How business process automation is contributing to coherent business growth and sustainability
Business process automation market
Digital technologies are increasingly being used by businesses to manage data and obtain real-time information. However, as workloads increase and IT gets more complicated, manual management no longer suffices to keep business competitive. Business process automation enables businesses to concentrate on developing improved, coordinated workflows that may generate business value effectively and efficiently. Therefore, creating adaptive business processes is necessary to access a broader business environment and employ real-time intelligence for enterprise-wide visibility and management.
As per a forecast, the global business process automation market will grow at a CAGR of 12.2% between 2020 to 2026. Its size will increase from USD 9.8 billion in 2020 to USD 19.6 billion by 2026. Businesses are rapidly adopting business process automation to remain afloat in the aggressively competing and constantly changing market. Business process automation is being widely adopted as a measure to improve efficiency and visibility as it benefits in different areas of business such as sales and marketing, IT and technical services, administration, logistics and human resources. If not, completely the businesses have at least partially adopted process automation in one of their business processes. A study revealed that inefficiencies in business operations led to a 20% to 30% annual revenue loss. These inefficiencies can be turned to efficient processes through BPA and business stagnation can be avoided.
For example, restaurants and food eateries got closed across India during the pandemic. If there were no alternative online solutions like Zomato or Swiggy, the businesses would have reaped heavy losses. Accordingly, emerging tech measures must be adopted by businesses to remain flexible and competitive in the volatile market. BPA offers a variety of solutions like simple automation for basic operations, process automation where a specialised network of software and applications is used to track and manage business operations, integration automation and automation using artificial intelligence to remain flexible in unprecedented times.
How it is contributing to coherent business growth and sustainability
Business process automation contributes to coherent business growth by streamlining and improving the areas in which a business lags and brings about greater accountability and productivity. BPA in administration makes it easier to monitor who is doing what, how and when. This way, the employees are made free to attend high-value work while process automation takes over the repetitive dull tasks. When employees are free from unnecessary burdens, the business environment becomes suitable for the growth of employees as well.
Employee onboarding, account handling and reconciliation process management are some business processes experiencing increased automation. With the use of BPA, more may be accomplished with less. Process maps can explain the workflow of operations in an organisation. Manual errors and errors due to miscommunication get readily addressed through it, making business processes transparent. These days, customised business technology with complete maintenance support offered by software and IT companies is furthering the business processes’ efficiency and reducing their complexity. For example, Unistanz, a software and IT services company, offers the QuickReco Tool that automates the data reconciliation process, complex calculations, reports and dashboards. It also provides customised application development and maintenance to aid in robust and scalable business growth.
BPA assists in cost optimisation, task effectiveness, scalability, visibility and overall efficiency. BPA replaces repetitive day-to-day tasks and manual processes while achieving centralised work processes and integrated functions across the firm. This brings about consistency in operations which in return delivers increased customer satisfaction.
Another emerging advantage of BPA is its contribution to carrying out sustainable operations. Digitization and automation have reduced the need for paperwork up to a significant extent. From spreadsheets to reports to tax documents to memos, every process is being carried out online. As a result, decreased paper consumption, reduced resource waste owing to time management, better efficiency, and lower carbon footprints are some of the ways process automation is helping businesses go green.
Conclusion
Process automation will allow businesses to cultivate a culture of trust and innovation. Business process automation’s environmental, social, and governance compliances will have a favourable influence on business finances. And, for the success of the fourth industrial revolution, businesses will need to adopt these emerging transformations to create a profitable, pro-planet and pro-people future.
(The author Mr. Jayendra Desai, Managing Director, Unistanz Software Private Limited and the views expressed in this article are his own)
