Every few months, there is a brand-new technology that everyone is talking about. Whether cryptocurrencies, AI, or a new implementation of IoT, while specific trends decline after some time, others become a standard. Of course, mindlessly adopting recent trends won’t get you anywhere, but it’s essential to keep up with current technology.
People responsible for business processes should invest time in researching novelties in the fields of technology and their possible applications. Adopting the right technology and training your employees to use it will lead to your company getting ahead of the competition.
Marketing automation is an example of a trend that has proven as an efficient way of improving the company’s marketing efforts. With over 76% of companies reporting using some form of automation for marketing processes, we can say that their implementation is a proper way of improving business processes.
Table of Contents
1. Analyze your processes
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Before going on a business venture of any kind, you should first analyze your company's current situation. Reaching out to your stakeholders and other team members is a way of learning more about the current state of your company’s processes.
With this approach, you will receive organic information from people involved in the processes. However, there are other ways through which you can acquire such information. A method that will give you a more precise insight includes using surveys. Surveys are often done quickly, but they will allow you to gather info from hundreds of employees for a short amount of time.
After the said analysis, you will have a list of all the processes in your business and their effectiveness. Not all processes require the same amount of time and resources, yet they are all essential parts of a well-functioning enterprise.
2. Identify the ones that require improvement
After getting a clear picture of the processes in your company and their attributes, the next step is identifying the ones that require improvement. An effective technique is to start improving the parts of your company that need the least amount of effort. Even though they might seem insignificant at first, working on these tasks will lead to an all-around improvement for your company.
One situation in which you don’t need to focus on small problems is if you have an important process that has been compromised in any way. It’s more important to fix a procedure that’s been dragging the company behind before doing any optimization.
Processes that require improvement are the ones that aren’t delivering results or costing you much more resources than planned. Once you identify the process and, after that, the parts of the process that are a problem, the obvious next step is finding a solution.
3. Automate processes & implement changes
Process automation is the practice of partially or entirely replacing personnel that would do the task manually with software that automatizes it. This method allows businesses to increase efficiency, save time and money, and optimize their processes.
The best automatization software will require you to rethink your budget if you decide that’s the best solution. However, in the majority of cases, this software will be a much better investment than spending time on training and managing personnel.
The benefit of this type of software is that it’s often scaleable for businesses of all sizes.
4. Monitor your processes after changing them
Business process optimization doesn’t stop after you change the compromised process and see some initial results. Process optimization is an ongoing process. Whether your company is altering or there are some changes in the market, the chances are that they will impact your processes.
To avoid doing process optimization from the ground up after a certain period, you should constantly monitor your processes and analyze the gathered results. With monitoring comes greater transparency in the company. Your team will be able to identify the challenges on time and make the right choice.
BPA software often has built-in tools for monitoring processes and gathering data. However, you will need to have experienced data analysts that will analyze this data accordingly and give you a better sense of what should your future action be. Automatized processes aren’t at risk of potential fraud or human error.
Benefits of optimizing business processes
Optimized business processes will allow your company to maximize its revenue, save you and your employees time, and many more small benefits in the company's daily functioning.
What techniques such as process automation do is remove unnecessary steps of a certain process. This practice reduces errors and saves time. The most significant benefit of this practice can be seen in processes that take place daily. The more efficient the company is, the more satisfied the customers are.
Many BPA software is being updated constantly, and besides improving their technical aspects, they are always up-to-date with laws and regulations. This can save you time from tracking laws and regulations worldwide and help you avoid potential lawsuits or fines.
A company that did its best to optimize its processes and streamline the works of various departments by implementing helpful software will be much more resistant to unexpected setbacks such as market changes or crashes. The flexibility that BPA software offers will help you react rapidly to any risks to which the company is exposed.
Examples of automated processes
Here are some processes that large corporations automate by implementing automation software. Although not all of the examples mentioned below can fit any company, they prove very valuable to you.
Spatial analysis software is a must-have if your company is operating in transportation, but at the same time, it can be useless for companies that have remote workers. Documentation software can help different types of companies, from IT to finance to self-employed people.
Take a look at these examples and find which one of these can suit your company in a way that will allow you to reap the benefits of this technology.
Using spatial analysis
If your company is operating in the field of transportation, or if you just want to help your employees get to work as quickly and safely as possible, you might want to look into cloud native platforms for spatial analysis.
Specific platforms of this kind also include helpful features that will allow you to dig into the demographics of a particular region, customer behavior, and environmental conditions such as extreme weather conditions.
Documentation Software
Automatized documentation software refers to a type of software that helps the individual in creating and managing digital documents. Documentation software will help you to save time organizing and editing documents, but it will also allow you to develop consistency when it comes to the visual aspect of the document.
This software can benefit organizations of various sizes and importance, from small enterprises to governmental institutions.
Automated social media & blog posts
With 76% of marketers reporting a significant ROI after implementing marketing automation software, we can say that this software is the future of marketing. Using said software to automate things such as social media posts or blog posts would allow you to provide your audience with consistency and content without you or your employees worrying about it.
Automated posts are carefully planned out days or weeks in advance. Just like people, algorithms are also fans of consistency. This method requires research and planning in advance. Most importantly, your posts need to be posted at the time at which your audience is online. So with timezones in mind, you should avoid posting during work or night hours.
For example, planning for black Friday and the holidays can be done weeks in advance, allowing you to carefully plan out your approach and maximize the revenue during this period. You can automate posts that will announce discounts multiple times a week or even multiple times a day and notify the consumers about upcoming deals.
Is optimizing your business processes essential?
Business process optimization can be quite necessary for a variety of situations. Whether a startup wants to streamline its processes from the beginning and maximize its growth, or a company that wants to get ahead of its competition, the practice of optimizing processes and automating them is a proper way of improving the firm as a whole.
However, with the overwhelming amount of BPA on the internet, one should do extensive research on the possible options that the market offers. You probably won’t find a one size fits all software. Certain BPA software developers specialize in areas such as geospatial analytics, while others focus on onboarding platforms, social media, or marketing platforms.
About the author: Veljko is a student of information technology that paired his passion for technology with his writing skills. He enjoys researching topics such as robotics and programming and cultivates his knowledge in philosophy, classical literature, and fitness. Veljko’s favorite writers are Borislav Pekić, Miloš Crnjanski, and Ernest Hemingway.