Business Process Automation
Microsoft 365 lets you automate your everyday processes to bring consistency to your business. Business process automation workflows reduce costs, save time, and increase productivity.
Business Process Automation
Microsoft 365 lets you automate your everyday processes to bring consistency to your business. Business process automation workflows reduce costs, save time, and increase productivity.
Business process automation system (BPAs) is the use of technology to automate repeatable, day-to-day tasks. Some of the common processes that can be automated are document approval, employee onboarding process, procurement process, etc. BPA also allows businesses to accelerate how work gets done and increase productivity by routing information to the right person at the right time through user-defined rules and actions.
With the help of Business Process Automation (BPA), you free up employees of doing the recurring business processes with the help of software and different application integrations so instead of having your employees do menial and simple tasks, you just let the software take care of the process. Therefore, by taking humans out of repetitive tasks that are better handled by an automated system, it saves time and reduces error rates.
Workflow Management vs. BPM
In the world of process management, two types of software dominate the market: workflow management and business process management (BPM).
Although BPM and workflow management address the same business needs, they cover different aspects. Workflow management allows you to coordinate certain repetitive tasks and procedures to save time and do the work more effectively. Workflow focuses on people and instructions, describes the role of each individual involved, and allows you to organize your daily work processes better.
BPM, on the other hand, is a more complex approach to handling your business processes. BPM is any combination of modeling, automation, execution, control, measurement, and optimization of business activity flows, to support enterprise goals, systems, staff, customers within the enterprise boundaries.
Why do you need a BPA system?
The multitude of benefits that implementing a BPA suite can provide have been clearly shown, and here we’re going to take a good look at each of them.
Before BPAs
After BPAs
Creates accountability
By automating workflow, you effectively create one person to be responsible for every part of the process. By doing this, everyone knows what specific tasks they are responsible for. This also reveals which tasks take the most time to complete.
Reduces costs and error
A business process automation system reduces errors because it keeps necessary tasks from going unnoticed. So, no more excuses of “no one told me!”.
Empowers employees to manage their own time
Now management will know immediately if their tasks are not completed on time. No longer will supervisors have to manage every employee or spend too much time checking on their progress.
Creates more workplace efficiency
By creating customised process automation, you can assign approval responsibilities to anyone within the company, no matter what the current reporting hierarchy is. Management no longer has to intervene in every task.
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Elements of Business Process Automation
BPA first concentrates on automating the processes then fine-tuning and optimizing them. Based on strategic and operational needs, each organization will vary in terms of the order in which they automate. There are three main elements through which business automation happens:
Process Management
In the management step, we plan out your overall business process in three phases including Planning, Mapping, and Governing process.
Process Planning
We define the most impactful processes in your firm and workflow.
Process Mapping
Our experts design graphical maps using BPMN standards to show high-level processes in your organization. These flexible and intuitive maps provide you with total control over the processes.
Process Governing
This allows staff to collaborate on the improvement of processes and lets you control process revisions to improve your organization’s productivity. These attempts engage all of your teams in improving and keeping everyone involved in every step of the process.
Process Automation
It’s clear that a successful automation process should use all the possible assets for the best efficiency.
Our designs allow you to create advanced and complex workflows using a user-friendly and intuitive platform. The drag-and-drop interface lets you get your processes up quickly and increases collaboration using multiple channels.
Forms
Forms are one of the essential parts of any automation process. The interface allows you to capture data on all devices including mobile and keep the tasks moving forward by getting everyone involved in gathering information step.
Workflow and automation
This step allows us to automate manual repetitive tasks using our workflow designer tool. This graphical tool allows users to identify which step of a workflow are they in and what are the remaining steps.
Document Generation and eSign
You can also benefit from the automated document creation feature to generate and share documents based on a pre-defined template such as contracts, work orders, and other necessary documents with just a few mouse clicks. Moreover, we have integrated our system with the electronic eSign platform to speed up the tasks related to e-signatures in a secure and intuitive approach.
Process Optimisation
Leveraging the data obtained through automation, we optimise the processes you have in your business for the best results.
Monitoring Processes
With a strong reporting tool which graphically shows how many workflows are running and where the bottleneck is located and how many task processes per day by each staff, you would have more visibility inside your organisation.
Analyzing Processes
Monitoring will help in analyzing the results through visualizations and other practical elements. So, you can have a better understanding of the real workload of your organisation.
Improving Processes
Once you understand what is happening, then you can make adjustments and improve processes by reviewing them.
Building workflow using Nintex, MS Power Automate, or Sparknit
It is often baffling for businesses to choose between workflow designer tools and the right platform as an automation engine. When the decision time comes, organizations should make a difficult decision between using Microsoft Power Automate (formerly MS Flow) or choosing a 3rd party platform such as Nintex Workflows or Sparknit workflow. Here we’ll discuss where to choose each set of tools for specific purposes:
Nintex has various versions that might or might not need installation depending on the scenario and application.
It gives you a few options since you can only find connectors for the major applications
Nintex is the most expensive one and pricing is based on the number of workflows you need but has no limit on the number of users. Pricing for 10 workflows starts from $13,000 AUD per year to $20,000 per year, you can use a free trial if you need.
Yearly subscription
Web-based designer but have a mobile app
Supports a mid-sized or large company needs perfectly
It has various versions that might or might not need installation depending on the scenario and application.
There are hundreds of them for any application you want to use.
It allows you to choose from two options:
• Workflow-based package with unlimited users which costs 6,000 AUD per year for 5 workflow
• User-based choice with unlimited workflows. (The prices start from $15 AUD per user per month equal to $180 per user per year which varies based on the plan you select.)
Monthly subscription
Power Automate runs on the Azure cloud and has a mobile designer on Android, iOS, and Windows phones.
For small businesses and SMBs will work the best
It comes with Office 365, and you can start using it right away without any additional setups.
It gives you fewer options compare to Nintex since you can only find connectors for the major applications
SPARKnit is the best value-for-money option that has better pricing compared to Nintex and includes many of its features. It starts from $3,400 AUD per year for unlimited workflow.
Yearly subscription
Web-based solution
For small businesses and SMBs will work the best
Customer success story
Automating contracting processes can help organisations finalize contracts more easily, and reduce repetitive tasks
Our client was a leading installer of quality solar power systems. They accomplish multiple projects throughout the year and used to sign their contracts on paper. They used to send an employee to their client’s house in order to conclude the contracts. Then the employee had to enter all those detailed contracts into the company’s system.
Preparing these documents used to take a lot of time and included various conditions that had to be entered into the agreements in detail. They were searching for ways to speed up this process and spend time on other essential aspects of the job, such as sales.
We applied an automated contract processes system in their workflows that acquired the necessary data from different general process cycles. Now the company will just send an employee to the client’s house and the client will fill all the contracts on a tablet. Therefore, all the data will be automatically transferred to the organisation’s system.
Aside from the added accuracy, the compliance was improved dramatically since everything functioned according to the latest terms and conditions. Besides, replacing automated processes with manual ones brought them greater control to forecast future plans.
Meet our BPA experts
Senior SharePoint Developer
Office 365 Developer
SharePoint and Office 365 Developer
Power Platform Developer
SharePoint Administrator
Office 365 and SharePoint Developer/Tester
Xamarin Developer
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