What is Business Process Automation

Business Process Automation or BPA for short. This was a buzzword a few years back with anyone and everyone claiming they were experts in this area. Maybe so. But to really realize its true potential you need to understand what business process automation is and why you will need it?

If you own/run/manage a business, take a look around yourself at the daily activities you perform to run your business effectively and efficiently. If you do observe closely, you will quickly notice that you (or your staff) do perform a lot of tasks that are generally repetitive in nature or they may be administrative tasks; tasks that you have to perform and are necessary to run your business.

Let me elaborate that with an example. A customer calls and enquires about a product you market. You tell the customer you will send a product brochure. You take all relevant information like prospect name, address etc. and walk over to your secretary. Your secretary takes the information, chooses the appropriate brochure, creates a covering letter, puts it in an envelope and mails it to your customer. Sounds familiar, right?

Well, what if I told you that process automation automates the entire process above using the Internet? And all with zero involvement from you? Or anyone else from your organization? Would that be cool? Let me help you visualize it.

Your prospect comes over to your web site, browses and is now seeking more information on a specific product. You have the prospect fill in all relevant information from within your web site. When the prospect submits the information, your web site will automatically save the information electronically in a database and send a personalized email to your prospect (i.e. thanking him/her for the enquiry and providing instructions to download the brochure). Your system can also follow up automatically after a few days with that specific prospect asking if they have any other questions or if you could be of any help.

This is, in essence, business process automation. You are automating the different business processes within your business. The beauty of automating this is the zero-involvement from your business. Let's take this a step further. If the prospect does decide to buy the specific product, they can purchase it directly from your web site (via a shopping cart). Your web site will already know what your prospect had received so you can "speed up" the process by simply collecting payment information over a secure line, process the transaction and then send new shipping details to your customer. The prospects details now go into the customer database (because you have converted a prospect into a customer). The order details automatically get sent to your order-processing department for order fulfillment. When the order is shipped, your order-processing department updates the "system" with ETA for the product. Your customer can now automatically track the status of their order. And you can actually get an overview of how many orders were received, shipped, transacted; all through a browser. Even if you were holidaying and were miles away from home/office.

Can you think of all the costs you have saved by automating routine, mundane tasks that have typically needed human intervention

How to Increase Your Profits With Business Process Management

As the recession takes a firm grip on the British economy, this is an ideal opportunity to review your business processes and establish whether you are working to your absolute optimum.

So, how do you know if you are working to the best of your ability?   To any business, large or small, it can prove difficult to have an insight into every department, every lead, every deal and the general daily "goings on". A lack of process management can mean you often lose or mis-handle deals; you lack visibility to improve the efficiency in the business and as a consequence of many factors, your profits decrease.   What can you do to change?   Map and automate your business processes for increased profit!   Business Process Management (BPM) can eliminate waste and add value within your organisation, as well as becoming fundamental to your continued success. The practice of Business Process Management aids the implementation of a customer/sales focused approach to the management, measurement and improvement of all your company processes.   The benefits of Business Process Management

• Increased visibility allows you to gain historical and real-time insight into your business operations allowing you to manage, change and improve them.
• Ensure consistent execution of your processes by clear definition of what ought to be done, how, when and by whom ensuring effective sales management.
• Report on key performance indicators in real-time for immediate or retrospective analysis for Management Information or Sales Reporting.
• Automate many manual tasks and large portions of any end-to-end business processes, and benefit from your employees' skill, experience and judgment where it will have the highest impact.
• Business Process Management will allow you to better meet sales targets through consistent execution.

The next step... It's important to understand your current business processes and how they are managed from department to department. Once you have worked to identify those processes it is then possible to go on to look at implementing Business Process Management or a BPM solution across your organisation. The key steps in the implementation of a BPM system are to understand your processes, streamline processes, implementation, measurement and control and finally the continuous improvement and update of your system. There are various companies which offer Business Process Management solutions, some are better than others, but it's important for you to establish the product that can be implemented with the most ease and that is most suited to you and your company. On implementation of BPM, you'll see the benefits, reap the rewards and never look back!