Business Process Automation Important

Business process automation is one of the most important software programs that you can look for in your business. The desire to be productive is common amongst small and medium businesses. If you find yourself doing too much manually, automating many business processes can be the solution you have been searching for.

Why should you have to do everything manually when there is software available to you? Business process automation is in the form of CRM (customer relations management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), and many other programs. You simply have to determine what processes you want to automated and then find the right software program. Working with a software provider can be one of the easiest ways to make this happen.

Software can do a significant amount of work for you. It can collect data, analyze it, and provide you with more detailed reports. This will save you time from analyzing the data on your own. You can have reports at your fingertips so that there is no need for you to do anything extra. You will be able to make more effective decisions because of having information available to you at all times. If you have ever had to make a decision off the cuff, you know how hard it can be - and how detrimental it can be due to your operations, as well.

Business process automation allows you to go mobile. You can provide the software on tablets and smart phones so that your employees can gather information in the field. The information is connected to a cloud back end, which allows information to go into the cloud and be accessed by your corporate headquarters as well as other people who are out in the field. Your employees can also access any of the information that is in the cloud because of having access to it. They will be able to talk with customers in a more efficient and intelligent manner because of having information available to them.

Everyone can save time because of having information available to them. Information can also be submitted electronically, which eliminates a significant amount of paperwork. You can say goodbye to paper trails because it will all be automated - you simply need to find the right software that will work for you. The employees that you currently have tasked to data entry can work on other areas that will have a more critical impact to your bottom line.

Once you have decided to become more productive and start automating many of your business processes, you will want to analyze the different software programs available on the market. For demos, you can contact software providers. This will allow you to see how the software operates in person. You should also compare features and make a list of what features are important to you. From there, you can make an effective decision on how business process automation will change the way you work within your business.

Measuring Business Processes

Often the wrong people are making these decisions, they aren't bad people but they should rely on those who work with Technology and understand the implications of making the wrong choices. One of the best ways to prevent the wrong people from making I.T. decisions is to make sure all business processes are well documented and measured (weighted). Why you ask?

* If all subject matter experts in your business were to document their business processes, you would know exactly what each staff person has to do each and everyday to get the job done. * You then have a foundation to measure the right software applications for your business * These business processes can now be measured and weighted to help make I.T. decisions for your organization

Those are just few but you should be getting the idea.

There are many ways of handling the task of measuring business processes but I'll try to keep it simple for you. There are two things I would recommend:

1. Build a Database (MySQL or SQL) to store your business processes & the weighting 2. Build Excel Worksheets to enter & pull these processes and weights from the Database

Years ago I had a couple of really sharp guys working for me, they built a nifty application (system) for us to measure our business processes against features in software applications. We wanted to have a snapshot of how each application matched up against each other, the problem is we didn't have an easy way to see all our requirements on one page. We also didn't know which processes were more important than others.

The first step is to pull your key subject matter experts together, get all business processes documented for each role in the organization. This ensured you knew what tasks had to be completed each and everyday to do business. Depending on your business this can be an easy job or a labour intensive one. I highly recommend this gets done regardless of how hard or how long it takes, because it makes future upgrades and or the decision to change a core application in your organization much easier.

Once you have your business processes documented you have something to work with when deciding what software or ERP systems implement, this job takes time but it's well worth it. Enter these processes into your database, then build spreadsheets to pull that data out for review.

In your database you want to also store a measurement we'll call weighting for this example. Why? When you sitdown and have software demonstrated you can ask key questions, does this software do this and that from your database. Afterall, you are asking directly from how you do business (your documented business processes). You now want to be able to give that process a score or measurement when sitting in these demonstrations. Your scale might look like this:

1 - Does it well and is easy to use

3 - Does it but not well - not easy to figure out or use

5 - May need to be modified

9 - Not sure - need more information

0 - Doesn't do it at all

In your spreadsheet you would use the above scale to measure the software you are looking at on a business process by business process basis. Sounds tedious doesn't it? It is when setting things up the first time, after that it gets much easier because you don't need to build it again.

This is just one way of measuring your business process against software, you could and should group your business processes by importance as well. That way you know exactly what you MUST have and what the NICE to have's would be.

I hope that helps, feel free to contact me if you have questions or wish to go through this process for your business.

I would love your feedback, what do you think and do you have a better way?