How Can Business Process Automation Raise Your Employee Productivity?

In a fast-paced digital work environment, tedious manual tasks impose a major obstacle to speed and efficiency.

Whether you’re entering data into a CRM or preparing documentation for a new hire, completing time-consuming but simple tasks manually can be a huge drain on time and energy. Not to mention, a manual approach creates vulnerability to human error.

For many companies, the solution is business process automation.

How does business process automation drive efficiency?

Opaque or inefficient processes are a barrier to technology adoption and innovation. But with business process automation, you can develop streamlined processes and dramatically improve the customer experience.

Business process automation refers to the use of digital technology to automate a process. Such tools automate processes and workflows to increase process speed and efficiency.

A WalkMe study of 117 customers and more than 117,240 end users of HCM and CRM systems found that the ideal length of a business process is under 70 seconds. It also found that when employees don’t need to complete more than five steps, there is a 70% success rate by users.

On the other hand, if employees need to complete more than five steps, it’s likely they will drop off before finishing the process. The implications range from diminished business performance to employee frustration and diminished morale.

Using business process automation helps to reduce the length of business processes and delivers a range of other benefits from increased productivity to transparency.

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Business process automation promotes digital adoption

Automation supports efforts to increase digital adoption by simplifying usability and eliminating the burden of software learning.

When employees don’t need to dedicate time and energy to learning rote processes, they can channel these efforts to more complex, high-touch tasks. Business process automation is embedded within a usual task. Instead of replacing the human worker, as many assume, this software augments their capabilities.

Now, users have the power to complete a greater range of tasks with far more efficiency and no chance for human errors. This is central to digital adoption success.

Here’s a deeper dive into three main benefits of business process automation.

1. Ensure your users accurately complete key business processes

In the same WalkMe study mentioned above, the results showed that employees could manage 6 steps of a process in 120 seconds with a non-automated process compared to 19 steps in 120 seconds with an automated process. By automating a process, you increase the number of steps an employee can manage.

Business process automation makes employees more productive. Lightweight and direct processes serve the needs of your employees and make their job easier. The less resistance there is to complete a process, the more productive an employee can be.

2. Automate tedious administrative tasks

Business process automation’s greatest utility is its ability to automate repetitive tasks that consume an employee’s time. A process like data-entry or account management is time-consuming and relies on employees filling and reviewing a stream of forms and fields.

The traditional model of having employees fill out forms manually is woefully inefficient. For example, M-Files finds that employees spend 50% of their time searching for information and take an average of 18 minutes to locate a particular document.

Automating the employee data-entry process reduces the administrative burdens of employees and does this tedious work for them automatically. For example, an automated data-entry platform could use data from an internal database to fill out certain information independently.

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3. Reduce human error

Investing in business process automation not only offers organizations the opportunity to increase employee productivity, but it also helps reduce the chance of human error. While it is easy for an overworked employee to fill in a document incorrectly, a software platform won’t make the same mistake.

Bloomberg BNA found that 27.5 percent of accounting mistakes occur due to human error and employees entering incorrect data into a system. Automating processes associated with tasks like data entry and employee onboarding eliminates the risk of recording incorrect information.

Streamline productivity with business process automation

The continuous development of technology is constantly introducing new opportunities for increasing the agility of the workplace. Building streamlined business processes is integral to keeping you up to speed with the market. Companies that use outdated and inefficient business processes will inevitably fall behind.

Using business process automation and supporting digital adoption with digital learning solutions gives employees the best chance of being able to adapt. It also eliminates the hassle of managing repetitive administrative tasks.

If you decide to incorporate business process automation, it is critical to focus on digital adoption by human-users before anything else. By focusing on the needs of your employees, you build their confidence and make sure they can integrate with automated tools smoothly.

By WalkMe Team

WalkMe pioneered the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for organizations to utilize the full potential of their digital assets. Using artificial intelligence, machine learning and contextual guidance, WalkMe adds a dynamic user interface layer to raise the digital literacy of all users.