“We can automate, but should we? Will it have a big enough impact on the business?”
The IDC whitepaper The State of Process Automation in the Midmarket in 2024 revealed something remarkable on this topic:
For many of the 1000+ companies surveyed, implementing automation wasn’t an issue—but proving its value was.
In fact, 13% of company leaders said they are decreasing their focus on automation because they can’t tie their investments to operational improvements. And 58% of respondents cited “tying automation to tangible business value” as a top concern.
From our perspective, that means many organizations are investing in automation simply because they think they’re supposed to, without knowing how to implement it strategically, measure its impact, or iterate on its improvements.
If that’s you, and you don’t want to miss out on business gains simply because you don’t know how to tie automation to financial outcomes, we’ve got you covered with a blueprint for success for your automation initiatives.
Why your business needs automation KPIs
Even if you feel confident using KPIs (key performance indicators) across your business, you might not know how to measure success in automation initiatives. But these metrics are critical for the long-term success of your automation program.
The IDC whitepaper shows that 41% of respondents who identified as “consistently successful” regularly tie financial performance improvements to automation investments. That’s compared with just 27% of everyone else.
So, why does successful implementation hinge on connecting your automation improvements to metrics?
Tie your automation to KPIs in order to:
1. Focus on what you can solve
Automation KPIs help you focus your attention on measurable improvements that connect to business objectives—so you don’t get sidetracked by other use cases. You can identify areas where your company could benefit most from automation and prioritize your efforts on improving them.
This also makes it easier to help employees understand your automation program and how it solves their business problems, creating a sense of support and excitement for the initiative.
“Awareness is equally as good as enablement for the majority of the business because they’re not going to be building forms or constructing workflows,” says Chris Ellis, Director of Pre-Sales at Nintex. “But if they can understand the type of data that can be captured by a form, how that data moves through a workflow, and how it can change in a way that’s relevant to them—then that’s a win.”
Team members start thinking about what they can solve within their line of business, creating further momentum for improvements.
2. Prove value
By comparing baseline metrics to post-automation metrics, you demonstrate the success of implementing your program. This helps you make a case to stakeholders that automation offers value to the business. These stakeholders can then visualize replicating those wins across the org—and may be more likely to increase automation spending.
And with increased spending comes more improvements. The IDC whitepaper states, “When an automation project is successful, it positively impacts business operations. Combining automation success with a larger budget accelerates the benefits of process improvement.”
“To guarantee success, the juice has to be worth the squeeze—particularly when you’re asking somebody for sometimes a substantial amount of money. So it all links to an initial return on investment, whether that return is time or cost savings or sentiment.”
—Chris Ellis, Director of Pre-Sales (APAC) at Nintex
3. Get future buy-in
Not only does proving value help you justify your investment for your current automation projects, but it also helps you get future buy-in. The IDC research found that “organizations successful with their automation projects are more than twice as likely to see an increased automation budget in 2024 than those facing challenges.”
In short, success yields more success. By tracking KPIs, you demonstrate to leadership that your initial investment in automation was worthwhile, helping you get more buy-in for future endeavors. As your automation program grows, you further reduce labor costs, minimize errors, and optimize efficiency—leading to even more wins and driving sustainable growth.
How to tie automation initiatives to business outcomes
Knowing you need KPIs to link automation projects with business outcomes is one thing. Figuring out how to do it is another.
Here are four steps to start demonstrating measurable business value in your automation initiatives:
1. Capture your current state
You’ve got to start somewhere—and in this case, “somewhere” is the baseline you use to quantify and justify a KPI.
“To measure the future state, you first have to understand the current state,” says Ellis.
Understanding your current state requires you to map out your processes as they stand now. Ask yourself questions like:
- Are we using automation now? If so, where and how?
- Are there repetitive workflow tasks that could be automated?
- How much time could be saved?
You can’t get answers to any of these questions without first capturing your current state.
Use a process discovery tool to capture your team’s daily activities and analyze and map your processes. This allows you to visualize your business processes in new ways and clock the KPIs that will form your baseline.
Pro tip: Nintex Process Manager combines process discovery and management, allowing you to gain control over your business processes, establish process visibility, and identify improvement opportunities—without asking your team to learn additional tools.
2. Set precise KPIs
Look at the processes you’ve mapped out, which lines of business or functions they’re tied to, and which KPIs will then work best. The ones you choose will depend on your specific industry and business type. Regardless, you’ll want to consider KPIs that align closely with your company’s current goals and objectives.
For example, if your organization is a government health agency, you might prioritize compliance goals. But if you run an ecommerce company, you might value sentiment and satisfaction.
Consider KPIs in these categories:
- Operational efficiency: No matter your industry, you likely can optimize operational efficiency to improve how quickly work gets completed. Track metrics like cycle time, the average time to complete a process, or throughput, the rate of production of a line or machine over time.
- Cost reduction: Going straight to the bottom line is a good way to build a business case for your automation projects. You might track metrics like your waste reduction rate or ROI.
- Compliance and risk management: Many industries, such as finance, insurance, healthcare, government, and construction, must follow strict federal, state, and local regulations—or face steep fees and fines. In these fields, you might monitor metrics like regulatory compliance rate, the percentage of processes that adhere to regulations, incident response time, or the time it takes to respond to compliance and risk-related issues.
- Sentiment and satisfaction: For companies with growth or retention goals, these metrics often make the most sense as KPIs. Consider tracking metrics like your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure loyalty.
3. Identify opportunities for improvement
Once you have mapped your current state and set your baseline KPIs, it’s time to find opportunities to improve them both.
“No current state process is going to remain current,” Ellis says. “For the rest of its days, there will always be an opportunity to improve.”
Those improvements—whether they involve eliminating a step in a bulky process or introducing automations—should be quick and iterative to increase your organization’s agility.
For that to happen, you need process improvement tools with a simple user interface (UI) that allows anyone to make changes. That puts improvements in the hands of the team members who know the process best. Instead of waiting for developers to code new automations, they can drag and drop elements to modify a process and quickly improve KPIs.
For example, Virgin Australia realized they had more forms than they could manage, from safety reports to leave requests. And they worried that the data collection process took employees’ focus away from their other responsibilities.
To remedy this, the company used Nintex to switch to online forms that automatically delivered data in a fixed format, eliminating manual data processing. The numbers spoke for themselves: with automation, they saw a weekly reduction of two-thirds of a week for a full-time HR staff member to process position descriptions. This demonstrated business value and opened the door for introducing other automations and centralizing business processes across the organization.
4. Build momentum with a major initiative
Building a business case isn’t just about convincing higher-ups that an automation suite is a sure bet. It’s also about using metrics creatively to build momentum.
For example, Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning, a state government transport agency in Australia, created a formal initiative to rally employees around their automation program. Once they set their automation KPIs—like the number of processes mapped and managed and the number of workflow tasks addressed in Nintex—they started tracking individual progress toward those metrics. When an employee made measurable progress toward one of the goals, the agency celebrated that individual publicly with a newsletter mention or an Amazon voucher.
Other employees noticed this attention and started asking questions about how they could earn recognition, too. The Department of Transport and Planning helped them boost their individual progress toward KPIs by providing them with training on their automation initiatives and tools, eventually building an entire community around best practices and success.
“They created positivity around the ‘fear of missing out,’ which we thought was very clever,” Ellis says. “Obviously, a lot of building a business case comes down to statistics. But what they managed to do was create this ‘too-big-to-fail’ initiative where everyone was on the bandwagon and continuously improving.”
The result was momentum that spurred innovation. The team was constantly introducing new features, functions, and ways of working, further reinforcing the automation program’s business case.
5. Prioritize continuous improvement
Process improvements aren’t a one-and-done task on a mid-market organization’s to-do list. By continuing to monitor your KPIs, you can further optimize your processes to see even more positive business outcomes.
“The final piece is continuous monitoring through artificial intelligence (AI) or business intelligence (BI) tools,” Ellis says. “Things like monitoring real-time performance of your workflows, lags in tasks, and overloads in personnel and teams.”
Keeping a close eye on the dashboard of your process management and automation tool helps you further refine your processes. When you spot metrics that could be improved, go back to your process map, change it to mirror a future state, and change the workflow. You’ll see the improvements in your dashboard, and the cycle begins again.
“The whole thing becomes this wheel of continuous improvement. Process mapping, workflow automation, and reporting and analytics—those areas are unique to Nintex—and it’s a nice big wheel of fortune.”
–Chris Ellis, Director of Pre-Sales (APAC), Nintex
Building a business case—and a culture of continuous improvement
As IDC found in its research, “Success is frequently attached to company KPIs or financial performance.”
By connecting your automation projects with metrics related to company goals, you focus on improving what matters to your company. This positively impacts operational efficiency, boosts your return on investment, and helps you gain more buy-in and budget for future endeavors.
Adopting all-in-one process management and workflow automation tools like those offered by Nintex simplifies your process mapping, KPI identification, and improvement implementation. With its drag-and-drop interface, the Nintex Platform makes process improvement accessible—making it easy for individuals to see how it can solve their business problems and create a culture of continuous improvement.
To see first-hand how Nintex helps you build a business case for automation, contact us for a demo.
