9 benefits of workflow automation for enterprise growth

The status quo  

Remaining relevant in a constantly changing, challenging environment is a veritable hurdle in the contemporary corporate landscape. Competition is fierce, innovations abound, and change is the only constant. Organizations need to keep innovating to survive in the face of constant challenges.

What can an organization and its stakeholders do to remain relevant?  

A practical approach would be to seek a way to overcome redundancies, inefficiencies, and bottlenecks, to align the organization towards viability and sustainability.

How can you achieve this? One approach is to digitize and automate organizational processes, including implementing approaches like workflow automation, to ensure assured viability.

What is workflow automation?  

Executing workflows using software-assisted methodologies instead of manual repetitive effort is workflow automation. Workflow automation provides effective workflow management to guarantee efficient task management, enables digitized data entry, promotes optimal business process management, and ensures the high throughput of business operations.

The need for workflow automation  

You need workflow automation for the following reasons: 

The demand for viability  

To maintain an organization's relevancy in the economy, and even to maintain its status quo, it has to adopt contemporary approaches to digitization. Leveraging approaches such as workflow automation to remain viable and relevant is crucial.

The need to have a competitive advantage  

Enterprises are constantly innovating. Today, to be at the forefront of the economy for an enterprise, a transition from archaic methods of execution to full-fledged digitization is vital. Workflow automation grants this much-needed competitive advantage over other companies which use outdated methods of operations. When leveraged diligently, an organization that harnesses workflow automation can outperform other organizations which don't harness such approaches yet.

The need for accuracy  

Precision is of high importance in critical business processes. Manual efforts rely on the human factor, which is prone to inaccuracies. However, owing to its digital nature, workflow automation guarantees high precision, as tasks executed by digital systems such as computers and computer software are error-free for the most part. This necessitates the implementation of workflow automation in an organization which seeks high quality standards in all of its operations.

The need to tackle mundane tasks  

Business processes have the innate tendency to become repetitive. Repetitive tasks, like data entry, consume the valuable time of highly expensive manpower, prolong business process execution, and offer limited customer satisfaction. Therefore, these repetitive tasks need to be subject to an efficient method of execution, by using workflow automation software. There are also repetitive processes, and automating these processes is a necessity for improving efficiency and throughput.

The digital age has made it so that executing processes manually is akin to reinventing the wheel. The demand for viability, the necessity to have a competitive advantage, and the need for accuracy greatly emphasize the need for workflow automation.

Benefits of workflow automation  

There are several benefits of workflow automation which an enterprise can acquire by implementing it. Primarily, workflow automation software assists in augmenting the organization's viability. It provides comprehensive workflow management to automate manual tasks and streamline business processes. It also confers other benefits, which we'll see.

Benefit 1: Increased efficiency  

In workflow automation, you route business data through digital systems. There is no manual execution of workflow processes. This ensures high throughput and increased efficiency as digitized processes eliminate the possibility of a human error factor. 

You can accomplish more tasks with less effort and increase your employee efficiency multifold. You'll utilize resources optimally and drastically reduce "effort" waste. Organizations obtain increased efficiency as a result. You augment organizational workflow efficiency when you harness workflow automation solutions to steer business processes away from the crutches of manual workflows, to the realm of automated streamlined processes.

Benefit 2: Supercharged accuracy  

Manual tasks and manual processes tend to harbor inaccuracies due to the human error factor. Reducing manual errors is an imperative. The digital nature of machines and workflow automation software guarantee high accuracy while executing repetitive tasks. Digitized operations have limited room for error, and they streamline workflows so that high accuracy is constantly guaranteed.

Benefit 3: Enhanced employee productivity  

Workflow automation takes away the burden of onerous tasks requiring manual effort away from the hands of employees. It digitizes these. Employees have more time to concentrate on critical and creative tasks instead of mundane and repetitive chores that bog them down. Utilizing workflow automation, employees are empowered to provide more output with their productivity enhanced by various digital tools available at their disposal. An automated workflow enables employees to focus on what's essential, to exercise their creative faculties, and not to be encumbered by redundant tasks like data entry.

Benefit 4: Insights into data  

A typical organization generates troves of data when business processes are executed, such as retail transactions and manufacturing processes.

When you execute processes manually, you need to manually interpret the data generated and this generates multiple possibilities for human error. This is also a prolonged process. To avoid human error, deploying digitization and workflow automation software is helpful.

Workflow automation provides avenues, such as data visualization algorithms, to visualize and generate meaningful information from raw business data. You can convert raw data into actionable information and deduce insights from it easily. These insights empower an organization's stakeholders and decision-makers to derive informed decisions that improve the economic outlook of the enterprise.

Benefit 5: Accelerated growth  

Workflow automation accelerates the growth of an organization. As machines take over the manual execution of tasks, more processes and tasks can be completed in a shorter time. Consequently, you can feed more input into the organizational processes, creating a productive loop. This ensures accelerated growth, allowing the organization to cater to more stakeholders and customers seamlessly and effortlessly

Benefit 6: Guaranteed viability  

Keeping up with technology is an important aspect of workflow automation. By implementing the most recent advancements in technology in your organization via workflow automation approaches, your organization can more efficiently compete with its competitors in the market. Also, cost savings accrued due to workflow automation ensure the financial well-being of the organization. These dividends promote the viability of the organization in the face of stiff competition.  

Benefit 7: Enhanced customer experience  

When you automate your tasks and workflows, you often reduce the turnaround time for other time-consuming tasks. Automated processes executed efficiently enhance the customer experience by delivering a stellar experience to customers during their interactions with your organization. This generates positive feedback, improves business operations, and justifies harnessing workflow automation to streamline processes and eliminate human intervention in many business operations. 

Benefit 8: Improved employee satisfaction  

Workflow automation tools support the process of automating. When employees utilize automated workflows, they expend little effort when compared with performing these actions manually. Business costs are reduced due to less time dedicated to operational processes, and the organization often experiences stellar growth because employees are empowered to create digitized and automated workflows to address mundane manual processes. Automating tasks simplifies daily work tasks and often ensures greater employee satisfaction. 

Benefit 9: Increased profits  

When combined, these benefits help an organization harness workflow automation to achieve increased profits. The resulting positive feedback loops empower the organization with each iteration of workflow automation. Increased profits can be directed into additional workforce enhancements, investments in R&D, and organizational overhaul. These contribute to continual organizational growth. 

Workflow automation benefits justify the transition of your network infrastructure from an analog to a digital mode. Operational efficiency is improved. Workflow automations save employees time and optimize key performance indicators.

Implementing workflow automation   

There are several workflow automation tools and software options available in the market to automate repetitive tasks and business processes. It is wise to consider utilizing a full-fledged workflow automation platform that can easily transform manual processes into automated workflows.

What is a workflow automation platform?  

A workflow automation platform is a collection of tools provided as a single solution to enable the automation of workflows, business processes, and tasks.

Types of workflow automation platforms  

There are different types of workflow automation platforms to optimize workflow efficiency in the industry today.

The most prominent are: 

• Business process management (BPM) suites

• Robotic process automation (RPA) software

• No-code platforms

• Low-code platforms

BPM suites  

These suites provide drag-and-drop workflow automation so you can create approval processes and approval workflows using visual interfaces. BPM suites can orchestrate approval flow between multiple stakeholders in an organization. However, they are expensive, have a steep learning curve, are resource-intensive, and require a lot of effort to implement.

RPA software  

This software mimics human interaction with applications. RPA software performs data entry and reduces the need for manual tasks and manual intervention in business processes. However, RPA software can only automate repetitive actions, and customization is difficult. Also, you'll have to install software for robotic process automation on your machines as it won't operate in the cloud, and acquiring licenses can be quite expensive.

No-code platforms  

Forward-looking and efficient, no-code platforms empower users to automate workflows by utilizing easy and efficient point-and-click and drag-and-drop tools. No-code platforms require no technical knowledge. However, they have several downsides. Currently, you cannot customize them to unique requirements, but have to utilize only the features provided in the vendor's offering. Also, they incorporate a "vendor lock-in" so that the platform provided by the vendor must be utilized as long as your operations rely on it. Integrating with other software while using no-code platforms is also difficult.

Low-code platforms  

Low-code platforms enable you to automate workflows with minimal coding. They provide a visual drag-and-drop What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface to automate your business processes and their workflows seamlessly. Using a point-and-click interface, you can implement workflow automation.

The primary difference between no-code platforms and low-code platforms is customizability. To customize your business rules, business processes, and workflows granularly, you're better off with low-code platforms. Also, low-code platforms are capable of integrating with most existing software in use today.

Low-code platforms require only minimal technical knowledge, so anyone at any level of technical expertise can get started with workflow automation. To implement complex custom logic, the "low-code" scripting aspect of these platforms can be utilized. These scripting languages, like "Deluge" in the case of the ManageEngine AppCreator platform, are easy to learn and use, as their syntax is similar to that of written English.

There are different types of low-code platforms, including ManageEngine AppCreator, which you can install on your own machines, and Zoho Creator, which is hosted in the cloud.

Get started with Workflow Automation using ManageEngine AppCreator  

ManageEngine AppCreator is an on-premises, WYSIWYG drag-and-drop low-code platform with powerful workflow automation capabilities.

You can use it to automate your organization's workflows, and its on-premises nature means your automated workflows run on your own computers. All you have to do is install the platform on your machines, and begin automating your workflows!

Leverage AppCreator today for the seamless automation of your organization's workflows.

Download AppCreator now