Interest in business process management (BPM) has grown exponentially over the past few years. That’s because, once you get your heads around it, BPM is an incredibly powerful technology that can be used to fully automate business processes and streamline operations. However, while there are many uses for BPM in general, there are also a lot of ways to implement it within your organization. And that means the sooner you start looking into them the better.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the best ways to implement low-code business process automation within your company.
What is Business Process Automation?
Business process automation is the use of technology to automate business tasks. It’s a process that uses software to improve efficiency, increase productivity, and reduce costs. By automating your business tasks, you can enhance the quality of your work and increase the predictability of its output. In other words, you can use BPA to eliminate repetitive manual work and achieve more with fewer people.
You can also increase agility, accuracy, and control, allowing your company to adapt quickly to new challenges and seize opportunities as they arise. Automating your business tasks can have tremendous benefits for the people who do the work and the company as a whole. BPM can help you improve the quality of your work, increase efficiency, predictability, and accuracy, and increase agility.
It can also help you find and eliminate unnecessary work. BPM can also help you improve the onboarding, training, and retention of employees, and it can help your organization coordinate its operations more efficiently.
Too Many Platforms?
One of the biggest issues with adopting BPM is the sheer number of platforms you need to integrate. If you’re trying to implement BPM in a company with a large number of departments, each with its platforms, you’re going to find integrating all of them a daunting task.
To get any kind of return on your investment, your BPA strategy needs to solve an important business problem. It needs to deliver improved business outcomes for your customers, so finding the right problems to automate is crucial.
Too Much Manual Effort?
BPM can be great for automating manual tasks, but it can also lead to a culture of “push everything through Excel” and “every single thing is a web task”. If this is an issue in your organization, then you might want to look into other technologies that can be used to automate business tasks without sacrificing the power of human decision-making.
In many cases, you can use a solution like a rule management or a decision engine to link Excel tasks to software that can make decisions, so you don’t have to turn everything into a spreadsheet.
Start Low Code Business Process Automation
1. Reporting and Analytics
Businesses often find it extremely helpful to be able to automate reporting and analytics. So, let’s say you have a marketing automation system set up. That system can be connected to different systems within your company, including your CRM, ERP, and marketing systems. And, once those connections are set up, then you can start to automate your company’s marketing campaigns.
The first step is to automatically pull in data from your different systems. So, for example, if you have a customer relationship management system configured, then you’ll want that data to be available in your marketing system. With that data available, you can then start to create automated campaigns. So, let’s say you want to create an email campaign to send to all your customers, offering a special deal. With the data from your CRM, marketing automation system, and other systems, you can put together a simple email campaign that automatically puts together the subject line, the body of the email, and the list of recipients.
2. Employee Onboarding and Training
Another common reason to implement business process automation is to cut down on manual effort and streamline employee onboarding. In most organizations, this process is highly manual, with a lot of manual effort required. However, with the right BPA implementation, you can automate this. And, with the right kind of automation, you can also make onboarding an experience that’s much smoother and less painful for your team.
Let’s say, for example, you have a new employee joining your team. That person needs to complete a lot of paperwork, such as authoring a lot of compliance documentation or filling out a lot of paperwork, such as health and safety training. All that paperwork can be automated with a BPA implementation. And, with that employee onboarded, you can then start to automate other onboarding tasks.
For example, you can start to automatically create training courses for new team members. So, as soon as a new team member signs up for training, then they get started on their path to certification. That, in turn, saves your team from having to manually create those training courses.
3. Operational Efficiency
Another common application for business process automation is to cut down on operational costs. With the right implementation, you can start to automate your operations. For example, let’s say that your company has many different locations across the country.
As your company grows and new locations are added, you might find that you’re spread very thin across the country. In that case, while that might mean that your company is very successful, it might also mean that you’re struggling to be successful across all your locations.
With the right BPA implementation, you can start to automate the process of coordinating between different locations. For example, you can set up a system that tracks the locations of your company vehicles, then uses that data to automatically coordinate between locations. That, in turn, saves your team from having to manually coordinate between different locations.
4. Supply Chain Coordination and Collaboration
Another common application for business process automation is to use it for data collaboration and coordination. With the right implementation, you can start to automate your supply chain. For example, let’s say you have several suppliers, each with its network of distribution centers. Within a typical company that can be a challenge, as it means that you’re relying on each one of those suppliers to get their data into your ERP system.
However, with the right implementation, you can start to automate the process of getting your data into your ERP system. That, in turn, saves your team from having to manually coordinate between different suppliers.
How to Choose the Right Platform for You?
Evaluate Your Company’s Needs
Before you can decide on a low-code platform, you need to know what features you need. And, to do that, you will need to evaluate your company’s needs. For example, if you are only looking to implement a low-code solution to automate a single process within your company, then you will only need to evaluate what your needs are in that regard.
However, if you want to use low-code BPM to streamline your operations as a whole, then you will also need to evaluate your company’s needs in terms of the various use cases for low-code BPM. And, once those needs are identified, you will then want to start evaluating low-code platforms based on those needs.
Know Your Objectives
When beginning your low-code BPM implementation journey, you will also want to make sure you know your objectives. And, by doing that, you can also determine what other low-code BPM use cases you will need to implement within your company. For example, if you want to start automating certain sales processes with low-code BPM, you will need to make sure you know what those processes are and how they currently function.
You will also need to make sure you know what your company’s sales figures are right now. After all, you probably won’t want to implement low-code BPM unless you have some use cases in mind.
Compute Your Budget
When it comes to implementing low-code business process automation within your company, you will want to start with a budget. That budget should be based on your expected results, as well as your company’s current operations. Once you have those figures in hand, you will be better equipped to put together a low-code BPM implementation budget.
To make budgeting easier, you can break your budget down into discrete funds. For example, you can break down your budget into development funds, operations funds, and marketing funds. With those funds in mind, you can then start looking into low-code BPM platforms that may work for you.
Wrapping up
Business process automation is an increasingly powerful technology that can be used to fully automate business processes and streamline operations. However, while there are many uses for BPM in general, there are also a lot of ways to implement it within your organization. That means the sooner you start looking into them the better.
BPM has huge potential to improve business operations, reduce costs, and automate manual tasks. That said, implementing it successfully can be challenging — especially for a company that’s not used to automating business tasks. To get the best from BPM, you need to be aware of the challenges involved and find a way to address them.
Low-code business process automation is a powerful technology, but it can be difficult to get right. This article aims to help you get started, and improve the effectiveness of your existing BPA, so you can automate work, reduce costs, and achieve more with fewer people.
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