Relying on manual processes could be bad for your business

Guest post by Prateek Desai, Practice Director – D365 Customer Engagement & Power Platform, Storm Technology

Technology is central – or should that be crucial – to the day-to-day operations of a modern business. From enabling 24/7 customer service to driving innovation with Artificial Intelligence (AI), technology redefines where and how people work, from acting as a personal assistant to automating tasks.

Yet manual, repetitive processes are continuing to have a negative impact on organisations of all sizes. Many companies across various industries have yet to fully embrace solutions which support digitisation and automation, meaning that business opportunities are being missed while business processes remain stagnant.

This is costing companies in a multitude of ways. After all, automation can result in financial savings, as well as increased efficiency and productivity. Employee satisfaction can also benefit from digitisation as menial tasks are removed from people’s in-trays, allowing them to focus on higher-level strategic planning and innovative problem-solving.

Empowering staff & customers

A survey conducted by Storm Technology at the turn of the year revealed that 42% of IT leaders in Ireland see relying on manual processes as one of the biggest obstacles to productivity in today’s workplace. With Low Code solutions such as Power Platform offering a fast and cost effective route to process and workflow automation, there is no excuse for organisations not to automate time consuming manual tasks such as data entry and information searches.

By automating these tasks, business leaders can help to free up more time for team members to focus on business-critical tasks such as identifying growth opportunities and enhancing customer service levels. Enabling people to be more productive and efficient is also likely to prevent burnout and increase satisfaction among staff, which is beneficial in terms of talent retention and attraction.

Alongside the expectations of employees, the expectations of customers have also evolved. In fact, the customer experience is now defined by rapid response rates, omni-channel communications and unlimited access to experts. Moreover, customers are more willing now to shop around when their needs aren’t being met.

Therefore, an over-reliance on manual time-consuming processes can cause a ripple effect and restrict customer service levels not only in terms of staff not being able to work effectively and thus not being able to help customers effectively, but also in terms of the digitisation of customer engagements which can help to streamline and improve same.

Streamlining processes & service delivery

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses software robots and intelligent business rules to mimic the actions of employees when performing tasks within applications. Similar to the way humans learn to process data based on past experiences, RPA uses historical data, usage patterns and reinforcement training to complete repetitive manual tasks without the need for human intervention.

With the ability to extract, input and verify data from across multiple data sources against pre-defined criteria, RPA has the potential to eliminate bottlenecks in many day-to-day processes such as invoice management, employee onboarding, and customer query management. For example, it can process invoices as they arrive in, extracting and validating relevant data against pre-defined criteria. Human validation can of course be brought in with invoices going to the relevant employee for approval.

Leveraging RPA technology allows businesses to streamline such processes across finance and HR departments. Similarly, for employee onboarding, software can create automated workflows to share training materials with new starters and follow up with automated prompts to remind employees about outstanding documentation or provide alerts when new training materials are made available.

With speed essential in both the delivery of a positive employee and customer experience, RPA can prove invaluable in supporting an organisation’s customer service agents by categorising customer queries. Tailored workflows can standardise and automate responses to frequently asked questions, while chatbots can be used to address customer concerns, enabling the customer service team to focus their attention on customer queries that require human attention.

Supporting compliance & expansion

Manual processes can also prove to be bad for business when it comes to managing risk and upholding compliance. Human error across data entry or compliance breaches do happen, which is why companies should address inconsistent operating processes and inefficient workflows. At best, such errors and blind spots may result in mistakes or delays. At worst, they could prove costly – both financially and reputationally – in the event where data is not processed or managed in compliance with industry or data regulations.

As well as compliance, businesses could be hindering innovation and future expansion with manual processes underpinning their operations, as repetitive administrative tasks take people’s focus away from more strategic activities and business growth opportunities. Having the technology infrastructure to support collaboration and innovation is key to driving growth. Furthermore, it is vital for being able to successfully expand the team and meet customer demands.

With the cost of manual processes so high and the wide range of technologies to overcome such bottlenecks, it is hard to pinpoint why all businesses aren’t automating manual tasks. The challenge often comes down to a dependence on legacy systems and the difficulty of integrating with modern applications. This, coupled with an overburdened IT department that simply can’t get to all project requests, could be stopping business from transforming how they work and equipping them with the means to bring their organisations into the digital age.

Regardless of your company size or industry, almost every business will have on area where they can benefit from such technologies. Be it automated workflows, enhanced customer service, or cost savings, there is no doubt that low code and RPA solutions are worth exploring from a business perspective and are transforming organisations for the better and for the future.

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