#69 Make 2023 the best year ever for Business Process Automation

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Yeah, Happy New Year everyone. 2023 just started and we're already getting asked questions from our community when it comes to process automation, where to start. And at the beginning of the year, we thought it's a really good opportunity to go through a couple of points and cover that area, where to start and how to start process automation. So as you know, technology is disrupting the way we do business pretty much everywhere. The message is, and has been for a long time, adapt, adapt now, or really risk falling behind. And yeah, despite process automation proving really valuable for many companies, yeah, for, for others, we know, we know when we hear about that it fails. And this is in most cases, as we identified down to the implementation itself. So deploying solutions onto sort of old legacy broken systems. And one other aspect is as well failure to set clear goals and also an overall lack of the commitment in the businesses can really disrupt that journey to become more digital and do more automation. So So how do, do we then actually start with process automation? How can you start with process automation? Sort of in a nutshell, successful digital transformation means really planning ahead, and it also means picking the right processes to automate. So if you're struggling to implement automation solutions or haven't started yet, so let's let's get ready and we show you how you can get started. Arno, do you like to kick off with some words as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that the key here is to get started with process automation. If you are considering where you are and, you know, how to start process automation, it's worth, you know, keeping one thing in mind, and that's not all processes need to be automated straight away. I guess the first question you need to ask, you know, yourself before you start is which processes are a priority for automation? And again, there, there, there are sort of two ways to uncover this. The first involves a, a manual journey of process discovery, and that involves a little bit of extra effort on your part. And then the, the second part uses what we called process discovery software to more quickly identify processes that's suitable for automation. So in today's episode, we're gonna look at both. Of course, the manual journey involves sort of going in and finding these processes you wish to automate. And then the sort of the more automated route to actually discovering these processes is, you know, this is gonna be more sort of around the process mining route.

All right. Yeah. Let's dive into that manual process discovery more in depth. Yes, you can already guess manual process discovery involves using sort of more manual approaches, and that will be using interviewing techniques to identify all the processes which might be ripe or are ripe for automation. Yeah, this takes a little longer than of course using software and automation or AI and those kind of things which are part of process mining and requires really digging into the trenches of the organization and your departments. But you can follow generally the manual discovery in 5 steps. First of all, interview of heads of departments and other process owners. Getting started with process automation and knowing your processes inside out. So that's, that's really important. Start by meeting with every head of department or any critical other process owner and Yeah, look out for processes which are very repetitive. Generally, these heads of departments and process owners, they know where the troubles are. So when they describe a process as tedious, this could be a good candidate. It's very administrative, put to the bottom of employees' to-do lists because the process no one really likes. It's full of bottlenecks, customers are complaining, things are slow, etc., and demotivating for staff to work on and are very time-consuming. So these are very, very important adjectives while you're doing these kind of interviews and look out for those. Yeah, a process that ticks any of the above I just mentioned is basically stale or broken and therefore really ideal for automation. Basically inefficient processes, crucial processes to the department, and need to be done daily really for the department to function, for the business to function, should be prioritized. Then those which are repetitive or tedious, yeah, identifying the correct process to automate is the first crucial step in really getting started with process automation.

So that's a good— so that's kind of like talk to people and, you know, and identify these processes. So that's a very good list to identify some of the candidate processes. You touch a bit on the kind of repetitive ones, ones that's tedious and the ones that really feels broken. So once we've got that list, the next step is really to map those out, you know, and again, we, we Without sort of process discovery software, and when I say process discovery software, I mean kind of like the data mining software, you can use like an interview process whereby, you know, you kind of like talk to the process owners to get detailed pictures of these processes. And of course, you know, at this stage you'll sort of have a candidate list of these processes. And, you know, when you map these processes out, of course at this stage you're kind of doing this manually, it's usually beneficial to take a visual approach, you know, draw these processes out with a pen and paper. And I know these days everybody's working digitally, so, you know, you can use a mirror board or things like that, or you can use sort of process mapping software. So there's a lot of process mapping software out there. At a bare minimum, you can use something like Visio. So you could use that to create a very accurate visual representation of the processes. So that kind of like falls into the category of mapping out the processes. So we typically know the process steps, we know the stakeholders, we know how the process flows. And the third step is really to identify problems. So if we take a sort of a view of the we've just mapped out. So it could be a broken process. This process mapping helps us to get started with process automation. It really, once we've got a visual on what the process looks like, it sort of shines a light on the process bottlenecks, any unnecessary steps, any broken pathways. You know, sometimes we have a process where people do work and they're not aware that other people do the same work as well because it could kind of span sort of different teams. And I think at this stage, you know, by highlighting these problems, you can start to solve them. You know, you can begin to kind of optimize the process. You know, a process with unnecessary steps that's, you know, too bulky or too fatty can really be trimmed back. A process with a bottleneck bottlenecks, you know, where we identify bottlenecks, so those could be flushed out. And once these problems have been identified, you know, you can refine the process and start to improve them. And again, at this stage, you're just identifying problems and sort of solving them on paper. You know, you are not doing any automation. You're simply taking the as-is and say, these are the problems. These are the to-be solutions that we want to implement. Let's now go to the next step.

Yeah, indeed. Of course, we're doing all that discovery work to ultimately improve our processes. Otherwise, why would we do it? So yeah, improvement is really the heart of process discovery, and the business goals are clear after that. If there is a bad process which is slow, clocked, and inconvenient to employees. Yeah, needs to be implemented. So it should be an efficient process, should be smooth, and really a process without obstacles. And of course, for every employee or supplier, whoever is in that area of that process, should be very easy to use indeed. When thinking about how to start with process automation, again, simplicity is key. If a process can be trimmed back, do it. So it doesn't really make sense to automate a completely useless process or where lots of areas are actually obsolete. Yeah, just take the big scissors out and cut where you think it's needed and then automate. And when workflow isn't working or flowing, don't be afraid to start from scratch and getting your processes into a good shape like we all should do in the beginning of the year. Yeah, when these processes are in shape, you really ensure you're not deploying solutions into really broken systems.

Yeah, and I think, you know, before you begin this, this whole automation journey, it's important to set those goals that you want to achieve. You know, and again, if you're out there and you're thinking about how to start with process automation, you know, it should be very, very clear that the outcomes and the goals that you want to achieve should be, you know, I'm using examples here. You want to increase productivity, you want to free up time for your employees, you want to perhaps improve employee satisfaction, you want to do things like reduce human error, you want to remove paper waste, for example, if you're still a sort of paper-oriented business. So, you know, and it could be all of the above as well, you know, so you could be one of those businesses that you want to I hit all of these goals. And again, you know, this, this, this list is not exhaustive. You can add a lot more to this, but you know, wherever you are today, you know, having these, these, these, these clear goals will, will better inform your automation business plan and what you're trying to achieve.

So yeah, that, that was a bit of a run through what you would do if you do manual process discovery. Now, We talked about there's this other way, process discovery software, and that process discovery software is helping us with basically all the steps we did in our— or basically automates these steps we had in our manual process. And the technology quickly identifies work processes and will then visually map out main path and variants of a given process. So it really shows you how processes are really running across the whole of the companies. Yeah. And then the magic kicks in and it evaluates their suitability for automation. So there's lots of really clever stuff in there and then instantly generates maybe executable workflows depending on the product you're using. And yeah, the beauty of process automation software is that it works really effortlessly behind the scenes. Once it's in place, yeah, it's there. And developing an automation strategy takes work, but with discovery tools, the work is largely done for you. So, and yeah, so there are lots of products out there in the market you can get going.

Yeah, and I think it's kind of like you said, it's the manual approach, Sascha, where you sort of, there is a formula or a recipe for that. And the points we've just touched on, you know, kind of identifying those candidates, setting your goals, using the process discovery software. Of course, there's many products out there, many products is very mature. We sort of move into the realms of, you know, process mining type software, but it's always key to sort of taking that first step and, you know, today's sort of episode, we specifically looking in 2023, if you are starting on your process automation journey, you know, where do you start? So regardless if it's something that you want to do manually and you follow the steps or you want to invest in, you know, the software, the process discovery software, you want to take that first step and, you know, you know, the landscape out there for process automation can be overwhelming, especially for people that's, you know, starting this journey out, you know, and again, kind of knowing which processes are the most cost effective to automate or whether existing processes even work. You might have some processes and you have some doubts whether or not they work and if they'd work, you know, to what degree, you know, I guess that the challenge is with you and a lot of businesses face the same challenge. So it is sort of just looking at that and say, well, you know, how do we get started? And really it's looking at understand, well, it's looking at these processes and understanding them first, you know, and the process discovery, regardless if you go for the kind of the manual route or the automated route, you know, it will help you to discover and ultimately map out a clear strategy before you dive into the actual implementation of automations. So, you know, we have a lot of examples of customers coming to us and saying, where do we start? And, you know, we've had many discussions on these podcasts on the same topic, you know, what's the best way to start? And there's a reasonable kind of list of candidate processes that's generally broken within every business. You know, we talk about HR processes, the onboarding process, finance. Finance, you know, accounts payable, accounts receivable, kind of like the usual suspects. I think that if you don't use process discovery software and you just have a manual approach, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take long if you don't deploy automation within your business just to, you know, use the usual suspects and, you know, identify things that's broken with inside your business. So the message is that These things are very easy to find because, you know, there's a common, I guess, a common set of processes with inside any business that's not automated that you can use as kind of like a go-to list and, you know, dip your toe into it. The technology is very mature. You know, we've got software robots, we've got AI, which is artificial intelligence, which can sort of enhance the robots. We've got workflow technologies. So there's a whole raft of tech that's very mature.

It is sort of just taking that first step to say exactly that discovery will tell exactly what process needs to be done and that sort of determines what kind of technology and technology mix is the right one. And yeah, on those areas, and we talk here on the podcast a lot as well, all the low-code tools, rapid application development area, workflow. Yeah, so this is just the start. If you're interested in that, what comes next, yeah, subscribe to this podcast or listen back to our previous episodes. We cover really the whole spectrum of intelligent automation and all things process and automation. Yeah, just listen back or join us here on the next episode. And yeah, until then. Let's automate it. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process in Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, please give us a 5-star rating and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time, and until then, let's automate it.