A new year is upon us, and the pressure is on organizations to streamline processes and drive efficiency across departments. According to a recent report, companies are expected to prioritize automation in 2024 in order to minimize mundane tasks and, therefore, increase productivity.
Have you prioritized your business process automation (BPA) goals for next year? Is it clear what the must haves vs. the nice to haves are?
Unfamiliar with business process automation? Don’t worry! We have a blog post that dives into what it is and how organizations use it.
Before you can take advantage of the latest business process automation technologies, you need to set well-defined goals that align with your company’s overarching mission. Here’s where to start:
Align with Organizational Objectives
Take a moment to consider your organization’s long-term vision and short-term objectives. What is your company as a whole planning to focus on in the coming months? What about the next five years?
Some companies are striving to scale operations while others are honing in on customer satisfaction improvement. With the current economic climate and all its uncertainty, increasing revenue must be a priority.
Every organization is different and has different needs and goals. Your unique automation objectives should unite with your unique company-wide objectives.
Assess Current Pain Points
The business process automation goals you set should focus on alleviating top pain points, resulting in quick wins. Think about the processes that pose consistent problems – both at the organizational level and the departmental level.
Invoice processing often comes to mind when considering department-specific pain points. If your accounts payable (AP) team is currently leveraging a manual – or partially manual – process, consider how slow and inefficient it is. Does it result in errors, missed early payment discounts, and/or unhappy employees, vendors, and stakeholders?
If so, you’re not alone. With just 10% of organizations with fully automated AP processes, many are burdened by manual invoice processing. Fortunately, the right AP automation solution can help alleviate those burdens – as long as the right goals are set beforehand.
Prioritize Scalability
In addition to your organization’s current pain points, take the future into account when determining automation goals.
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything it’s that we need to be able to adapt quickly to whatever comes our way. At the same time, we need to be able to scale and take advantage of growth opportunities as they present themselves. Keep this in mind when setting your business process automation goals.
Consider things like remote work, which enables businesses to continue operating no matter what and facilitates growth with a wider pool of potential employees. These benefits likely play a role in the expected increase in teleworking. According to the August Survey of Business Uncertainty fielded by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, organizations expect their share of hybrid and fully remote full-time employees to increase over the next five years.
If you also predict your share of partially and fully remote workers to increase as you scale, make working remotely a priority when setting automation goals.
Consider Employee Experiences
Operational efficiency is typically top of mind when defining business process automation goals, but automation’s potential to enhance employee experience shouldn’t be overlooked.
A recent Salesforce study found that 74% of employees believe business process automation technology helps them complete tasks quicker. This gives employees more time to focus on higher value work, which can lead to increased recognition as well as overall satisfaction. In fact, the same Salesforce study also found that 89% of employees are actually happier with their jobs since leveraging business automation.
The key to achieving such a positive outcome is to openly communicate with your staff about automation and include them in your goal setting initiatives. Ask your team members for their opinions on the types of tasks that should be automated and what their ideal results look like. Doing so will provide you with the additional insight you need to effectively define and prioritize business automation objectives.
Partner with the Right Business Process Automation Expert
The right business process automation technology partner will help you set goals based on your organization’s broader objectives, current pain points, scalability expectations, employee experiences, and so much more.
MetaSource has over 30 years of experience helping companies set realistic business process goals and successfully implement automation solutions – from digital mailrooms to accounts payable automation solutions – in order to achieve them.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help your organization set and attain business process automation goals. Not quite ready for a conversation with one of our BPA experts? Download our free guide on taking BPA to the next level, which includes:
- The fundamentals of business process automation
- A checklist for determining your current automation level
- A full step-by-step action plan for defining your automation goals
- Insight into the various levels of business automation
- Common business process automation solution use cases
- And more!
Take Business Process Automation (BPA) to the Next Level
Learn what BPA is, what your current automation level is, and, of course, how to take the next step in your automation journey.
