The benefits of business process automation (BPA) are unarguable. By automating all the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that keep your day-to-day business running, you can cut operating costs and free up time for you and your team to do more of the things that matter. Show But just because the benefits are plain to see, it doesn’t mean achieving them is straightforward. If you launch into BPA without a plan – or with the wrong plan – you’re likely to end up with confusion, internal resistance, and doing the opposite of what you set out to achieve. So, what does getting it right look like? These are the business process automation steps you need to take to make your move to greater efficiency. The key steps to business process automationTransforming an enterprise through automation can’t be rushed. It requires time and patience. And it’s a process that is as much about people as it is technology – which is why these steps for automating business processes are about bringing key stakeholders into the project and transferring knowledge as you identify, design and implement the changes you want to make. Step one: AssessThis step is about selecting which business processes you’re going to start automating first. Of course, in time you can aim for ‘all of them’, but in the initial phase, we recommend no more than ten. But which? To help you decide, we’ve developed a process assessment tool that can help you streamline your thinking. The tool assesses: • Business impact – how much value will automating this process add? By assigning each process a score, you can identify which are the optimal processes to automate so you can demonstrate value quickly and maintain buy-in. Once you complete the assessment, we strongly suggest selecting processes with high business impact, medium complexity and high maturity scores. This will allow those working on the project to learn the new technology while having a significant effect on your business processes and organization as a whole. Step two: DesignThere are two parts to the design phase, one on functional needs and the other on technical requirements. i) Functional – This is about taking what you need in a business and defining it in terms of the solutions that will meet those needs. It’s critical that all the relevant users and team members are consulted during this phase to make sure all user requirements are fully represented. ii) Technical – This stage then translates all the work above into a technical design document that defines all the technical details and specifications of the solution so best practices can be shared with everyone who needs them. Once the documents are complete, it is crucial to have them approved by the different stakeholders prior to the build stage as they will define the building path.
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