Most businesses are well aware of why they should work to optimize and improve their internal processes. The simple formula is, if they can decrease the time it takes to complete daily tasks without sacrificing quality, they will create more business value.
And in today’s competitive business world, effective business process strategy development is more vital than ever.
According to a survey of business leaders, process automation has “emerged as a requirement for many organizations,” with digital transformation being cited as a “primary goal of process initiatives” in the near future.
So how can a business reach that goal? We look at three steps.
1. Manage
The first step to improving your business processes is understanding them. After all, value can’t be created if you don’t understand where the potential for optimization is.
To do this, process managers should follow a simple, three-stage process: First identifying, then mapping, and finally sharing your process maps with the rest of your organization. Once everyone in the organization has access to clear and simple diagrams that illustrate your business-wide processes, suggestions for improvements can be made and discussed.
Traditionally, this has been done through complex Visio charts and procedure documents that make it difficult for untrained employees across the organization to interpret. To achieve these three steps quickly and effectively, therefore, businesses should take advantage of specialist process mapping technology. This will allow them to create simple yet effective process maps that can be easily seen, interpreted, and collaborated on by all workers.
2. Automate
Once you’ve identified the potential for improvements, the next step is to implement the automation technology that can enable this.
First and foremost, this should include workflow automation technology, which allows each task within processes to be advanced seamlessly to the next stage, streamlining efficiency and reducing bottlenecks in your organization.
With common processes such as vacation requests, simply filling out the request form will automatically initiate the workflow and divert tasks to the relevant people (managers, HR, etc.) to view, approve, or reject. From there, organizations can create further value with document generation and eSignature technology that automatically create common business documents like contracts, and allow managers to add signatures at the click of a button.
But the benefits don’t end there – emerging technologies provide even greater automation potential. Robotic process automation, for instance, allows users to train bots to complete common tasks within workflows, as well as automating the workflows themselves.
To return to the vacation request example, an organization with RPA could train a bot to check for vacation clashes or compare projected resourcing capacity, to decide whether the request should be approved. Once RPA is fully set up, the only manual part of the whole process is downloading and filling out the original request form.
By implementing a wide range of technologies, including workflow automation, document generation, eSignatures, and RPA, business leaders can improve efficiency across their whole organization.
3. Optimize
The most important thing to remember about process automation is it’s not a one-off initiative, but an ongoing process. Creating effective automated processes across your organization requires regular improvement and optimization. This could involve creating new automated workflows, increasing the size and detail of existing ones, or automating more tasks within a workflow.
Unfortunately, manually compiling the information required to make these decisions can be time-consuming. To do so effectively, users should take advantage of process intelligence technology that collects and presents granular, intelligent detail about the health of all your processes. This grants process owners the ability to easily identify actionable, data-influenced improvements that will improve their processes at every level.
Unbeatable business process strategy development
To get the maximum value from your business processes, you need access to diverse and wide-ranging technology solutions. Nintex offers a single integrated platform that combines essential capabilities to make it happen:
- Process mapping
- Automated workflows
- Document generation
- eSignatures
- Robotic process automation
- Process analytics
By combining all these tools into a single platform, Nintex offers an unrivaled suite of automation potential. The recent Forrester report, Digital Process Automation for Wide Deployments, described in detail how Nintex is leading the pack in offering this automation potential in two of three main categories – Strategy and Market Presence.
In a clear endorsement of Nintex’s potential, they concluded that the platform provided “the industry’s most complete process management and automation strategy,” before going on to say that Nintex was “leading the charge to make businesspeople into developers.”
“Nintex leads the charge to make business people into developers,” and our strength is in our no-code functionality, which empowers workers “without formal coding skills” to plan, create, and optimize their own workflows.
If you want to find out more about how your organization can benefit from the automation potential in the Nintex Platform, get in touch with the team today.
