How to Choose the Right Business Process Automation Tools for Your Organization - Bionic
This Blog was Originally Published at: How to Choose the Right Business Process Automation Tools for Your Organization — Bionic Sarah the CEO of a young and fast-growing e-commerce firm faced numerous challenges arising from manual and time-consuming business processes. When her company began to grow, she realized that her team was overwhelmed with a flood of mundane activities, from order fulfilment to inventory management and customer support. This led to low productivity and reduced morale levels among the employees due to the increased pressure. “Honestly, there are not enough hours in the day. We are taking a lot of time dealing with these routine, procedural tasks that we have very little time left for the activities that will have a direct impact on the company’s success.” Sarah complained to her co-founder. It was a pitiful situation of struggling with the repetitive work. She then learned the impact of business process automation tools (BPA) in managing her business. The use of appropriate business process automation tools helped Sarah to increase productivity, remove unnecessary clerical tasks, and direct attention to valuable activities. The outcome was phenomenal — the efficiency increased, customer satisfaction raised to a new level, whereas the overall net profit increased in digits. In this detailed guide, we will explain the most important factors you need to consider when choosing BPA tools and the current state and prospects of BPA. By the end, you’ll have a clarity on where and how to look for the perfect BPA tool that will change your organisation’s fortunes. Understanding Your Business Needs The first step in selecting the right BPA tool for your organisation is to identify the requirements and automated business ideas of the project. What is the kind of work your team does over and over and wastes a lot of time in the process? Which areas of performance would you like to see enhanced, for example, efficiency, productivity, or customer satisfaction? The first step you can take is to talk to your employees so that you can learn firsthand some of the challenges they are facing in doing their work. This is important in helping you understand which parts of your business need to use automation to reduce the time they take. For instance, at Sarah’s firm, the order fulfilment process entailed a series of paperwork and handoffs between the e-commerce group, the warehouse, and the shipping division, but the firm automated this process. When you understand where automation will be most helpful, you can begin to compile a list of the features and capabilities that will be required by a BPA tool. Do you need more detailed workflow management features? Robust reporting and analytics? Do you want the integration to be as smooth as possible and be friendly with your existing systems? Ensure that your preferred solution can meet all your specified needs to be an optimum solution. “Automation is the new electricity. It’s transformative, and it’s going to change everything.” – Ken Goldberg. Key Features to Look For Once you know what a particular automation setup demands for your automated business, you’re ready to move to the research and evaluation stage. There is a plethora of available BPA tools characterised by certain functional capabilities, costs, and requirements for integration and application. Here are some of the key factors to consider: Ease of Use