Each business is unique, but all businesses have something in common: they strive towards improved productivity in the workplace. Essentially, that leads to increased production and more sales within a shorter period of time.
This is where the concept of business process automation comes in.
If the business can automate certain processes, the employees have fewer tasks to do. They can focus on quality instead of quantity. Business automation leads to better quality of services, integration of tasks between departments, reduced parallel controls, and other invaluable gains.
We’ll list specific examples of business process automation, so we’ll understand how this concept works in practice.
First, Let’s See: What’s a Business Process?
We use the term a lot, but do we understand what it is?
A business process is any set of connected activities completed by employees, teams, or departments within an organization with the intention to achieve specific goals.
Definitions are always abstract, so let’s explain this one through examples.
7 Business Process Automation Examples and Ideas
1. Employee Analytics Automation
The human resources department of each company has to evaluate the work of its employees. As big data is gaining a prominent role in analytics, it’s impossible for HR managers to consider all available information without automating parts of the process. They use analytics systems that track all tasks of each employee and give ready-to-use reports.
2. Automating Parts of the Marketing Process in a Small Business
Let’s say the marketing department of an online fitness channel wants to attract more subscribers. They will set a deadline and a number as their goal. They will observe the market, monitor the competition, promote the brand via email, offer promo codes… all these steps are part of a business process. Automation tools will make it better.
- The team can set up Google Alerts to get notifications whenever someone mentions competitive brands online. Instead of performing continuous searches, they will get new information when it shows up.
- They can use Pagico, an app available through Setapp, to manage all clients, contacts, files, notes, and team tasks in a single platform.
- The email marketing campaign will be automated through Mailchimp.
3. Automated Hiring Processes in Businesses
The process of hiring an employee involves a few stages: recruiting, selection, interviewing, and adaptation period. This is another business process. It cannot be subjected to total business automation, but the HR department can use tools to make parts of it easier.
They use HRM (Human Resource Management) systems, which receive and organize applications. The recruiter inserts relevant keywords, and the system launches relevant applications. This makes the selection much easier.
4. Automation of the Customer Support Process
It’s crucial for each business to develop an online presence. Potential and current customers will first try to contact the business online. If they see a live chat feature at the website, it’s a bonus. They can instantly get their questions answered. If they send an email and receive an automated response, they are happy to get instant assistance.
The traditional customer support process can become much more effective when parts of it are automated. Email clients and chatbots can take over the initial parts of the communication. They can answer commonly asked questions. For more complex customer issues, they will direct the ticket to an agent from the appropriate department.
5. Project Management Automation
Tools like Asana enable team leaders to get all members on a single platform and monitor the workflow from there. Where’s the automation in this process? This software displays all activities and tasks of each member on a single dashboard. All members of the organization automatically get their daily tasks and are expected to deliver them by a certain deadline.
This is a much more successful way of managing tasks when compared to individual email communication.
6. Social Media Management Automation
Daily presence on social media is a must for a successful branding process. Companies use business automation software to schedule posts for automated publishing. This type of software also delivers reports and brings all social media profiles of the business in a single platform.
Some of the most popular tools for social media management automation are Agorapulse, Buffer, and Hootsuite.
7. Auditing Process Automation
Auditing is one of the most complex business processes, especially in large corporations. It’s a systematic examination of documents, accounts, and books of an organization. Thanks to automation through BPM (Business Process Management) tools, a large part of the auditing process is automated, with minimal potential for error.
Each Business Has Potential for Automation
By automating different business processes, companies can reach improved productivity at the workplace. With so many tools available on the market, it’s not hard to choose the ones that would make your work less messy.