Automation: Digital is NOT THE Automated Workflow Solution

Understand The Difference between Digitized and Automated

For example, a company that has gotten rid of paper reimbursement forms in favor of fillable PDFs has digitized the form.

Eliminating inter-office memos in favor of email is digitization.

Turning your employee handbook into a wiki-style format is digitizing.

But None of These Are Examples of Automation

For automation, the enemy is not paper, but the manual transfer of data.

If your traveling salesperson must download a reimbursement form, punch in all the data, email it to her manager for approval, and then forward the email and form to the finance department for processing, although the process has a facade of digitization, it’s actually a labor-intensive manual workflow.

Automation seeks to eliminate as much of this manual transfer of data as possible.

In an automated workflow, your salesperson would start with a reimbursement form that is already half-filled in with all of her details.

After submitting all the details, she hits submit. From that moment, she doesn’t need to do anything but wait for the cash to be deposited into her account.

In fact, every member in the process needs only to complete their small role (i.e. approval, processing) while the transfer is handled without any human lifting.

In the book Digital Transformation with Business Process Automation, Keith Swenson of Fujitsu America says;

“As we make everything digital, what is it that we are transforming? There is little to gain from digitizing things that are already automated. The real benefit comes from transforming things that are not automated; things that today are human processes.”

What Automation Brings to You

1. REDUCED TIME: If you were to eliminate all the time your team currently spends manually inserting, creating, tracking, and transferring data, what kind of savings could you imagine? Automation helps your company spend less time on mundane busy work and more on things that matter.

2. REDUCED ERRORS: When you have an automated, predefined workflow for your processes, the chance of error is greatly reduced. Systems and machines almost never fail to accurately handle data. If you use intelligent forms and appropriate approvals, you can expect your processes to run with zero errors.

3. REDUCED COSTS: The alternative to an automated system is to hire someone to handle all the data generated by a single process and ensure its completion. It is likely that you already have people on staff who are performing some of these manual tasks. By freeing them up to do other things, you will have not only reduced errors but also saved on labor costs that don’t net much of a return.

4. BETTER TRACKING: When a process is automated, you can see the status of any item inside that process with a quick glance. Imagine processing 300 sales invoices a month and wanting to know what stage a single order is in. In a manual environment, this means searching through files, emails, and phone calls. In an automated system, it’s a simple click of a button.

5. DATA AND ANALYSIS: With manual processes, it is extremely difficult to gather data on how well the process is running. You probably have no idea how long employee onboarding, vendor payments, or service requests take to complete on average if you have a manual system. When you turn to automation, you can see exactly how long the process takes, and where the bottlenecks are that you need to address.

Download the ebook Automation Essentials for Small Businesses and you will learn: when is the right time to automate, bursting the anti-automation bubble, and getting the automation ball rolling, and much more!

Kissflow Digital Workplace. The Power of Simple.

In a complex world, simplicity holds power beyond imagination. Here’s a glimpse into the digital workplace platform of the future and what it can do for you.

Related Resources

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses
This ebook provides you with a quick manual to bring automation into your organization at the easiest level - in your routine processes and as you work further with automation, you will see many more possibilities emerge. Download Now!

---

Why Does Your Business Need A Digital Workplace?
In this ebook, we discuss in detail why you need a digital workplace, a standardized platform that brings your entire workforce together to better collaborate on processes, projects, and essential discussions. Download Now!

---

More Resources from Kissflow