How You Can Identify The Processes That Can Be Automated

Automation has made its mark in the business environment and while many have already adopted intelligent automation in their organizational framework, several are planning to do so. But there are some of the businesses that are not able to decide from where to start.

Automating your business processes in your organization can be incredibly beneficial. It helps organizations to bring down the cost of automated job functions by 30-40% while maximizing their efficiency. In the overall process of automating different functionalities of an organization, identifying a correct opportunity can be a challenge.

So, how to select the right processes for automation?

Identifying the right process to automate can be a challenging task, as the process has to meet certain requirements before being automated. However, it is necessary to check that the selected process is the right one or not to ensure a good ROI.

An ideal process to automate has to have certain characteristics:

• It needs to be a monotonous task (so that you can free up human resources to do more value-added activities)
• It requires a lot of mouse clicks and application screens
• It occurs regularly and engages more than one employee
• It uses digitally available data

Here are some of the steps to effectively implement business process automation services:

Step 1: Consult with the process owners and development leaders about the possibilities of automation

• Brainstorm with these people to generate possible business process automation solutions.
• Ask questions like �Do you have a process which could be improved if you had real-time reports?�, �Which administrative tasks are always late because no-one wants to work on them?�, �What processes do your colleagues find tedious because they are repetitive?�.

Step 2: Create a list of all ideas gathered from the brainstorming sessions

• Think on every listed idea, including discussing its pros and cons.
• Categorize ideas by different �processes� they are connected to.

Step 3: Set expectations with each idea

• Determine what value your �process idea� could bring to your company � like if your company will save time and data accuracy will be increased due to the elimination of human involvement.
• Don�t just think of ROI as a monetary measure � freeing up your team from boring, repetitive tasks give more time for creative work and additionally, can increase job satisfaction.

Step 4: Prioritize the ideas not only on the outcome

• Now when you have evaluated your ideas and what they can deliver to your organization, the next and foremost thing you need to do is analyze what to automate first.
• We advise looking at other aspects like time saved, errors reduced, processing time reduced, the significance of real-time data, etc. rather than just the expected returns.
• Ease of implementation must also be considered. We advise going for a quick win like focusing on fewer systems affected, fewer policies affected, fewer departments involved.

If the process you wish to automate has a lot of unnecessary steps, feel free to select another one to automate and fix before going with RPA. Going through the above-discussed steps can help you to identify the right process along with implementing it with ease.