How Process Automation can help your organisation

Welcome to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Today we are talking about the challenges that organizations face with their work processes and how automation platforms can help.

That's right, Sascha. It's a good topic. And I looked at a recent survey and it found that 71% of companies with 500+ employees struggle with multiple conflicting processes and disconnected workflow systems, with 50% of, of employees saying many of these processes don't work efficiently, or many of these processes are simply not fit for purpose.

Wow. Yeah. So it gets me thinking, what's holding companies back from taking full advantage of process automation? And I guess it's the cost of development time. And that's what we hear. And the resources required to plan and code and test and deploy all these custom solutions.

Yeah, exactly correct. And I think there is this sort of anxiety. Just coming back to that survey. You know, this is the same survey and 77% of companies reported that they can't automate processes on their own because, you know, they're too reliant on IT or operational departments. So there is this sort of barrier that exists that makes it very hard to take this first step in, you know, automating processes and sort of opening up those initiatives.

And that's exactly where where low-code development comes into play. The low-code platforms— many of our listeners probably have heard us talking about low-code before, but yeah, many of those platforms empower business people with just basic technical skills, not the sort of the deep high-coding skills. Yeah, enables them to build and automate their own workflows using drag-and-drop interfaces, so very visually and very easy, right?

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, by allowing more people to create and automate these workflows, it really reduces the burden on IT departments and allows them to focus on other high-value projects while still remaining in control over the processes that, you know, these so-called kind of business developers roll out. Of course, there are some governance frameworks that need to be put in place. We have talked about this on numerous occasions in this podcast. And, you know, if you've missed some of the previous episodes, you know, feel free to listen back to some of those where we talk about the guardrails that we need to install. And this is purely a sort of a, I guess, an IT-led initiative, but effectively creates the framework that business developers can then develop these automations within without causing security problems, scalability problems, proliferation problems, support problems, all the usual things that you can imagine will happen if there's not proper governance in place.

So let's look into what are some ways that automation platforms, low-code automation platforms, can help in the businesses and can improve the way we work. And yeah, I know.

Yeah, so we'll go over some, you know, of the key benefits. The first one is to give people really the power to automate. And again, the most effective platforms out there uses visual drag-and-drop type interfaces so business people can go out and build and modify processes without writing very complicated IT code. You know, when the individuals who use the processes are building these automation solutions, they can determine what the experience and functionality will be like. And then the application or the app effectively that they build can be tailored to meet all of their challenges. Goals, objectives, you know, of a particular, you know, business problem that they are looking to automate.

Or the next one is they can handle complex workflows at scale. So making it simpler to implement non-standard processes such as the role delegations, approvals, parallel approvals, escalations, and far more. So workflows that are built to accomplish just one process at a time don't really cut it. So when you're trying to scale across several departments in your organization, and yeah, platforms try to expand across an enterprise are often too complex and too expensive. So in a platform that leverages sort of that drag and drop, the clicks rather than the coding, can easily scale across departments and provides the best of both worlds really. So this makes it 100% simpler to implement non-standard processes such as I mentioned before, the exceptions and reroutings and so on. So the more complex workflows pretty much.

Yeah, yeah. Another key benefit here is you know, you protect your data by integrating with native security systems. So obviously we talked a bit about governance and, you know, keeping data secure is a priority and, you know, can be a concern when you, for instance, connect your line of business systems, CRM systems, ERP systems with any external platform. So, you know, the best platforms will respect your native system security settings. So data remains protected, you know, no matter where it's accessed from. And also, what's more, you'll be able to create your own security settings around your data, you know, with your sort of process applications interacting with your data. So there's this kind of a security model, all of the best of breed platform's support. And this ensures that, you know, only the right people are able to create, modify data when they interact with the processes. And again, this idea to protect your data is really important, and it's also a key element to allow scalability of these solutions. When they get deployed across various departments within such organization.

Yeah. So the next benefit of these automation platforms is they easily integrate with line-of-business systems such as document storage solutions, document management solutions, and other platforms, maybe like social media platforms. So yeah, most automation platforms provide out-of-the-box workflows, so starter blueprints, accelerators that can be used immediately within your departments. And these workflows easily connect and integrate with, yeah, sort of the leading line of business systems and document storage solutions. There are connectors available straight away for Dynamics, Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, so everything what's sort of quite popular out there, you can very easily connect to. So you don't have to build all these integrations like we did in the past. So meaning you can perform your work within these systems without leaving the app you're building. So yeah, yeah, big benefit there.

Yeah, the next one is really looking at accuracy of the actual application. And you know, again, if you, if you use one of these platforms, it actually increases your accuracy automatically, really, because it allows you to identify workflow anomalies. And so a lot of platforms has got really intelligent models within them. And, you know, if you out there and you're a business developer and you are deploying, you know, some of your custom apps, you know, identifying any bugs or glitches, you know, usually requires manual review, which takes a lot of time, and issues may still be overlooked during your development and deployment phases. So Automation Platform can help individuals, like I said earlier, diagnose and fix application issues, whether or not it's a workflow issue or there's a, integration point issue or failure with, with, with integrating with a specific endpoint where you source data from, or even a form component, you know, and, and this can happen before your app is deployed. So, you know, people that develop these apps get the best experience possible. So when once the apps are deployed and you are using them, it just ensures that you know, there's no bugs that's overlooked. Things just work and, you know, you can get on with using the application rather than worrying about debugging it.

Very cool. Yeah, and these platforms also offer mobile access out of the box very often, most of the time really. So a big concern when you have sort of operations teams out in outside of the office and need to capture information. Yeah, so having access to the data of the process and the backend via mobile device is super important and very necessary for lots of you out there. So the best applications offer that mobile access. So your employees can respond to tasks, initiate workflows wherever they are really in any time. So super important. Yeah, back then, yeah, we had to develop these apps natively or separately next to our workflow solutions. And yeah, these days out of the box straight away available.

Yeah, yeah, that is, that is a very powerful feature, you know, especially, you know, it's all out of the box. It's, it's easy to implement, configure. The next one I want to talk about is the ability for this platform to provide powerful analytics to encourage process improvement. Of course, if we automate a process, you know, we always want to look at improving it. So automation platforms provide you with that immediate analytics and reports. You can identify any issues to further optimize your processes, like bottlenecks, for instance, and things that, you know, make your process less efficient. So, you know, whether it's using out-of-the-box reports or custom dashboard, you have that power and flexibility to monitor and measure processes and their performance with the view that you can enhance them whenever, you know, so you could look at these reports and they really tell you a lot about, you know, how to, where to invest your time basically to improve the process.

Really cool. So I think, yeah, that brings us to an end. I think these benefits show just how automation platforms can help your organization, help your organization to streamline processes, increase productivity, and ultimately improve the way how you work on a daily basis. All in all, these kind of platforms make developing and deploying complex workflows really, really easy. And more and more companies are taking a platform approach to automation to make their businesses more efficient. As we mentioned in the beginning, a big blocker is development time, so they use these platforms to reduce the development time massively. Some, some say you develop like 10 times to 15 times faster than with the traditional coding methods. And yeah, that's, that's very true in lots of scenarios. Yeah, customers are eliminating roadblocks and yeah, enhanced customer experience. And of course, yeah, these platforms and getting applications out very quickly and adapt them to changing environments helps to meet regulatory requirements. Yeah, yeah. And ultimately improves the bottom line.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what it's all about. So that was, that was hopefully a very, very good list for all of our listeners out there that want to look at sort of the key benefits. Maybe you're interested in automation and you want to look into low-code platforms. And this could be, you know, workflow platforms, case management, robotic process automation platforms. And again, if you're interested in learning more about how automation platforms can help your organization, please be sure to visit our community on theautomationguys.net. There's resources there. Obviously, all of our previous podcasts are there, or just get in touch with either myself or Sasha on LinkedIn and, you know, start the conversation. You know, we're here to help you guys out there. If you want to take that first step, maybe you feel a bit anxious, you don't know where to start. You know, that's the reason why we talk about these things on these podcasts, really to make it really easy to get started and really to demystify you know, all of these automation-related topics out there and really simplify things so that if you have got any opportunity in your business where you want to deploy some automation, it's really easy to get started. And also, you know, you get the support you need.

Cool. Yeah. So yeah, that's it for today's episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. Yeah, thank you for tuning in. Yeah, we will We will be back with another episode very soon. And 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.