Stop right now and look around your office. What does it look like? Is it mind-numbing or fulfilling? Is it planned or chaotic? Is it predictable and managed or does it seem like there is a new surprise coming every hour?
There is a solution to drudgery and chaos. It’s called workflow automation. Every company deals with repetitive tasks that are boring, take up a lot of valuable time, and have a high propensity for errors. Workflow automation takes those repetitive and inefficient tasks and adds automation around them so that you know they are getting done the right way, with less effort and with fewer mistakes.
Here are 7 workflow automation benefits you need to implement today.
Workflow Benefit #1: Increased Accuracy.
Errors typically come from one of three sources, all of which can be reduced with workflow automation. First, the more hands that have to manually input data the more likely a typo will result in an error. Every time your employee has to search a document for information and then type that into your management system is an opportunity to introduce incorrect data from a simple slip. Couple that with the fact that most data entry is repetitive and fatiguing and errors increase with the amount of work. Workflow automation can eliminate 90% or more of your manual data entry in many areas with document data extraction run by artificial intelligence capable of learning from the many documents you receive.
Second, if you haven’t defined your processes, you have no way of tracking your accuracy and efficiency and thus have no way to correct common errors or sources of inaccurate data. For example, a new employee mistakenly enters a PO number in the invoice number field in your system not realizing they are used differently for reporting. Workflow automation allows you to define, track and monitor your processes so you can find new ways to improve.
Finally, your employees may not be the source of the error in the first place. Perhaps a vendor typed an incorrect amount on an invoice that doesn’t match your original PO. In that case you’re relying on human intervention to catch those errors instead of letting workflow automation examine the amount and put it into an exception or review queue.
Workflow Benefit#2: Better Orchestration.
How many processes in your company depend on email or passing around spreadsheets? You can’t run a company by spreadsheet. When you add many different employees and multiple software systems to the mix, let alone input from people outside your office like vendors and customers who can’t see your spreadsheets, the result is chaos. Paperwise Symphony connects your people, data, and systems so they can work together to complete tasks. Information flows to the right people at the right time and you build a stronger connection between your people and your processes.
Workflow Benefit #3: Efficiency and Productivity.
Workflow automation reduces many of the most frustrating and time-consuming parts of your employees’ jobs. Things like:
- Automatically sending notifications when a task is due or overdue preventing all of those follow-up and update emails.
- Employees aren’t waiting around for approvals, they can move on to the next task and get a notification when an approval happens.
- No more hunting around for lost documents, all of your documents are indexed and stored for easy retrieval and reference.
- Your billing department no longer has to print back up documentation and compile it by hand, instead they can use automation to collate all of their billing documents into one billing package.
Workflow Benefit #4: Elimination of Repetitive, Redundant, and Manual Work.
According to a study by Unit4, workers spend an average of 552 hours – that’s 69 days per year – on administrative tasks. That is almost one-third of their time spent on tasks that don’t improve your business or your customer service. Workflow automation reduces or eliminates a lot of this time that is spent on repetitive tasks. Most importantly, you can use the power of your employees’ creative minds on the most important, highest value tasks in your company instead of spending a third of their time following up, hunting down, sharing updates and entering data.
Workflow Benefit #5: Streamline Multiple Workflows.
Multiple studies show that multi-tasking doesn’t work and actually results in lower performance. For example, this study shows that when you increase the number of items to which the brain must pay attention, you also create mental bottlenecks that block out awareness of important information and disrupt your ability to make decisions. And this study shows that increases to your cognitive load – more thinking tasks – impairs performance especially in areas that require accurate and complex judgements.
Many of the jobs in your company are complex and require multiple types of work to be successful. So the answer isn’t a modern version of division of labor. What makes multi-tasking so prevalent are the little hiccups in our workflows that result in trying to keep information from several open tasks in our minds at once. Automation takes care of the details for you so you can focus on the specific task or decision in front of you with your full attention. If a task goes undone or needs additional steps finished (e.g., approvals, questions) before you can continue, you can relax knowing that the robots will follow up and notify you when it’s time to step in instead of trying to juggle multiple tasks all at once.
Workflow Benefit #6: Stop Micromanaging.
Almost every company has that one person or manager who feels it is their job to follow up on details. Sometimes, this person plays a welcome role in a chaotic and complex environment. More likely, this micromanaging behavior is the result of a lack of process and automation. Micromanagement is the result of just bad management and reduces the trust and comradery among your employees.
Workflow automation increases trust, visibility, and cooperation. Each job improves through clarity and defined operational goals. Managers can reduce their time spent on follow up and correcting errors and increase the time they spend coaching and motivating employees to do their best.
Workflow Benefit #7: Happier, More Fulfilled Employees.
Most importantly, your employees will be happier and feel more fulfilled in their role if you can eliminate the worst repetitive tasks in their day. None of your employees enjoy any of the issues we outlined in the above six areas – making errors, being micromanaged, not having timely access to information and not working in coordination with other employees. Workflow automation relieves these pressures making your work culture stronger. Automating tasks and reducing repetitive manual labor removes stress. Your staff will be more confident, relaxed, happy, and creative which leads to better results for your company and better interactions with customers and partners.
