Business process automation 101: How to automate workflows

More and more companies are adopting business process automation as the pace of business and the cost of talent continues to increase. In fact, Camunda reported that 67% of companies already use some business process automation solutions across different systems.

If you want to stay competitive, you need to be able to operate with the speed and accuracy of automation. The benefits of business process automation are extensive, including cost savings, error reduction, higher customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

Enhanced efficiency and cost savings

Employees spend a fair amount of their day logging in and out of disparate applications, manually entering and analyzing data, learning new software and processes for nearly everything, from requesting time off to entering time sheets to filling out expense reports. It’s all a bunch of manual work with absolutely zero value added. But it’s still necessary work, which makes it a perfect candidate for business process automation.

Alexander Sukharevsky, senior partner and global leader of McKinsey-owned AI firm QuantumBlack, asserts that “Seventy percent of employees’ tasks today could be automated.” Automating tasks such as data entry, approval of timesheets, expense reports, basic customer support replies, simple analytics, and other repetitive processes would cut your labor costs significantly while reducing human error.

Reduction in errors and human intervention

A major difference between manual workflows and automated workflows is the number of errors. Humans are fallible and forgetful, and errors happen – especially in larger organizations with more people and processes involved in each workflow. But business process automation brings precision, consistency, and accuracy to every workflow.

A key concept to understand here is rule-based decision making. Rule-based automation makes decisions based on a set of rules predefined by human experts. You encode your rules in the software, and the software follows the rules precisely without fail.

For example, Brex helps you automate the process of enforcing your expense policy rules. You can issue a spend limit to employees and encode the rules you want them to follow, such as “spend only on approved vendors,” and the rules-based approval workflow will enforce your rule with every card swipe.

Improved customer satisfaction

A key area where business process automation can add value is customer service. Your customers are your most important asset, and they don’t like to wait. If you can process customer requests automatically based on established rules, faster processing times and reduced errors will enhance the customer experience and improve customer loyalty.

Even better, automation can respond to customers immediately 24/7. Even if the service call warrants live support, the customer will get an immediate response from the automated system (based on rules and talking points you encoded). This will calm customer nerves until a human can get in touch.

For some types of businesses, your customers need to be able to reach a real person 24/7. For example, because Brex is in the business of corporate cards and spend management, it does leverage automation to serve customers faster, but customers can always reach a human for live support 24/7.

Streamlined workflows and operational excellence

Ever lose weeks on an important project because you were waiting for a purchase order to get approved? Ever spend hours rekeying data into a spreadsheet because the primary system has bad export functionality and lacks decent analytics? Ever spent half your day entering invoices and then proofreading them to correct your errors?

Manual systems are a massive bottleneck and time drain, and a morale killer. There’s no reason for companies and employees to continue to suffer. Automated invoice processing, purchase order management, and more can all be delegated to a business process automation solution.

This will also increase transparency and oversight, so instead of keying in data, you can identify opportunities for vendor management automation and savings.

“Doing more with less” is the goal for nearly every business in today’s competitive marketplace, but for many of them, rampant inefficiency stands in the way. And these inefficient processes are costing companies anywhere from 20% to 30% of their revenue every year according to IDC. Inefficiency also leads to burnout as employees manually perform repetitive tasks and work harder simply to achieve the same company goals.

Another type of automation is robotic process automation. This type of software is trained to automate all those repetitive steps that humans take at work, like copying and pasting data into a field and entering invoice data. Robotic process automation solutions tend to handle simpler, less-complex tasks compared to business process automation.

While business process automation workflows are often customized to the organization, robotic process automation is more plug and play. In fact, a business process automation solution might also incorporate some robotic process automation software.

Both types of solutions often use artificial intelligence and machine learning to interpret data like emails, images, and audio files, which means that the technology can learn and interact with user needs, giving them a powerful assistant.

Business process automation can significantly enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors in various areas of your organization. Here are the most common processes that businesses should consider automating.

Repetitive, high-volume tasks

Frequent, high-volume tasks with predictable steps are prime targets for business process automation. Examples include manual accounts payable tasks like invoice entry and payment scheduling, manual expense reporting with paper receipts, financial report generation at the end of the month, and even appointment scheduling.

Rule-based decisions

Processes that follow consistent, predefined rules are ideal for automation. Take credit approvals, for instance. By inputting specific approval criteria into their finance tools, companies can leverage automation to assess applications rapidly and accurately, outpacing human capabilities. Advanced automation features also offer the flexibility to designate certain cases for human review, ensuring a balance between efficiency and oversight.

Error-prone tasks

Manual tasks are prone to human error, and this is perhaps most problematic when it comes to financial transitions. If a company manually enters invoices or payment details incorrectly, they can overpay vendors or miss a payment, jeopardizing their chance at negotiating lower rates down the road. Accounts payable automation such as offered by Brex is a great way to solve this. You can use AI to auto-capture invoices down to the line itemization level and auto draft payments with all the correct details. You’ll save hours and errors, and stay on your vendors’ good side.

Workflow bottlenecks

With business process automation and robotic process automation, you can automate nearly all manual tasks that create workflow bottlenecks, such as waiting for PO approvals, waiting for expense approvals, managing vendors, running accounts payable, and more. Automation accelerates all these workflows by eliminating delays in approvals, data transfers, or waiting for human intervention.

Implementing business process automation can be a transformative journey for your organization. The following four steps provide a structured approach to help you effectively automate your workflows, ensuring you maximize efficiency and minimize disruption during the transition.

1. Document your processes

It’s important to look at business process automation as a chance to start fresh. Also known as a zero-based approach. You don’t have to do things a certain way just because you always have. Don’t let the past constrain you.

Before automation, look at your workflows holistically. Take time to document your current processes. For each workflow, define the purpose, the people involved, the time it takes, and the value it delivers to your business and customers.

Creating comprehensive flowcharts, step-by-step instructions, and decision points can really help you narrow in on the best places to make improvements with process automation.

2. Define automation goals

Deciding which workflows to prioritize based on your goals should be your next step. To do this, you will need to define the desired outcomes and functionalities of the automated solution. Let’s look at some common processes that can be automated with a business process automation solutions:

• Automated invoice processing

• Vendor management automation

• Accounts payable automation

• Purchase order management

• Cash flow management

• Cash flow forecast

• Expense management

Your workflows and goals will be unique to you; although, companies that implement automation are usually looking to increase speed, improve accuracy, save money, reduce headcount, and drive efficiency company wide.

To help you implement the right solution and measure its impact, you’ll also want to document specific data inputs, outputs, and integration requirements for your solution.

3. Choose the right tools

Business process automation may not necessarily require a wide scale technology implementation. There are of course dedicated workflow management software, which allow organizations to define and control the routine, repeatable activities associated with their business processes.

But many modern software solutions, such as for accounting, accounts payable, and expenses, already have automated workflows built in. For example, Brex automates countless tasks across expenses, accounting, and accounts payable. In fact, Brex has saved its customers over 11 million hours to date by automating business processes.

To select the right automation tools, look for ease of use and hard data on how much time the solution is saving customers. Also look for responsible use of AI and a secure approach that keeps you in the driver’s seat with embedded policies and rules while taking hundreds of hours of manual work off your and your team’s plates.

4. Implement and monitor

Implementing business process automation should be fairly plug and play if you use a robotic business automation solution, such as no-code automation workflows. But if you implement a major business process automation solution, there will be some time needed for customization, process configuration, and testing. It’s also important that you monitor and evaluate the performance on an ongoing basis to identify optimization opportunities and ensure that you’re maximizing your value.

By following these four steps, you can effectively implement business process automation and reap its benefits. Remember that automation is an ongoing process, so continue to monitor and refine your automated workflows to ensure they remain aligned with your business goals and evolving needs.

Business process automation is a growing trend across various departments, from finance to procurement and beyond.

Accounting department

Automating data entry

Automation can handle many repetitive tasks like recording invoices, processing payments, and managing accounts payables/receivables, saving companies hours a day and improving payment and record accuracy. Such automation often uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for capturing data from invoices and receipts. OCR is a widely used technology that can read documents and turn them into digital files that can then be populated securely across other software.

Reconciliation and reporting

Month-end is painful for accounting teams. There are volumes of data to be analyzed, recorded, triple checked, and reported out. Automating reconciliation and reporting tasks, from expense reconciliation to generating financial reports, can free up finance teams for more strategic work and analysis. And they’ll have cleaner, more timely data for faster decision making because business process automation is ten times faster and more accurate than manual work.

Procurement department

Automated purchase orders

Purchase orders are notoriously slow, but finance teams like them because they are highly effective at controlling spend. The good news is that you can use automated purchase order solutions to ensure that all steps in the purchase order process are completed without manual intervention based on your predefined rules and approval flows. You get control, accuracy, and speed – which is critical to ensuring company spend goes where it should in a timely manner.

Reducing procurement lead times can unlock new business opportunities and empower employees to pursue growth opportunities without missing their window due to a slow PO.

Vendor management and invoice processing

Automation can make it much easier to manage vendor information, automate invoice processing, and facilitate timely payments. With business process automation, you can feed your automation software vendor data, and it will remember and populate it where needed across other software. In fact, when you use Brex’s automated accounts payable solution, after the software automatically enters an invoice for you, it will suggest the right matching PO from your software.

Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) software is also on the rise for efficient data exchange with vendors, and Brex’s accounts payable solutions also allows you to have your vendors email invoices directly to your accounts payable software, and you can send your vendors a self-serve link where they can populate their own invoices and data if you prefer.

Human resources department

Automated recruiting and onboarding

The process of recruiting and hiring employees is full of repetitive tasks - reading resumes, replying to candidates, scheduling interviews, sending offer letters. But automation can handle all these tasks faster and with fewer errors, so your recruiters can focus on finding the best talent. Many solutions even include chatbots to answer candidate questions and provide a seamless onboarding experience.

Payroll processing and benefits management

Automating payroll calculations, deductions, and direct deposits is another opportunity for human resources teams to benefit from business process automation. Running payroll only gets more complicated and time consuming as companies scale, having an automated solution can save you time and money – and keep employees happy. Direct deposits and reimbursements are also a great opportunity for automation, especially when you have contractors. With Brex's expense management software, you can set up policies and approval criteria so that reimbursements can be automatically approved.

Benefits enrollment and administration tasks can also be delegated to a business process automation solution. All of these automations save you time and ensure that employees are paid correctly and in a timely manner.

Finance department

Automated cash flow management

Cash management ensures that your business can meet its short-term liabilities while maximizing its ability to invest and grow. But manual cash flow management processes leave you open to human errors, leading to an inaccurate forecast, and it requires extensive manual data entry and analysis.

On the other hand, a cash flow automation tool can instantly track cash inflows and outflows, providing real-time insights into cash positions and liquidity. This improves your ability to forecast future needs and overall improves accuracy, security, and efficiency, reducing the risk of errors and fraud while saving time and operational costs.

Budgeting and forecasting

Automating the budget allocation process makes it easier to allocate resources efficiently, prioritize project activities, and track budget utilization. With Brex’s spend management software, it's incredibly easy to allocate departmental or other budgets and track spending against those budgets in one place in real time.

Automated budgeting technology helps companies define budget categories, set budgetary constraints, and automate the allocation of funds based on predefined rules and criteria. They can then run reports and have more time to analyze and forecast the best use of company resources for current and future needs. In addition, automated forecasting tools make it easier for companies to predict future revenue and expenses with greater accuracy.

Business process automation is not just a trend but a strategic necessity for businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. The benefits of automation extend across your entire organization, from human resources to procurement to finance and accounting. Companies will experience increased efficiency, reduced errors, improved customer satisfaction, and streamlined operations.

As you think more about opportunities to implement process automation in your organization, consider starting with expense management, accounts payable, and accounting. Brex solutions have helped companies save over 11 million hours by automating workflows in these areas. Book a demo today and see for yourself how Brex can help everyone in your company work more efficiently and accurately.