Process Automation: What It Is And Why You Should Think About Doing It

Table of Contents

Benefits of automating processes in your organization

Process Automation: In a highly competitive scenario, we cannot afford to waste time on repetitive tasks that, although necessary, add little value.

In all organizations, some processes consume a large amount of people’s time. The dilemma has always been: how do I minimize the cost of this type of task?

The alternatives are:

Process these tasks, so they do not consume management time (more expensive) due to decision-making by particularities.
I assign profiles that are as economical as possible, where personnel costs are minimal, as well as training and replacement/rotation costs.
We contract outsourcing tasks to a provider that can reduce costs thanks to the volume.
We hire an outsourcing provider in a country with substantially lower costs.

If we have reached step 4, we find that:

We have reduced the direct costs of these tasks.
We have lost control over these tasks and possibly the flexibility to modify and update.
We have increased management costs, as we all know that offshore providers require a lot of supervision.

Why don’t we propose a more intelligent solution based on technology?

The technology may initially seem expensive and requires a payback period, but it has been shown that it is always profitable by reducing the number of hours of manual tasks.

How can we reduce process time with technology?

With process automation. Process optimization aims to reduce craft time, eliminate errors, and reduce time-to-market.

What is Process Automation?

Automation consists of designing processes or workflows to use the capacity of the systems to carry out specific tasks previously carried out by human beings, being able to be controlled, corrected, and visible through said flows.

Benefits of Process Automation

A significant advantage is feedback: It allows us to evaluate, compare and make corrections in real-time (as in Excel) while leaving traces of execution.

Another benefit is the possibility of generating a series of reports of all or part of the process.

In addition, process automation allows tasks to be scheduled, enabling unattended planning.

In general, the main benefits of Process Automation are:

Control and monitor the process at all times in a detailed and complete way, knowing its status immediately. Avoiding the “black box” effect of the immense Excels, in which they are usually developed.
Reduce the time of the process cycle that is, from the beginning to the end.
Eliminate the exchange of information through email, Word files, Excel, and paper documents.
Obtain performance indicators (KPI) updated in real-time.
Know exactly what happened in each process step through the record or trace generated from each activity.
Identify bottlenecks, redundant tasks, or those that do not add value to improve the process.
Receive through automatic notifications alerts of what happens or doesn’t happen at any point in the process.
Control the rules or policies, which are homogeneously applied to different processes.
Facilitate the search for information by having it centralized.
Achieve results with minimal effort and cost, or at least not so variable.