Benefits of Process Automation
It’s essential to bear in mind that process optimization and automation offer several overarching benefits. Depending on your business goals, certain benefits may align more closely with your strategy than others. Here are some general advantages to consider:
By identifying the specific benefits that align closely with your strategy, you can prioritize process optimization and automation efforts to achieve your desired outcomes.
Cost Savings
Cost savings serve as a primary motivator for change, particularly when exploring new automation tools or strategies. However, it’s crucial to remember that these savings might not be immediately reflected in the bottom line. Typically, cost savings through automation stem from time saved (calculated as hours saved x cost per employee x number of employees). This formula takes into account the value of time saved, factoring in employee costs and the potential impact across the workforce.
Achieve cost savings through various methods, including:
- Streamline data input by eliminating manual entry of invoice data into financial systems.
- Automate document storage to save time and ensure proper organization.
- Enhance efficiency by reducing document search time caused by inconsistent saving methods.
- Accelerate authorization of documents or process steps, resulting in significant time savings.
- Minimize rework caused by manual errors, leading to saved time and effort.
- Reduce expenses on physical materials like printers, faxes, ink/toner, and paper.
- Trim costs associated with postage and faxing for internal and external document transmission.
When considering employee costs, it’s crucial to go beyond just their salary.Additional expenses to factor in include National Insurance contributions, pensions, sick and annual leave, IT equipment and software, and any other benefits provided.
Remember, employee costs encompass more than just wages—they extend to various financial obligations and resources required to support your workforce effectively.
Increased Revenue Generation
Another area business like to focus is generating more revenue or creating new revenue streams. This could easily be achieved when saving time for your sales teams when it comes to sales order processing for example (time saved x average £’s in sales per hour x number of sales people). From this simple sum you can quite easily see.
Also being able to find new ways of generating revenue is equally important especially in todays business environment where every £ counts. Take for example a company that delivers MFD (Multi-Functional Devices/Printers), they used to ask a customer to fill out a network installation form in PDF format. This was both lengthy and not user friendly at all and generally resulted in the form not being filled out correctly and rarely stored in the correct place. They then decided to digitise this form which allowed them to ensure the correct data was captured and the form was much more user friendly so the form was filled out on every occasion and stored correctly first time with correct access. At the end of the form they decided to add the option for customers to choose other simple services they could add that previously sales either forgot or did not know about to ask the customer, resulting in extra revenue and profit for the business. This is just one example, but spend 15 minutes thinking of new ways to earn revenue that are passive and you could find your business being 10’2 of thousands of £’s better off.
Business Growth
Ever wonder how you could possibly take on more work in order for your business to grow. Usually this involves hiring more staff to take on the extra workload. Lets look at sales order processing again as an example. You have 3 admin staff currently who are dedicated to processing sales orders and general admin associated to this. They are pretty much at 80-95% capacity most of the time which means there is not a lot of room for increased business. If you could automate and ensure that errors are reduced or eradicated, then you could quite easily save between 25-50% of their time to process an order. So with the same level of staff, you now have capacity to take on that extra business you so dearly need, without worrying about bottlenecks or staff shortages due to holiday, sickness or leavers.
Customer Satisfaction
This one seems obvious but to be honest is probably the hardest to quantify so projects that rely solely on this for justification rarely get implemented. But that does not mean that it is any less important than the others, it just means that they are harder to quantify and therefore justify to owners and directors to release budget.
Customer satisfaction is a huge area and can cover many things from ease of signing a new customer up to your service with contracts etc. to providing them with timely updates on deliveries, or simply just ensuring you get things done right first time and providing consistency to your clients.
Can you put a number on how much extra revenue would be generated by improving customer satisfaction? Implementing customer satisfaction surveys (Which we could help with) or A/B testing groups could help, but It certainly makes for an interesting topic.
Employee Satisfaction
This is another area that is hard to quantify and probably gets overlooked the most. Do you find it hard to hire new employees or keep hold of your talented ones? Ever thought about improving their daily routine so instead of them entering data 100 times a day from a spreadsheet to a system, this could be automated so your people can spend time on more interesting tasks that provide the business with more value.
Why should you spend £15 (or often more) an hour for an employee to copy data from one place to another or to go searching for documents every day (believe me you probably do). Wouldn’t that be better spent with them writing reports that need human thought and knowledge to put together to help the business or giving them the time and freedom to think of other ways to improve your business or generate more revenue or even spending more time with your customers.
Untie your people from the mundane and repeatable tasks and let them do what they love and what they are great at doing!
Risk & Compliance
Process automation brings significant benefits to risk and compliance management in businesses, including aiding compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Firstly, automation ensures consistency and accuracy by enforcing standardized procedures, reducing errors, and promoting compliance with data regulations. This helps protect sensitive information, maintain data privacy, and minimize the risk of penalties for non-compliance.
Additionally, automation improves efficiency by streamlining data management practices. Automated systems handle data collection, storage, and retrieval securely and efficiently, reducing time and effort. This enables businesses to effectively respond to data requests, conduct audits, and meet regulatory requirements.
Furthermore, automation enhances transparency and accountability, crucial aspects of compliance. Automated processes maintain comprehensive records of data processing activities, track data flows, and generate audit trails. These capabilities demonstrate compliance efforts and provide evidence for regulatory audits or investigations.
In summary, process automation simplifies risk and compliance management by ensuring consistent procedures, enhancing data handling efficiency, and promoting transparency. By leveraging automation, businesses can effectively protect sensitive information, maintain compliance with data regulations like GDPR, and minimize the risk of non-compliance penalties.
Unleashing Real-Time Data Power
Access to real-time data through automation offers significant benefits for businesses. Firstly, it enables prompt decision-making by providing up-to-the-minute insights, allowing for agile adjustments and data-driven strategies. Additionally, real-time data empowers businesses to identify emerging trends and capitalize on new opportunities, giving them a competitive edge. Finally, it improves customer experiences by enabling personalized offerings, targeted marketing, and responsive customer service. Overall, real-time data empowers businesses to make informed decisions, seize opportunities, and deliver exceptional customer satisfaction.
These are just a few areas of benefit when optimising your business processes, there are many more and we would love the chance to discuss how we can help your business and your people.
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We understand that finding a pathway to successful business automation is challenging and even confusing. There are a multitude of options and software providers to choose from. Our job will be providing you with a workable plan and we will be happy to support you through it’s implementation if you so wish!