongoing evaluation fosters continuous improvement of automated and integrated workflows. Proving value through measurable outcomes will justify expansions while maintaining organizational support for automation initiatives.
Conclusion
Establishing a clear roadmap and sticking to the basics of identifying tasks, outlining goals, selecting a solution, managing change and tracking outcomes are integral to a successful automation implementation. Continual monitoring provides valuable insights to refine processes over time and ensure goals remain aligned as priorities evolve.
With the right planning and ongoing improvement, business process automation delivers lasting benefits that multiply across the organization in improved productivity, reduced costs and strategic refocusing of human capital. Don’t be intimidated – even small initial efforts using these steps can pave the way for transformative impact through technology.