As you may already know, workflow automation is changing the world rapidly, helping people achieve heights like never before. Business has become smooth, and transactions are now being conducted at lightning speeds.
Interestingly, the automation industry is predicted to be about $16.06 billion in the next year, as it has already seen a massive growth of 62.9% since 2016.
If you’re in a business and want to learn how to use this automation to your advantage and avoid being obsolete, you’ve come to the right place. Below are some facts about workflow automation, including how it can help you increase your business.
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation is a much simpler concept than you may think. Many people tend to think that automation would replace their jobs entirely. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
To put it simply, workflow automation is the practice of utilizing specific software to automate activities at work and internal operations. It also helps you to use resources efficiently to streamline your business processes. The days where humans had to be actively involved in every business process are over.
Why Workflow Automation is Used
Workflow automation is used for various reasons by many different industries across the workspace.
Below are the two main reasons why many people use it:
● It helps a company streamline their workflows
The first reason why workflow automation is now used in many parts of the world is that it helps the company streamline its workflows. This means that its workflows are conducted more smoothly and devoid of the most avoidable errors.
● Workflow automation increases efficiency
Efficiency is something that can make or mar a company. In fact, only about 10% of companies remain efficient and relevant over the past five years of their establishment. The ones that do use a fair amount of workflow automation to conduct their businesses. As you can see, this has helped them improve their services and expand enormously.
How Does Workflow Automation Help With Productivity?
To understand how workflow automation and workflow software helps with productivity, the first thing you have to know is what work productivity means. Work productivity refers to how fast and efficient a work is accomplished within a specific amount of time. If a company has high productivity, its employees tend to complete tasks in very little time and achieve admirable performance levels.
That said, here is how workflow automation helps to improve productivity significantly:
● Reduces repetitive actions
Repetitive actions are one of the main reasons why the productivity of many businesses is minimal. Many employees in companies are constantly being forced to engage in repetitive activities to keep the business running. For example, without workflow automation, a digital marketer might be saddled with the task of sending out cold emails individually. These bland, repetitive actions can take several days to complete.
That said, workflow automation allows companies to reduce the number of repetitive actions its company does. This alone would help to boost the output of your company.
● Increases customer engagement
Customer engagement is one of the most crucial parts of a business’s success. In fact, there is no business without customers’ patronage. One small error in this area can disrupt the reputation of the entire organization. As important as it may seem, customer engagement is quite a tedious task. It requires you to spend a significant amount of time answering customer’s different inquiries and requests. Large corporations can take the whole day answering customers’ needs.
Workflow automation is something that can help with that. Automation would allow these inquiries to be answered in far less time instead of the requests being handled manually.
● Work rate can be tracked
In the traditional work setting, work can’t be tracked. Sure, you can pop in occasionally and see what your employees are doing, but that’s about it. Employees tend to waste over half of the time they’re meant to spend working.
Presently, there are several software used by firms to track the performance rate of their employees. These companies have gone on to become highly successful in their industries.
● Improves communication
Communication’s importance can’t be exaggerated. Without clear communication, the performance rate and motivation level of the employees of a company would be highly affected. It is also the responsibility of the organization to provide necessary communication channels to their employees, facilitating seamless flow of activities. Workflow automation solves this by helping employees get clear instructions and directives, allowing them to perform their jobs better and faster.
Right Approach To Implementing Workflow Automation
All that being said, many people are aware of workflow automation and its benefits but don’t know how to go about implementing it into their businesses.
The first thing you should do when you want to do that is to identify the workflow processes that need automation the most. After you do that, the next step would be to look up similar businesses to yours, and how they automated their workflows.
Doing this would undoubtedly leave you with some options for the automation of several work processes. Pick the best one that reflects the interest of your goals.
Prioritize the processes that need automation the most, and work your way down. After automation, you can go ahead to use KPIs to measure the ROI of your new platform. If it doesn’t bring any noticeable change, then try another automation option for that particular work process.
However, you should understand that Workflow automation software is not out to get jobs, as many people believe. Instead, automation aims to help a company’s business processes and increase its performance rate. Repetitive, time-taking jobs would be delegated to this software, allowing employees to focus on more significant tasks at hand.
Automation In The Long Term
Although it’s still too early to decide, the automation industry will be huge in a few years from now. Many business and tech enthusiasts have realized that businesses lose 20% to 30% per year due to inefficiency and have begun to automate their workflows already.
