Have you had a situation in your business when you send out an email for approval and it goes for weeks on end because either the employee supposed to approve is not known or they have so many requests they do not know which one to approve first? Have documents gone missing? How many colored stickers do you have on your computer? Is misery spreading from one department to another? Then you need to automate your business processes.
Processing data manually results in a lot of wasted time but with business process automation, you save on time and focus on growing your business. With the simple click of a button, you can track every piece of work taking place at your business without having to scream at anyone.
You can make your work a lot easier by having your business processes automated because it:
1. Makes communication more efficient.
Imagine the number of emails you receive per day and all the things you have to do at work in a day. You can use stickers or use Google tasks but sometimes you even forget you had a to-do list and some work fails to be done. With an automated system however, the mode of communication becomes streamlined. You have one common dashboard where incoming and outgoing requests come in along with all the details on what stage the business process is at.
It becomes so easy such that you can click on the command “initiate a request” when you need to send a leave application. The best part of this process is that you do not have to know the manager by name; everything will be done for you. All you need to do is indicate the reason you need a leave and the system does all the processing for you.
2. Accountability
When you streamline communication and automate workflow you can tell which employee is responsible for what process. Approvals, initiations, rejections etc. are bound to the employee responsible for the action. This kind of transparency in your business will enforce accountability among your employees. There will no longer be excuses of losing memos or missing a certain email.
3. Costs due to inefficiency and manual errors are reduced.
We often err as humans; we may forget payment dates, approval deadlines or make payments for goods not delivered. More often than not, this results to financial problems. With an automated workflow however, these errors are minimized. Transactions are presented in their current state and if an order is pending and you haven’t received it yet, you cannot make a payment. Payments are only made when the transaction is updated to “received”.
4. It gives you insight into your business process
After you’ve automated your business process and your employee base is streamlined to use the new system, what do you do with all the data that’s been accumulating? You maybe want to find out what requests are pending, how many were approved and how the business can improve.
You want to know whether the business process is encouraging employees by making their work easier or it simply isn’t serving its purpose. The automated workflow tool will provide you with insights into whether your business is bottling up at any point, whether employees are having an easier time using it or its complicating things that could otherwise be simple.
5. The approval hierarchy is established clearly.
In most organizations, the approval hierarchy is never the same as the organization’s hierarchy. An automated tool helps prevent situations where mail is flying left and right since you can’t figure out who should or should not sign what. Approving of requests becomes easier too. An automated workflow tool will have approval hierarchies codified and ensure the specific hierarchy of a process is followed. You will never have to call a full company meeting so that one approval is sorted.
Courtesy of http://www.digitalframeworksltd.com/
