Is your company struggling with the heap of tasks it has to carry out, day in, and day out? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. But help is at hand – in the form of workplace automation.

What is workflow automation?

Workflow automation is defined as the design, creation, deployment, and automation of business processes based upon preset rules where tasks are automatically triggered and routed between people, technology, and data.

In business today, we use all sorts of different applications and services to get our jobs done – everything from ticket management, task tracking, social media, email, calendars, spreadsheets, invoices, forms, etc. And with the right strategy and software, every single one of these processes can be automated.

What can workflow automation be used for?

Some great examples of workflow automation are email marketing and employee onboarding.

By using a bot to automatically follow up on emails, you free up the person who normally monitors and carries out the process to engage in more meaningful work.

When it comes to employee onboarding, all the relevant screening processes and form filling can be automated to pull through the info held on the new candidate. This can then be sent out for references and then reviewed, on completion, by a person – letting them add their value.

What’s the biggest challenge automation faces in a business?

The greatest resistance you will find to workflow automation, and making people’s lives easier, is surprisingly from those very people. Naturally cautious of technology that might steal away their job, – or make an error out of sight – your staff and senior management may be hesitant to dedicate resources to developing or maintaining something they can’t have a conversation with. Business automation starts with people, so get your answers to their questions ready.

FAQs

Questions like “how will this help us grow?” or “will it really save us money?” are common And handled correctly, automation can add more value than many realize.

When it comes to growing your business, you need your talented teams to focus on making your product or services better. You don’t want your top-tier marketer replying to feedback emails, you want them organizing the next great campaign to push your product, right?

And when it comes to saving you money, think of it like this: a bot can outwork any person if you build it properly. Sorry, we’ll rephrase that: a bot can outwork all of your people. Computers are built to deal with operations at an unbelievable speed and scale unmatched by human input.   As a result, they can churn through your tasks quicker than a room full of people. While the performance benefits are clear, the cost impact is too – even with programing and maintenance costs factored in, automation is much cheaper.

What are the pros and cons of using an integrated workflow automation system?

An integrated workflow automation system bridges the gaps between your business’s different programs and automates process flows that run across multiple platforms. Naturally, this makes things a lot quicker and allows teams working over different areas to communicate with each other more effectively.

Workflow automation needs to be seamless, so if you don’t do a good job of building it in full or haven’t finished it – your staff have to fill the gaps. People are great at workarounds and patches, but if you subject them to that for too long they’ll become frustrated.

As long as you reach out to an expert and get the guidance needed to do it right, workflow automation has the power to transform your business for the better.

Caught up in workflow automation? Get in touch with PAteam today!