The global pandemic and its after-effects have redefined the way businesses operate. According to a recent study by Deloitte, the Covid-19 pandemic has hastened business leaders’ plans to automate their organizations – with more than two-thirds deploying technologies such as Business Process Automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in their response to the crisis. Automation has shifted from a business priority to an imperative, with the emergence of the Pandemic and its resulting remote/hybrid working scenarios.
SharePoint delivers various out-of-the-box workflows allowing organizations to get started on their process automation journey. Further, SharePoint’s flexibility as a platform encourages business users to implement more focused and customized automation to simplify their cumbersome processes. Towards this, the new age Low/No-code tools have ushered in a new era in SharePoint Business Process Automation (BPA). Such tools have enabled organizations to easily and quickly apply automation across a range of business specific use cases and meet the demands of these critical times.
Best Use Cases of SharePoint BPA
Today, SharePoint BPA is being used extensively across various departments and processes. However, below are four use cases where the benefits of SharePoint BPA implementation are simply unmissable.
#1: Business Reporting Automation
Data is the new currency of the times. Today, business-critical decisions, future expansion plans, business investment, and divestment decisions, and everything else hinge on the complex reports made after analyzing massive amounts of data. As the most popular repository for enterprise information, SharePoint lists, libraries, sites, or site collections are filled with insights that can propel an organization to the next level.
However, SharePoint offers limited out-of-the-box data dashboarding, aggregation, and reporting capabilities. Fetching useful data from SharePoint requires not only an in-depth understanding of SharePoint as a platform but also needs specialized coding skills. As a normal practice, the users have to approach the IT department to get the necessary customizations and visualizations done on their report. This is a big roadblock for organizations in an era when real-time data has become the basis of business decision-making. Automation of business reporting enables business users to fetch data, filter/customize it, and prepare impactful reports at the shortest time lapse.
#2:Operations Management
In a hybrid working world, organizations need to manage operations efficiently. However, without the right tech, operations management can be very tough. It can be difficult for the management to understand how projects or processes are going without getting in touch with the team leaders or supervisors. SharePoint’s integration with various powerful Microsoft 365 workloads makes it an essential platform for operations management.
SharePoint BPA helps organizations to keep a track of all the operations – the who’s, what’s, and when’s of your business. It allows organizations to introduce custom workflows, thereby automating the entire logistical part of a process. It enables a process to live on its own. An employee finishes a task, and the system automatically notifies the next person within the workflow that they have a new task. This makes operations management much easier and more efficient.
#3: Task or Project Management
Organizations that don’t have a streamlined task management process in place face challenges with inefficient task execution, deadlines being missed consistently, and lack of proper team collaboration. Emails, information, files, to-dos – everything can end up being lost in miscommunication unless organizations have a standard process to prevent it.
Organizations can address such challenges by creating a detailed, multi-step process using SharePoint. Managers can have an insightful project or task dashboard developed with SharePoint No-code application development solutions in no time. The dashboard would contain details about every team member’s tasks, deadlines and other requisite details. It can tackle various project management challenges and simplify tasks for the management.
#4: Purchase Orders Processing
Purchase Order (PO) requests are recurring processes in most organizations. The requesting team fills out a form and sends it to the purchasing team. The approving authority then examines the request and rejects the request in case information is inadequate or if there are budgetary constraints. It is then sent back to the requesting team. If approved, a purchase order is created and copies are sent to the supplier as well as the inventory team. Without automation, there could be several issues with PO processing. Manual processes could lead to delayed approvals, low productivity, incomplete records, errors in PO, and errors while taking delivery from suppliers.
SharePoint BPA can help improve accountability, transparency, and enable accurate data recording, which can be accessed by relevant stakeholders when necessary. It will also retain all process-related communication to make execution easier and faster. SharePoint BPA is the way forward for organizations. When implemented effectively, it can deliver various advantages to the organizations. QuickApps, as a No-code SharePoint application development solution, allows organizations to rapidly build powerful applications and automate business processes. Business users can leverage its rich assortment of powerful web apps and point-and-click configuration to automate tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks.