Protect your business by automating processes

There is a huge rush to streamline operations as a result of the current economic situation. However, every company should be looking at ways to run their business with less cost and higher efficiency at all times. It helps prepare a company for lean times and ensures they will get the most reward during up cycles.

Perhaps the most overlooked way to improve business conditions is by optimizing and automating business processes. But can even focusing on just a few processes can have a dramatic effect on a company's efficiency?

Absolutely! Here's why:

First, automating repetitive manual, tedious procedures focuses your staff on making money. Most jobs have some repetitive tasks. For example, once a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) is issued, a repetitive set of tasks could be automated. Shipping replacements, checking for duplicates, notifying the returns department, and charging a credit card if the item is not received within the time limit are examples that could occur automatically when an agent enters an RMA.

Likewise, the initial review of an insurance claim could look up the policy details of the claim and examine whether it meets one of the hundreds of criteria that generate an automatic approval. Claim history could be examined to determine if the deductibles have been reached. Instead of agents looking at every claim, they could review the smaller number of claims that don't qualify for automatic approval. That represents a potentially huge savings in the number of employees needed to complete that task.

Second, businesses risk losing staff with valuable knowledge and experience. Documenting and incorporating that knowledge into system processes protects your business from losing valuable operating information. Systematizing your best employees' processes will increase the productivity of other employees. Imagine if the successful techniques of your most profitable salespeople could be utilized by new or less experienced salespeople. You could evaluate sales performance with a more balanced measurement.

Third, many tasks function much better as automated processes. Processes like expense report approval or initial insurance claim review both require a complicated matrix of overlapping criteria to be properly applied. The work of building these complex matrices can be done once, tested, and then released for use by all employees in an automated workflow. When changes or corrections occur, only one update is needed.

One of the unique features of Interaction Process Automation™ (IPA) is the ability to automate most (if not all) of the business process. Most traditional business process automation "solutions" serve a particular niche or act as an extension of another product such as imaging/document management solutions.

Recently an analyst in the communications field asked why we weren't talking about process automation like everyone else. The reason is simple - there is major difference between traditional process automation solutions and IPA.

Traditional process automation solutions only embed communications into a business process while IPA goes one major step further and actually automates those processes and embeds communications throughout the process.

Here's a simple business process that could be automated by a traditional process automation solution or the IPA tool - widget order processing.

1. A salesperson faxes in an order
2. A sales admin pulls the order off the fax machine and manually enters it into the order processing system
3. Order fulfillment opens up the order processing system, identifies the customer's order, picks the order from the shelf, and ships it out the door.
4. Order fulfillment checks a box inside of the order processing system indicating the order has been shipped

Keeping things very simple, here is how a traditional process automation solution would handle this process:

1. Assuming some automation, a fax is received via a fax server and an automated notification is sent to the salesperson acknowledging receipt of the fax.
2. Another notification is sent to the sales admin that a new order arrived. The fax sits waiting for the admin to open and enter it into the order processing system - human latency is still present.
3. Once the admin opens the fax, reads it, it gets manually entered into the order processing system - human error is still present.
4. An automated notification is sent to order fulfillment notifying them of a new order. The order sits waiting until order fulfillment processes it - human latency is still present.
5. After order fulfillment opens the order processing system, they repeat the existing process and manually update the system.
6. An automated notification is sent to the customer informing them the order has shipped.

Again, keeping things very simple, IPA would handle this process similarly, but with additional functionality, including all the same notifications:

1. Once the order is received in the fax server, it is scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture sales, customer and order information and automatically enters the information into the order processing system.
2. Instead of the order sitting idle waiting for one particular sales admin to open the system, it is queued and routed to the next available sales admin (based on their availability using presence) for approval. If the sales admin doesn't process the order in a timely fashion, it is rerouted to another sales admin to ensure it is handled promptly.
3. Once the order is approved, it is queued and routed to order fulfillment based on their availability using presence. Again, if it isn't processed in a timely manner, it is rerouted until it is fulfilled.
4. Throughout this entire process, supervisors, sales managers, executives, and anyone else can view the status of this order through a supervisory console. At any step in the process, alerts can be triggered to notify them of delays or completions.

The techniques and technologies that serve as the foundation of IPA are rich and well developed.

It differs from other methods because it uses queuing, routing, presence, recording, and supervisory monitoring to track the entire process and automate as much as possible. Those differences give IPA-enhanced processes a clear ROI and offer companies a competitive advantage when looking for ways to improve their business.