How to boost business effectiveness and automate your processes? 

Greatest barriers to process automation

A survey by Deloitte shows that the greatest barriers to business process automation include: 

• Process fragmentation, which involves many small but complex tasks handled by different systems and people. Before processes can be automated, you need to set down precise rules and procedures for each step in the process. If the process is broken down into many smaller parts, it is difficult to determine which steps should be automated and which require human intervention. In addition, process fragmentation may lead to ineffective connections between different systems and applications, thus hindering integration and automation. 
• Lack of IT preparedness – technical limitations that may make business process automation difficult or impossible include: the lack of appropriate IT infrastructure, lack of IT resources (experienced analysts and programmers) and limitations in systems integration (legacy, incompatible systems). 
• Lack of a clear vision – if you are unclear about your business needs, unsure which processes need to be automated or what goals you want to achieve to begin with, process automation may prove useless or even harmful for your business. You risk automating the wrong processes or processes that won’t bring any tangible business benefits, which will only generate unnecessary costs and changes. 
• Resistance to change – resistance or opposition from your employees or management to change their tried-and-tested ways and procedures. Business process automation requires changes in the way the work is done, as well as new IT tools and systems. Employees often feel insecure about the way these new tools will affect their work; they may even fear they might lose their job. Management, on the other hand, may be worried that automation will generate higher costs or fail to bring the expected benefits. 

• Deployment costs – to successfully deploy automation, you often need to invest in dedicated equipment, software and human resources. You may also expect additional staff training, data migration and systems integration costs. 
• Deployment time – automation requires time, resources and planning, as well as a thorough understanding of the business processes you want to automate. Organisations often work on very tight schedules and are under pressure to quickly deploy new solutions, which leads to errors and cutting corners and, as a result, failed automation. 

Where to start with business process automation?

Even though automation in business has a wide range of benefits, it is not, unfortunately, a magic remedy for every problem or a sure recipe for success. If you consider such an investment, take your time to consider the following three issues and then decide whether you are ready to start to automate your processes and do it well. 

1. Define your goals and expectations 

When it comes to automation, you should first define what you expect it to do for you. Automation simply for automation’s sake means unnecessary costs, wasted time and a run of disappointments, which may discourage decision-makers from trying ever again. So, before you embark on any automation project, please consider which of the following typical aspects has the highest priority for you: 

• Improving effectiveness and performance by reducing the time and costs involved in manual tasks; 
• Improving task performance quality and accuracy by reducing human error and making a better use of data; 
• Improving business scalability by using appropriate automation software that can quickly process larger data volumes; 
• Improving customer experience by ensuring better, faster and less error-prone handling of customer queries; 
• Improving security and compliance by reducing human error and ensuring full control over data flows and confidential data protection. 

2. Choose the processes you want to automate 

The next, equally important, step is to identify the business processes that best lend themselves to automation. Usually, these are routine, repetitive processes that consume a lot of time and human resources. You might also want to focus on processes that are prone to human error and delays, as well as those with the greatest impact for your business. As you can imagine, this step requires a comprehensive analysis in order to determine the areas in which process automation is most likely to boost effectiveness and generate the biggest savings. 

Businesses commonly decide to automate the following business processes: 

• Customer service, e.g. automated e-mail replies, customer query processing; 

• Invoicing and payments, e.g. automated invoice generation, payment reminders, integration with accounting systems; 
• Document management, e.g. automated document processing, document classification, archiving; 
• HR processes, e.g. automated application verification, integration with billing systems; 
• Logistics and warehousing, e.g. automated order generation, package tracking, stock management; 

3. Pick your automation tools 

Once you have defined your most important goals and chosen your processes, you still need to pick appropriate business process automation tools. The market offers a wide variety of solutions that will match your specific business needs. The choice depends on many factors, including process type, business size, your budget, as well as the skills and preferences of your IT team. 

Apart from doing market research, checking prices and reviews and, if possible, testing selected solutions, it is also a good idea to check whether your tool comes with dedicated technical support. Especially if your business is only just starting out on its journey to automation: you might need to fall back on the services of experts who know the tool inside out to successfully automate your first processes.

Business process automation at your company

As you can see, in theory, automation involves just three steps: defining your goal, analysing your processes and choosing your tool. In practice, however, these are all complex and elaborate tasks where you might want to fall back on an experienced partner. Altkom Software has spent many years helping businesses digitise and automate their processes with the aid of the most popular European low-code platform, Camunda BPM. Camunda is a solution that offers a wide range of benefits, including an open source code, easy use, fast deployment, flexibility, scalability, connectivity with other systems, as well as a large and supportive user community who vouch for its effectiveness.  

Many of our clients have used Camunda to achieve success and you can read their success stories in our case studies, e.g. for Zencargo. If you want to learn more about what Camunda can do for you, find out about our original, dedicated Camunda extensions and get help with your business process automation; please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to help you, starting from the stage of goal-setting and automation potential analysis, always ready to break down barriers and cooperate effectively with your IT teams.