We recently shared an article on workflow automation, outlining what it is, the benefits, and addressed some of the usual concerns surrounding automating processes. If you read that, we’re sure you’re thinking “great, I would love to leverage technology to automate tasks and processes to boost efficiency and accuracy, but how do I do that?”
That’s what we want to tackle here. Hopefully, after reading this article you will understand how to navigate through the intricacies of implementing workflow automation in your operations, to ultimately streamline your processes and move towards a more efficient and error-free environment.
Introduction to Workflow Automation
For a more in-depth explanation on workflow automation, check out our previous article on the topic. As a recap, Workflow automation is the use of tech to automate, streamline, and optimise different processes and tasks within daily operations. Most tasks can be automated, and workflow automation can be applied across many industries and business functions.
Workflow automation increases efficiency, saves money, reduces employee workload and burnout, and leads to faster turnaround times for tasks and processes. By automating processes within your business, you will eliminate the frustration of carrying out repetitive, time-consuming tasks, and give yourself a strategic advantage that will allow you to stay ahead of your competitors.
That’s all well and good, but how do you know which processes can be automated?
Identifying Processes for Automation
The first step to implementing workflow automation within your business is of course identifying the workflows, processes, or tasks that can be automated. Generally, you will be looking for repetitive, time-consuming tasks that follow a consistent pattern and require a lot of manual data entry. A more structured approach to identifying processes for automation would look something like this:
- Process Mapping: Document all your processes and fully understand how they’re performed. Who’s responsible? What inputs are required? What outputs are produced?
- Establish Criteria for Automation: What will be the driving factors that indicate potential areas for automation? This can include things like repetitiveness, volume, and strategic importance.
- Stakeholder Input: Get some feedback from the stakeholders who are directly involved in executing the processes and the managers who oversee them. They’ll be able to provide real insights into pain points and inefficiencies.
- Cost-Benefit Analysis: Consider the potential return on investment (ROI) of automating each process. Make sure you take into account both the costs associated with implementing the automation, and the expected benefits.
Then once you’ve identified a bunch of processes, how do you find the right automation tools to do the job for you?
Choosing the Right Tools
To select the right tools to automate processes, various factors need to be considered to ensure that the chosen tools align with the needs and requirements of your organisation. Once you have found the processes you want to automate and understand the functional requirements you need from any automation tools, have a think about the below before investing in an automation tool:
- Ease of Use: Consider the usability of the automation tools, particularly from the perspective of end-users who will be interacting with them daily. Choose tools that are intuitive and user-friendly, which will help speed up adoption and boost engagement.
- Assess Scalability and Flexibility: Look for tools that can accommodate the future growth and evolving needs of your business. You don’t want to be back to square one every time you have a change in processes or requirements.
- Check Integration Capabilities: What existing tech do you have in place, and how will the automation tool interact with it? Compatibility with APIs, standard protocols, and data formats is essential for smooth integration and data exchange.
These are three key factors when choosing the right tools, but there are of course other things to consider such as cost and vendor support.
Implementing Planning
So, you’ve found the right tool to automate your processes, what next? It’s not as easy as just plug-in-and-go unfortunately. You should develop a comprehensive implementation plan that outlines the steps and timelines for deploying the automation tool. This should include tasks like configuring the tool, integrating it with existing systems, migrating data (if applicable), training users, and conducting testing.
It’s important to fully consider all of these steps to ensure a smooth transition when implementing your automation tool. Your tool needs to be set up correctly in order fully benefit from its use; if the tool uses data from existing systems, if this data is not fully accurate then it’ll be an uphill battle from the start, so make sure data is properly cleansed beforehand; and training the team on best practice and highlighting the benefits of automation is imperative for driving user adoption and improving productivity. After this, it’s time to start testing before the roll-out.
Testing and Rollout
Testing and rollout are critical phases in the implementation of an automation tool. It’s key to make sure the solution is working as it should be, and that it is fully ready to be deployed across your business.
There are a few different aspects you want to consider when testing your automation tool: Does the solution perform its intended tasks correctly? Is the tool integrating correctly with other systems within your business? How well does the tool cope under different conditions? Does it meet the end-user’s needs and expectations?
Once all these boxes are ticked, you can start thinking about the rollout phase. This can be done in various different ways, depending on the structure of your business and your preferences:
- Phased Deployment: Instead of implementing the automation tool organisation-wide straight away, you can deploy it gradually in phases or stages. This can help with change management, reducing the risk of disruption and providing an opportunity to address any issues that come up in smaller deployments before scaling up.
- Pilot Deployment: Before rolling out the tool to your whole company, you could consider a pilot deployment. This could be with a smaller group of users or a specific department. You could also think about developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to deploy as a pilot before implementing the full solution.
Throughout and following the rollout phase, clear communication and comprehensive training for your wider team is required to ensure a smooth transition.
Training, Support, Monitoring and Optimisation
Now you have successfully implemented workflow automation into your business operations, you need to make sure your automated processes are effectively adopted, perform optimally, and continue to evolve to meet changing business needs.
Training is essential to ensure your employees understand how to use the workflow automation system properly to avoid creating new inefficiencies through incorrect use. Likewise, ongoing support is critical to address any issues that arise when using new systems, so it’s important to establish channels for users to reach out for help, and ensure that support resources are readily available.
On top of this, it’s key that the performance of automated workflows is monitored. Establish KPIs to track the efficiency, accuracy and throughput of automated processes, and implement monitoring tools or dashboards to track metrics in real-time. Review and analyse this data regularly and that will feed into continuous optimisation of your workflows over time, maximising their effectiveness and efficiency.
Conclusion
Successfully implementing workflow automation requires a systematic approach that involves various stages, from identifying processes for automation to training, support, monitoring and optimisation. By getting all these stages right, businesses can streamline their operations, boost efficiency, and move towards a more error-free environment.
If you have processes that need automating within your business operations and need some help with any of the above, reach out or get a quote.
