Business Process Automation (BPA) is a computer's ability to replace human action in repetitive or complex tasks. A computer can save time, eliminate errors, and reduce costs. Business Process Automation is known as "Workflow Automation," "Robotic Process Automation (RPA)," or "Application Automation." It involves using software to automatically perform tasks that people would otherwise do manually.

The software mimics the actions of a human to perform specified activities within an application. This allows businesses to streamline their operations and reduce cost, error, delay, and workload for their staff. As technology improves, the options for Business Process Automation continue to grow.

In 2015, according to The New York Times, companies saved up to $35 million each year by relying on one advanced form of BPA called robotic process automation (RPA). That's an average saving per company per year of $12 million.

What are the benefits of Business Process Automation?

Business process automation refers to a broad range of technology-enabled business process changes that help businesses improve their efficiencies, reduce costs, and provide better customer experience. BPA enables the management to improve business efficiency, reduce costs and provide a better customer experience.

Save Time and Money through Automation

This is because the software will eliminate repetitive manual tasks, usually time-consuming. In addition, it will also decrease human errors since the software will perform the same task without fail. Thus, employees will be free to perform other, more important tasks instead of performing monotonous administrative work repeatedly. This will allow them to focus on critical decisions instead.

Improved Business Efficiency

With the help of business process automation, your business can be more efficient. The software will ensure your business performs according to plan by automating all processes efficiently. Doing so will ensure that your customers get their service or products on time without delay or loss. Therefore, your customers will be happy with your services and will keep coming back to you repeatedly.

Larger Reach

A web-based or mobile application allows a company to extend its reach beyond its geographical boundaries. For example, suppose you have an application for inventory management in place. In that case, you can use it to manage those products sold at your retail outlets and sell those products even if you are in a different country.

Increased Customer Satisfaction

Businesses that automate their processes through software enjoy increased customer satisfaction due to faster delivery and improved accuracy in data management. Customers expect accuracy when dealing with financial transactions or submitting information online. Therefore, any forms used by your company must be accurate and consistent each time they are used.

Leading User Experience

Software applications available through the Internet must look consistent with the rest of an organization’s website content. Otherwise, customers may opt out of using them altogether. Users may quickly become frustrated if these applications do not emulate other applications within a user interface (UI). This is not what your company wants when trying to build brand loyalty or establish a relationship for repeat purchases.

Save Money Through Better Customer Experience

The whole concept of business process automation is to create tools that will make life easier for the employees in the company. These tools can be used by sales, shipping, or accounting departments. When these departments use the tool, they will benefit at many levels. For example, let’s say you have a tool that allows your sales department to generate quotes faster. The services provided by your company will improve as well because now your salespeople can focus more on talking to the customers instead of wasting time typing on their computers and typing up quotes. Doing this gives your customers a better experience because they don’t have to wait hours for a single quote. Still, now everything is automated, giving them exactly what they want in a matter of minutes.

Save Time by Eliminating Errors

Process automation can also help companies reduce errors in their work. For example, if you have an employee who has to type data from some source onto your Excel sheets every day. They might make some errors while typing up the data. But with process automation, you can eliminate these mistakes by simply creating an integration tool between your system and Excel where you can feed all your data into one central location instead of using Excel sheets separately. By doing this, you are saving many person-hours because now no one has to type anything anymore. Still, everything is pre-fed into one central location, which is an Excel sheet, thus saving time and eliminating errors since everything is fed centrally in one sheet only and not individually in many sheets separately manually.

Save Energy

Suppose you are using business process automation with artificial intelligence integrated into it. You can also save energy at your company by letting AI integration tools do the work — looking for trends, performing binary searches, or sorting data for you, saving a lot of energy otherwise required if these tasks are done manually. Instead of automatically through artificial intelligence-empowered business process automation toolsets. 

Even more, energy is saved when it comes to BPA if AI is used along with BPA techniques because AI offers an extra layer of efficiency, which helps businesses save time, money, and energy when used correctly.