SharePoint Products
Process automation applications.
Business processes are critical to an organisation’s operations, however they can often be time-consuming and laborious. When processes are carried out manually they can be vulnerable to human error, delays, and lead to resourcing costs that can weigh down efficiency.
At Content Formula we build and implement bespoke business process automation applications and integrations based upon your individual business needs and goals. Helping to transform your business operations and achieve rapid and tangible value.
Business process automation (BPA) is the use of advanced technologies to automate and streamline repetitive tasks associated with processes and workflows. It minimises the need for employee intervention and is therefore highly effective at optimising business efficiency, reducing costs and reducing the possibility of errors.
Today, there are essentially no drawbacks to adopting BPA technology solutions – the more of your business you manage to automate, the more efficient it will run, and the more your employees will be able to focus and innovate in other areas for future growth.
Business process automation can be categorised into four main types, each serving a different organisational need. Businesses can use a combination of these depending on the process they wish to automate.
This form of automation addresses basic tasks within an organisation. For example: consolidating information within a centralised location.
Integration automation is where technology and workflows are leveraged to replicate how a human would carry out a task, and run processes without the need for human intervention. This form of automation is particularly useful in automating repetitive tasks.
Process automation uses dedicated software to automate workflows and processes, and streamlines the management of tasks and documents.
AI (Artificial intelligence) automation is when technology drives decision making. Implementing AI within your software systems, enables a machine to learn behaviours and make decisions on behalf of your employees, therefore streamlining your operations.
Automating repetitive tasks is vital for business growth. If implemented correctly, automation can provide significant time and resource savings.
Business process automation can be pivotal in an organisations ability to succeed within a competitive landscape.
Here are some of the top benefits your organisation can enjoy with business process automation:
Drive productivity
Process automation helps to increase productivity by reducing the time employees need to spend on simple, repetitive tasks.
This time can then be redirected to more meaningful and value-added activities, supporting an increase in productivity and helping everyone optimise their time.
Reduce costs
When business processes are manually executed, there is often a significant waste of resources.
With business process automation, the cost of operations are minimised, thereby increasing profit margins. Resources are optimally utilised and wastage is eliminated.
Scale processes
Automation means it is far easier to scale a process that previously required greater human intervention.
Delivering business process automation at scale can be a game changer for the growth of an organisation, and can help support digital transformation.
Improve employee happiness
A significant advantage of business process automation is higher employee morale.
Having to complete repetitive tasks can be frustrating for employees who would rather be working on more interesting things. Automation can help free-up time for innovation.
Support customer service
Automating business processes that involve customers usually means they are carried out faster, helping promote better customer service.
For example, a customer requesting documentation on products and services can have them automatically sent out.
Increase process speed
When you automate simple tasks within a process, you reduce the potential for bottlenecks and delays in that process.
For example, you no longer have to wait for people to manually complete a step. This often leads to quicker process and task completion.
Trigger process redesign
When you automate steps in a business process, it often stimulates ideas for how to improve that process or even redesign it altogether.
Process owners can see new ways of doing things, allowing business process automation to inspire innovation.
Improve data accuracy
Automation can often involve adding or updating data automatically across multiple systems.
Whilst manual data entry can inevitably lead to errors and mistakes, automation can greatly reduce the risk of inaccuracies and support better overall data integrity.
Find out more about our process automation services.
Request a call back with one of our BPA experts, for a free consultation.
Employee onboarding
Employee onboarding often encompasses a complex set of processes that involve setting up a new person in a variety of different systems and asking the employee to complete a stack of paperwork. Invariably, there are a lot of moving parts involving workflows across multiple functions with tight deadlines. Employee onboarding is a great use case for business automation, ensuring the new starter has a smooth experience, and that everything works in a streamlined and seamless way.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation is a good use case for business process automation, and can help support a great customer experience when you have a small, time-pressured marketing team. For example, marketing automation might automatically send a follow-up communication to someone who has interacted with your website showing responsiveness, or send tailored messages to support the sales funnel.
Basic IT and HR processes
Business process automation can support some basic IT and HR processes, such as ensuring a change in the HR system is triggered across different systems, addressing basic IT processes like requests for access to different systems or provisioning new collaboration sites. This automation helps support busy IT and HR helpdesk teams who can then focus on resolving more complex issues.
Content management
Content management involves multiple processes which are ripe for business process automation, including automated content reviews and relative workflow, archiving and deletion, the application of metadata to different content and documents and more.
Reminders and notifications
Reminders, notifications and approval workflow requests can happen across multiple systems. Keeping on top of these can be overwhelming, and doing so via email is often very inefficient with items getting missed. Business process automation to consolidate these into one aggregated experience can help users keep on top of their tasks and improve overall efficiency.
Functional and Line of Business processes
Different functions, teams and lines of business throughout your organisation will have a plethora of individual and specific business processes that they carry out. For example, in-house legal teams might be creating contracts at scale, engineers will be carrying out site inspections and sales and business development teams are building proposals for new prospects. All these processes may entail opportunities for automation that could instigate significant improvement.
Procurement
Procurement processes can be quite complex, frequently involving a variety of steps and a wide number of stakeholders to review potential areas of risk. Consider a typical RFP process or performing due diligence on a new supplier, and the quantity of people and systems usually involved. Business process automation can help do some of the heavy lifting here, ultimately completing the processes more quickly and efficiently.
At Content Formula we help you leverage the power of business process automation with the right solutions that suit your business needs. Our tried and tested agile methodology ensures that we completely understand your business environment and objectives before designing and deploying the right solution.
We provide a flexible approach to meet your individual business requirement. Whether you have only one IT specialist or a fully functional IT team, Content Formula's managed service offering can tailor an approach to suit your business.
Discovery and strategy
Stakeholders within your business often have a long list of what they would like to potentially automate, but teams don’t always know where to start. Through our discovery process, we help to identify automation opportunities and suggest priority areas that will create maximum impact and value.
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Bespoke solution design and build
Our specialist team of Microsoft certified developers can help to identify the best technology solutions to support your business process automation needs, then build bespoke applications and system integrations to achieve your business objectives.
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Implementation
Finally, we help you implement automation, often on an ongoing basis to support continuous improvement. Our role can differ, we can either complete the technical configuration and development, or work with your IT function as technical advisors to support your inhouse operations.
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With market-leading expertise in Microsoft 365, Content Formula can provide Microsoft technology process automation services to suit all your business needs.
We work directly with you to identify the key areas within your business that would benefits from business process automation, then select the technology solution that best meet your objectives.
There are lots of opportunities to leverage Microsoft tools (including those in Microsoft 365) to support process automation including:
A powerful set of applications that allow organisations to harness data, streamline workflows and gain insights to drive business processes that are intelligent and progressive.
Dataverse is a cloud-based relational database that lets you securely store and use logic to manage data across multiple systems, making it an ideal component in automation.
SharePoint Syntex uses artificial intelligence (AI) to organise content, and optimise search and compliance, to automate and improve critical business processes.
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