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Monthly Archives for January 2022

Why is Business Process Automation Imperative for Start-ups?

Why is Business Process Automation Imperative for Start-ups?

Hyperautomation is here to stay.

– Gartner’s IT Automation Predictions for 2022

The concept of business process automation (BPA) isn’t new for businesses today. It has been there for quite some time now, with an improbable concoction surrounding it that automation will eliminate jobs and replace humans in the workforce. Workers, for a long time, were apprehensive about their organizations adopting automation. But despite the common narrative, many enterprises have adopted automation in the last few years to improve their overall productivity and efficiency, evidencing that BPA isn’t a competitor for human jobs. 

BPA can do a lot for organizations of all sizes, be it startups or big businesses with deep pockets and at all stages of their development. Unlike multi-million-dollar corporations, startup leaders might think twice before investing in automation, or they might consider it an unnecessary investment, but that’s completely understandable, as a series of minor overspends can add up fast, becoming a nightmare for the startup leaders.

Taking their fear into consideration, in the subsequent sections, we have discussed why business process automation is worth investing in and how it enables employees to be more efficient, benefiting the startups in more ways than one.

How BPA delivers a competitive advantage to Startups?

The global startup ecosystem is getting stronger with every passing year. However, according to a National Business Capital report, startup failure rates are around 90%. 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year. The reason for such high failure rate is intense competition in the space. 

The basic mantra for a startup to stand strong in the market is to ‘outperform the competition’. In order to stand ahead of its competitors, a startup has to do better in all the underlying areas. 

  • Address the customers’ pain points proactively
  • Curate a compelling selling story that connects with the consumers 
  • Focus on unique selling propositions and add value to customers
  • Serve customers with a smile 24X7
  • Keep up with the market trends

BPA helps a startup to improve in all the aforementioned critical areas. For instance, the data related to customers’ interests and behavior, when analyzed with the help of automation, can shed light on the customers’ needs. Leveraging the data, startups can create a selling story that will actually impact the customers. And finally, automation enables startups to serve the customers better and faster with reliable products and services. Thus, automation strengthens the effectiveness of all business operations.

How can BPA help startups gear up for success?

In the book, Deep Finance, veteran startup finance expert Glenn Hopper says, “Automating parts of your process can help you scale faster. Lost productivity from manual tasks means it will be difficult to scale operations as a company grows. Manual processes are people-intensive and not scalable. You may have to start manually in the beginning, but today there are so many apps that give businesses the ability to start with automated processes. It is possible from day one to be automated.”

Let’s see how BPA benefits startups.

#1: Delivers more and faster­­­

Automation gives startups the super-power to deliver more in comparatively lesser time and improve their customer satisfaction rate. When the processes that are performed manually are successfully automated, they are processed by means of programmed commands combined with automatic feedback control to ensure proper execution of the instructions, which means the employees will now be able to invest their time in areas that require human intelligence. Theoretically, automation can double the speed of deliveries. 

#2: Automation helps in cost containment

By 2024, organizations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyperautomation technologies with redesigned operational processes.

– Gartner’s IT Automation Predictions for 2022

Leveraging technology to automate organizational business operations helps startups to manage the payable hours of their workforce and thoughtfully reduce expenses to improve profitability without risking long-term damage to the company. 

#3: Establishes standardization of business processes

Standardization is achievable with automation. Whether it is the standardization of workflows or quality of products and services. By removing human interference from the processes, the chances of manual errors are dissolved. Therefore, all the operations are performed according to a predefined set of rules ensuring top-quality and error-free.

#4: Increases scalability

Automation improves business scalability. It empowers a small team of employees to perform tasks that generally require a large team by handling all the repetitive, tedious tasks on its own. Thus, scaling a company for more productivity and efficiency. 

#5: Extracts data and delivers actionable insights

Analysis of data is essential for every organization. But, if a startup is stuck in analysis-paralysis, it will probably fail in making critical decisions timely. Automation technology combined with AI can help the stakeholders to analyze the data and make decisions faster, based on which the team members can perform operations at a faster speed. Businesses can get to know the customers more, identify the areas of improvement, and maximize the return on their investments.

Still, wondering if your young business needs automation?

BPA will continue to be a core focus for growing organizations in the coming years. It is more than just a convenience. It enables organizations to overcome various daunting business challenges, bolster productivity, and increase customer satisfaction.

AgreeYa’s suite of intelligent automation solutions has enabled organizations to increase process efficiency, enhance customer experience, optimize operations, amplify workforce productivity, reduce process costs and risks. Our award-winning No-code SharePoint BPA solution – QuickApps – enables organizations to automate their business processes on SharePoint and Office 365 with its powerful suite of web apps. It enables startups to automate their cumbersome processes and maximize SharePoint or Office 365 investment. Download a free trial today, to learn more.


5 Business Process Automation Trends to watch out in 2022

5 Business Process Automation Trends to watch out in 2022

“In 2022, organizations will require more IT and Business Process Automation (BPA) as they are constrained to accelerate digital transformation plans in a post-COVID-19, digital-first world.”

– Gartner

The pandemic has altered the business landscape and continues to encourage innovation and technological adoption. Before the pandemic, organizations looked at technology as a beneficial way to improve and automate their business processes, increase productivity, and engage with customers effectively, yet they never considered it a mandate. But the repercussions of the pandemic have dramatically sped up digital adoption by several years. In the last couple of years, BPA solutions have witnessed broader adoption across all business sectors.  

As we head into 2022, the growth story of BPA will continue to rise further. Organizations will be more focused on implementing specific BPA solutions to improve efficiency and profitability in key areas of their businesses. 2022 will see new BPA trends emerge, like all previous years. Below we are listing some of the anticipated BPA trends to watch out for in the upcoming year.

Top Business Process Automation Trends in 2022

#1: Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) adoption is the future of enterprise resilience

The popularity of LCNC development platforms has skyrocketed in the post-pandemic world. Such a visually integrated development environment (IDE) allows professional developers as well as business users to develop an application without complex coding using simple point-and-click configuration. Given the intense demand for new applications in the market and an acute scarcity of software development talents, it’s easy to predict that LCNC will continue to gain popularity in the coming years.

AgreeYa’s experts believe that LCNC solutions will be more extensively utilized to build applications that automate mundane yet essential business processes. Such solutions will empower the business users to unburden themselves from the routine tasks and contribute towards more challenging work with higher growth opportunities. Additionally, organizations that keep persisting with the traditional, code-based development approach will lag, while others that embrace LCNC solutions will experience a surge in productivity and efficiency.

#2: Adoption of automation in new employee onboarding will be widespread

An organization’s onboarding process determines how an employee perceives the company in terms of values, work culture, and environment. A faster and smoother transition in an organization gives a fulfilling experience to the employee. Our experts believe that 2022 will be the year when automation of new employee onboarding will go mainstream. The adoption of BPA in this essential process will pave way for a structured, comprehensive, and engaging onboarding process to make an excellent first impression on the employee. It eliminates tedious paperwork, manual errors, unreasonable delays, and employee dissatisfaction. The new hires can easily understand the organization, its vision and onboard to the specific team with excitement.

LCNC solutions will enable organizations to rapidly automate and streamline the new employee onboarding process. Automation of this manually handled and document-intensive routine will inspire the recruitment team to put their energies into other high-value tasks.

#3: Automation to emerge as an enabler of employee growth 

For decades, there has been a lot of buzz around the future of work and automation. For years, employees have feared automation as something that has arrived to steal jobs and take over from humans. However, various researches prove that such assumptions are wrong. Though there are many benefits offered by automation, at the end of the day, robots won’t ever fully replace humans in the business landscape.

We believe that with the widespread adoption of automation across all sectors in 2022, employees will finally be able to get over years of skepticism. Automation will emerge as an enabler for employee growth and work satisfaction. It will allow humans to move to more strategic positions where employees can utilize their skills and intelligence to contribute towards organizational growth.

#4: Proactive approach to Cybersecurity will be essential

Everyone knows that the complexity and nature of cyber threats are increasing every day. Today, cybercrime poses a threat to organizations of any size and industry. While large organizations have been securing themselves and their system with security automation, but that is hardly followed by medium and small organizations. Most organizations still do not understand the severity of cybercrime and underspend on cybersecurity.

However, advancements in security automation solutions enable organizations of all sizes to stay proactive and sense a threat early. BPA helps in creating a security blanket around an organization that detects cyber-crime before it enters or harms the system. Security automation solutions capably automate and validate all ongoing processes and identify a threat increasing overall cyber resilience.

#5: AI-powered BPA will transform the way organizations work

In 2022, the existing process improvement platforms will converge and be challenged by new AI-led entrants; investment to address global worker shortages will be prioritized; and to address the future head-on, enterprises will embrace an automation fabric to fuel extreme innovation.

Forrester

In the near future, different tools such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Digital Process Automation (DPA) will be integrated to enhance the power of Business Process Automation. AI-powered BPA will redefine the possibilities of automation, transform digital workflows, increase productivity, and accelerate deliveries. It will enable organizations to get more done with less.

Business Process Automation will continue to be a core focus for growing organizations 

New trends emerge every year and some of them shape the way organizations operate. 2022 promises to be a huge year for BPA. Automation of processes will progress from good-to-have to an imperative for business growth. Organizations can overcome various daunting business challenges, bolster productivity, and increase employee satisfaction by embracing BPA.

AgreeYa’s suite of intelligent automation solutions has been enabling organizations to increase process efficiency, enhance customer experience, optimize operations, amplify workforce productivity, reduce process costs and risks. Contact us to discuss your process challenges.