Business process automation often gets touted as a way to reduce the number of staff members organizations need to maintain in order to support everyday operations. While there are certainly some settings where this may be true, business process automation in the modern enterprise is focused more on supporting knowledge workers than finding ways to replace them.
A recent ITProPortal report highlighted that business process automation gives organizations an opportunity to restructure and refocus their operations. In action, automation can streamline many of the longstanding paper-based business processes that can hold organizations back and give users an opportunity to work more quickly and efficiently on an everyday basis.
"Automation helps businesses maximize the value of their existing staff."
Moving ahead with automation
Automation creates unique opportunities for businesses to maximize the value of their existing staff members. For example, a Confluence survey found that approximately 61 percent of asset managers are implementing automation to help them support regulatory compliance. Effectively complying with regulatory standards requires high levels of process documentation in order to create transparency into operations and reduce user error - 91 percent of those polled saidmanual processes leave them worried about errors.
This is just one example of how business process automation can free your workers from menial tasks. With regulatory compliance, users have to stop what they're doing to document their work and maintain paper trails, something that distracts from their core competencies and makes it more difficult to maintain everyday operations. Automation isn't making workers expendable here, it's making them more valuable.
Getting value from automation
Using business process management (BPM) software to fuel automation strategies can take the raw benefits of automation to another level. BPM is built around analyzing and optimizing processes, something that can inform automation plans by helping organizations identify key pain points and standardize operations as much as possible - something that makes automation even more valuable.
To learn more about BPM, take a look at our guide BPM Is More Than You Think.
