case study business process automation

Business Process Automation: A Case Study

Understanding Business Process Automation

Definition and importance of business process automation.

Business process automation, simply put, refers to the use of technology to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks within an organization. By automating these tasks, businesses can significantly increase efficiency, reduce errors, improve productivity, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction.

Imagine a scenario where a company receives hundreds of customer inquiries every day. Without automation, employees would have to manually sort through these inquiries, categorize them, and assign them to the appropriate department for further action. This process would be not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. However, with business process automation, intelligent algorithms can be used to automatically categorize and assign inquiries, saving valuable time and ensuring that each inquiry is handled promptly and accurately.

Furthermore, business process automation allows employees to focus on more strategic and value-added activities, driving innovation and growth. With repetitive tasks taken care of by automation, employees can dedicate their time and energy to tasks that require creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. This not only boosts employee morale but also leads to improved business outcomes.

Key Components of Business Process Automation

Successful business process automation involves careful consideration of various components. Firstly, it requires a thorough analysis and understanding of existing processes to identify areas with the highest potential for automation.

For example, let's consider a manufacturing company that produces a wide range of products. By analyzing their production line, they may identify certain repetitive tasks that can be automated, such as quality control checks or packaging processes. By automating these tasks, the company can ensure consistent quality and reduce the risk of errors or defects.

Next, businesses need to choose the appropriate automation tools and software that align with their unique requirements. These tools should allow for seamless integration with existing systems and provide scalability for future growth.

Take, for instance, a retail company that wants to automate its inventory management process. They would need to select an automation tool that can integrate with their point-of-sale system, track inventory levels in real-time, and generate automatic purchase orders when stock reaches a certain threshold. The chosen tool should also be capable of handling the company's projected growth and accommodate any future changes in their inventory management strategy.

Moreover, effective communication and collaboration between departments are crucial to ensure smooth implementation and maximize the benefits of automation. By involving all relevant stakeholders from different departments, businesses can gain valuable insights and perspectives, identify potential challenges, and develop comprehensive automation strategies.

For example, in a healthcare organization, automating patient appointment scheduling requires collaboration between the front desk staff, medical practitioners, and IT department. By working together, they can design a system that not only automates appointment scheduling but also considers factors such as doctor availability, patient preferences, and emergency situations.

Lastly, ongoing monitoring and evaluation are essential to identify areas for further improvement and optimize the automation process. By analyzing data and feedback, businesses can fine-tune their automated processes, address any issues or bottlenecks, and ensure continuous optimization.

Consider a customer service department that has implemented an automated chatbot to handle customer inquiries. By monitoring customer interactions with the chatbot, analyzing customer feedback, and tracking key performance indicators, the department can identify areas where the chatbot may need improvement, such as understanding complex queries or providing more personalized responses.

In conclusion, business process automation offers numerous benefits to organizations, including increased efficiency, reduced errors, improved productivity, and enhanced customer satisfaction. By carefully considering the key components of automation and continuously monitoring and evaluating the process, businesses can unlock the full potential of automation and drive growth and innovation.

The Role of Technology in Business Process Automation

Automation tools and software.

The advancement of technology has paved the way for a wide range of automation tools and software. These tools offer a plethora of features, such as workflow management, document processing, task scheduling, and data analysis.

Workflow management tools, for instance, enable businesses to design, execute, and monitor complex workflows, ensuring tasks are completed in a timely manner. Document processing tools automate the sorting, extracting, and analyzing of data from various documents, reducing manual effort and errors.

Task scheduling tools allow businesses to automate repetitive tasks, such as data backups and report generation, reducing the risk of human error. Data analysis tools provide valuable insights into business performance, enabling data-driven decision-making.

The Impact of AI and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have revolutionized the field of business process automation. These technologies have the ability to learn from data, make predictions, and continuously improve processes.

AI-powered automation systems can intelligently handle complex scenarios, adapt to changing requirements, and perform tasks that were previously only possible for humans. ML algorithms, on the other hand, can analyze large amounts of data to identify patterns, anomalies, and optimize processes based on historical data.

When combined, AI and ML can enhance decision-making, increase efficiency, and drive innovation within organizations. From customer service chatbots to intelligent data analysis, the possibilities of AI and ML in business process automation are endless.

Implementing Business Process Automation

Steps to automate your business processes.

The implementation of business process automation requires a systematic approach. Here are some key steps to guide you through the process:

• Identify: Analyze existing processes and identify areas with the highest potential for automation. Prioritize processes based on their impact and feasibility.
• Design: Design the automated workflow, ensuring it aligns with business objectives and streamlines operations. Engage relevant stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition.
• Choose: Select appropriate automation tools and software that meet your specific requirements. Ensure compatibility with existing systems and consider scalability for future growth.
• Implement: Integrate the chosen automation tools into your existing infrastructure. Train employees on how to effectively use the automation system and address any concerns or challenges.
• Test: Thoroughly test the automated processes to ensure accuracy, efficiency, and reliability. Identify and resolve any issues or bottlenecks that may arise.
• Monitor and Improve: Continuously monitor the performance of the automated processes and collect feedback from users. Identify areas for improvement and optimize the automation system accordingly.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Implementation

Implementing business process automation can be a challenging endeavor. Some common challenges include resistance to change, lack of employee buy-in, and the need for extensive training and support.

To overcome these challenges, it is crucial to involve employees from the early stages of automation planning. Communicate the benefits of automation and address any concerns or fears they may have. Provide comprehensive training, ongoing support, and celebrate small successes along the way to boost morale and encourage adoption.

Measuring the Success of Business Process Automation

Key performance indicators for automation.

Measuring the success of business process automation is vital to assess its impact and identify areas for improvement. Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider:

• Cost Savings: Measure the reduction in operational costs, including time, labor, and resources required for manual processes.
• Productivity: Evaluate the increase in productivity resulting from automation. Calculate the number of tasks completed within a specific timeframe.
• Quality: Assess the accuracy, consistency, and error rates of automated processes, comparing them to manual processes.
• Customer Satisfaction: Monitor customer feedback and satisfaction levels to gauge the impact of automation on service delivery.

Long-term Benefits and ROI of Automation

Business process automation offers numerous long-term benefits, making it a worthwhile investment. Improved efficiency and productivity result in significant cost savings over time. Reduced errors and delays enhance customer satisfaction, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business.

Moreover, businesses that embrace automation gain a competitive edge by being able to respond quickly to market changes and customer demands. The return on investment (ROI) of automation can be substantial, with organizations reporting increased revenue and profitability as a result of streamlined processes.

Future Trends in Business Process Automation

Predictions for automation in the business world.

The future of business process automation is promising, with several exciting trends on the horizon. One key trend is the integration of robotic process automation (RPA) with AI and ML technologies.

RPA enables the automation of repetitive, rule-based tasks, while AI and ML enhance the intelligence and decision-making capabilities of these robots. This combination can significantly enhance productivity, accuracy, and efficiency across various industries.

Preparing Your Business for Future Automation Trends

To prepare for future automation trends, businesses should stay informed about emerging technologies and industry developments. Regularly assess existing processes to identify areas where automation can be further optimized.

Additionally, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within the organization is crucial. Encourage employees to embrace automation as an enabler rather than a threat. Invest in training programs to upskill employees and equip them with the knowledge to leverage automation technologies effectively.

Overall, business process automation is a powerful tool that can revolutionize how organizations operate. By embracing automation, businesses can unlock new levels of efficiency, productivity, and growth. So, take the leap and embark on the journey towards automation to stay ahead in today's competitive business landscape.

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16 Real-World Business Process Automation Examples That Sparked Success

Business process automation can be used to improve just about any business process, delivering greater efficiency, cutting costs, freeing up time, and allowing you to deliver better customer service. 

But when your scope for choosing where to start in your own business is ‘everything’, that can make getting going harder. So, to help guide your thinking, here are a whole bunch of examples of how businesses have benefited from process automation.

1) Approval requests

Read the full case study. 

2) Vendor management

Read the full case study.

3) Supplier onboarding

4) Quotations

5) Claims processing

Read the full case study.  

6) Reporting

7) Employee onboarding

8) Performance management 

9) Loan processing

10) Credit approval

11) Pricing approval

12) Auditing

13) Customer onboarding

14) Proof of compliance

15) Repair tracking

16) Manufacturing production line

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In their own words, learn how companies across industries achieved a higher ROI with IBM Robotic Process Automation.

The restaurant chain eliminated 2,000 manual work hours for 100% ROI in 3 months with IBM Robotic Process Automation.

IBM Robotic Process Automation bot helps Belgian standards organization NBN do more in less time.

The startup automates a core process for its first-of-its-kind drug safety monitoring by using IBM Robotic Process Automation.

The insurer frees employees from repetitive tasks by using IBM Robotic Process Automation, saving 3.5 hours a day.

Aon Italy modernizes insurance and risk processes with IBM Robotic Process Automation and IBM Cloud Pak®.

Sicoob reduced process times by up to 80% and cut costs by up to 20% with the use of IBM Robotic Process Automation.

Credigy uses IBM Robotic Process Automation for due diligence reviews on thousands of loans, processing invoices and more.

Cobmax saves time and reduces back-office operations by 50% with process automation.

Lojacorr Network uses IBM Robotic Process Automation to achieve an 80% increase in process execution efficiency.

Inter Aduaneira frees up thousands of manual work hours by automating shipment tracking with IBM Robotic Process Automation software.

GAM saves BRL 120,000 per year by automating manual and repetitive tasks.

IBM helps finance employees eliminate manual tasks and shift more focus to their most valuable work

Read The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) report about potential ROI of implementing IBM Robotic Process Automation.

Explore the robotic process automation resources in our digital library.

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Process Automation Examples: 4 Amazing Case Studies

A lot of people talk about how important and transformative process automation can be but don’t provide much in the way of case studies. Yet, process automation examples are a dime a dozen, and you can easily spot them if you have the desire to. 

We can’t fully understand the importance of process automation in the modern business world unless we see it in a practical sense. That’s where examples of process automation can apply theoretical knowledge to an existing organizational structure.

In this post, we will examine four examples of process automation and discuss the benefits and best practices of applying automation to your existing business processes as well.

What is process automation?

Process automation refers to the use of technology to automate and streamline business processes. It can be applied to a variety of different processes, including: 

• Finance 
• Sales 

At its core, process automation involves identifying repetitive and time-consuming tasks that can be automated using technology. 

This can include tasks such as: 

• Data entry 
• Order processing
• Customer service 

By automating these tasks, businesses can free up their employees to focus on more high-value work, like strategic planning and customer engagement.

Process automation examples

Here are four process automation examples:

Murray Dare is an award-winning marketing consultant who manages a remote team that delivers marketing strategies and content to a variety of clients.

He and his team noticed that they were becoming bogged down with small, tedious, and time-consuming tasks, particularly the uploading of content. They figured out that the copywriters were spending 25% of their time on administrative tasks. Time that could have been spent creating marketing content.

That one area alone was killing their productivity, so Murray dove into research to find a way to automate as many tedious tasks as possible. That’s when he came across Process Street .

With Process Street, Murray figured out a way to give his copywriters the time back. He created processes where copywriters could dump their written and edited work when they were finished. From there, an outsourced team would take the completed content and upload it for them.

Additionally, Murray utilized Process Street’s conditional logic feature when outsourcing certain writings to external firms. It allowed external writers to access the workflows without being able to see any sensitive information.

“I was able to use the conditional logic to build a highly targeted workflow. With a simple email entry form at the top of the workflow, the workflow would then display the client information appropriate to the person who had accessed it. This flexible system was a lifesaver.” Murray Dare

In the end, process automation with Process Street resulted in the following:

• 25% increase in content production
• 18% cost savings
• Better content quality 
• More accountability
• The ability to take on more work
• A happier team doing less bothersome work

AllMed Healthcare Staffing provides professional healthcare staffing along with customized solutions that offer advanced reporting capabilities as well as compliance monitoring.

To accomplish this, AllMed receives a staggering amount of data from its clients. Data that is often sensitive and needs to be handled correctly in order to remain compliant with government and HR regulations. 

Before process automation, AllMed did all of its data collection with physical paper, creating a long, slow process with a lot of bottlenecks. It also meant that all information stored by the company was not easily accessible.

To try and improve this, AllMed selected PerfectApps to automate its data collection process. 

The employees at AllMed created web forms on PerfectApps to send to clients. When the forms are completed, they are automatically put into a workflow for the employees to then work through. 

Doing this saves them thousands of hours of work and, by default, lots of money. Their processes are much more streamlined, and they were even able to expand their use of PerfectApps to help them handle their employee and client onboarding as well. 

ERP Suites sets companies up with IT solutions, providing them with secure data, improved response times, as well as the application of industry knowledge and best practices.

With over 250 customers, ERP Suites struggled to scale and keep up with the demands of creating bespoke IT solutions. This created a big problem for the employees, who couldn’t always handle each customer’s unique needs.

They had to hire more technicians to help them with the workload, but each one took roughly four weeks to fully onboard. On top of that, they had a lot of turnover in promoting and hiring, that’s common in a scaling business. 

To help manage this load, ERP Suites adopted Process Street to make use of its workflow and documentation capabilities. With it, they were able to create automated workflows for their new customers to cut down on the work their technicians had to do.

They also utilized workflows for their onboarding process, and they were able to cut their onboarding time from four weeks down to just two. 

Salesforce is one of the largest tech companies in the world and has created the most successful CRM ever.

Being such a large company, Salesforce onboards new clients constantly so having a streamlined and automated process is incredibly important. Without it, it cannot continue to scale and deliver the best possible service to its clients.

To help them build a better client onboarding system, Salesforce enlisted the help of Process Street . 

They used several workflows to automate the process, and by doing that, they were able to:

• Easily share knowledge
• Increase customer success rates 
• Reduce human error with documented processes
• Automatically track what work was being done and by whom
• Progress continuous improvement
• Establish and scale best practices 
• Standardize internal operations for remote collaboration and synchronization

Here’s a breakdown of the basic steps of the onboarding process used by Salesforce:

Process automation benefits

Okay, so what are the actual concrete benefits of process automation? Let’s break it down.

Increased efficiency

When processes are automated in software, businesses are able to streamline their services and operations, freeing up time for all team members to focus on other tasks.

And with increased efficiency comes greater overall productivity. With well-utilized business operations management software, businesses can do incredible things like:

• Increase product output
• Reach new customers
• Develop new sales and marketing strategies

Then there’s the reduction of cost, which brings me to my next point. ⬇️

Reduced costs

Process automation won’t save you money right off the bat, but it will if you do it right and give it enough time.

Software tools are great because they organize processes and keep everything in one place. By that, I mean communication, documentation, data, all of it. This cuts down the costs of having multiple different software and the labor cost of maintaining them.

Additionally, having all company data stored in one place and easily accessible to all employees reduces the time employees spend trying to track down different pieces of information. 

All of this time and labor savings contribute greatly to the overall ability of companies to grow and scale.

Better decision-making

Process automation services often come with data-tracking features. These features are extremely useful when it comes to decision-making because they eliminate human error in data reporting. 

Without errors in data, managers can make better decisions about sales strategies, onboarding techniques, and pretty much anything else. 

This, again, saves organizations time and money because they won’t be making as many mistakes in their day-to-day operations and overall business decisions.

Happier employees and customers

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, process automation improves both employee and customer satisfaction. 

For employees, having smoother, more streamlined operations that make their jobs easier and remove tedious tasks is a major plus. Effectively using process automation can significantly reduce employee churn. 

For customers, they become happier when their questions are answered and problems addressed in a more timely manner. Process automation frees up employees’ time enough for them to be able to do that for customers.

Their satisfaction also increases when the product they have been on the waiting list for comes back in stock sooner than expected. All thanks to the increased output made possible by operations management software . Hello, repeat customers!

Process automation best practices

Have I sold you yet? I hope so! I can’t speak highly enough about automating business processes. 

If you are ready to move forward and get started with process automation, keep these best practices in mind to get the most out of it.

Set clear goals

One of the worst things you can do is say, “I want to automate my business processes!” and then stop there.

Which processes do you want to automate? Why do you want to automate them? Do you want to automate the entire process or just part of it? If so, which part?

It’s imperative that you set clear goals for your automation before you even select the software you want to use. 

Without clearly-set goals, you won’t be able to maximize the benefits of it. 

Start by identifying the recurring tasks that could easily be automated and build from there. 

For example, one goal could be to automate sending emails to customers after they purchase your product. Why is that beneficial? Well, the emails are all the same, save for the name of the customer, and it’s not necessary for an employee to spend the time doing it. 

It saves the employee time and gets the email to the customer sooner. It also ensures that every customer gets an email and none fall through the cracks.

See? Easy. Now we have a simple goal that is easy to follow and will lead to immediate benefits.

Test, test, test

As you start building automations, you are likely to run into problems. They’re usually small, like setting up the automation and then forgetting to activate it . A quick and easy fix.

But because little problems like that arise, it’s important to test the automations you make. And then test them again to double-check they work. And then test one more time for luck.

Testing is the quickest way to not only identify problems as they arise but also to identify other things you can automate in the process.

The last thing you want to do is launch an automated process full of bugs that isn’t properly optimized.

So save everyone, including yourself, a migraine and test.

Train, train, train

This is just as important as the testing. How can process automation software be used to its full potential if your team doesn’t know how to use it?

Invest in the time it takes to get your team to a place where they fully understand how to use the service. Even if they aren’t building automations themselves, they should still understand how it works.

Having that understanding empowers teams to come up with their own ideas for creating new automated processes because they know what the software is capable of. They can also easily identify problems and come up with solutions when they arise.

Your team should know how the service works as well as you, so train them as much as necessary to get them to that point.

Ask for feedback

Make sure you listen to any feedback your team has, especially in the early days. If the software is poorly implemented because of poor training and education, it will likely have the opposite effect.

Your team’s feedback is the best tool you have to make the service work at its best.

They will be the ones who use it the most, so if they have ideas on how to improve it, listen.

The thing with process automation is that you’re never done improving it. There will always be a way to make it better, so be open to it and listen to the people who know it best.

Ready to get started?

If you are ready to take the plunge or want some more process automation examples, book a demo with Process Street ! We’ll tell you everything you need to know and help you get started when you’re ready to move forward.

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