Enhancing Business Process Automation

Business Process Automation is the process of streamlining business processes for efficient operations of a business. It involves removing bottlenecks, creating standard operating procedures, meeting key performance indicators and removing defects and errors.

Typically Business Process Automation constitutes of:

1. Designing a certain business process

2. Modeling the process to better understand the requirements and implications of the business process, through a BPM software

3. Implementing the business process

4. Evaluate the system to assess its effectiveness

5. Take corrective measures after system assessment for better productivity

How are Business Process Management Systems helpful

Business process management softwares are a robust system of ensuring efficient workflows. These softwares help model and monitor business processes and suggest improvements. Business process Automation can focus on different aspects of an organization. For instance BPM can be human centric or document centric.

If the BPM is document centric then it can involve enterprise content management solutions and document management systems.

What exactly are Business Process Management Systems

An EDM system allows businesses to capture data in soft or digital form from a hard copy. The EDM softwares allow the users to edit process and store the “captured” data and effectively categorize it for future use. In other words, the dossiers and files are now digitalized. The Electronic Document Management Softwares use scanners for capturing data from hard copies. The data scanned can be anything from transaction receipts to business reports, to customer records to transcribed interviews to sales invoices.

ECM is not very different from EDM but in fact go hand in hand. ECM involves making the relevant content available to the relevant audience.

How do these softwares help in exercising control on Business Processes

Through Business Process Management Systems the communication and collaboration be it internal or external, smoothens up resulting in an efficient workflow. This means that the business objectives are more likely to be achieved within the time limits. Effective communication also results in continuous feedback, idea generation and decision making. With the help of BPM softwares the decision makers can make the best logical decision with all the information at hand. The supervisors can monitor the activities and correspondences of the subordinates with a robust communication system.

Business Process Management systems are a cost control mechanism. They help in reducing waste and tackle bottlenecks. A BPM software eliminates duplication of content, processes, documentation and records. This is a major contributing factor to reduce the TAT (turn-around time) of processes giving businesses a competitive edge.

Things you should keep in mind

Business Process Management Systems can be a large investment, so before making any decision a budget analysis is necessary. The investment should not be so large that it takes ages for the business to get a positive return on investment. While adopting a BPM software, it is important to ensure that it is compatible with the nature of the business and grows as the business grows.