11 Examples of Business Process Automation – How To Automate Workflows

By Optiform Blogger, August 7, 2018

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These 11 examples of ways you can automate core business processes in your organization can help you drastically improve processing times, speeds, accuracy, and wasted resources doing mundane steps that can and should be automated.

11 Excellent Examples of How to Automate Business Processes:

 

Verify Applicant Data

Pull an applicant’s Intelius report and use that data to verify information about their application.

This process is likely manually handled by someone on your team. As the first step in the HR workflow, running a batch of these checks can help with filtering the thousands of applications you’ve received.

 

Automate Credit Approvals

Within hours, your customers can find out whether or not they are approved for a line of credit – mortgage, car loan, credit card, etc…

 

Automate Credit Limit Increases

If your business has customers who will request credit limit increases, you’ll be thrilled to know (as will your customers) that you can automate the re-scoring credit check process. Using a web service, you can get a credit report from Experian to automatically increase credit limits.

 

Invoice Processing Automation

Approving invoices can be a cumbersome process; especially if there are inconsistencies with the data on the invoice. If it doesn’t match the purchase order, the AP staff will then have to send it back to the vendor for adjustment, and/or verify with the internal purchasing team to see if it is possible that there has been an adjustment to the PO. After these steps, the invoice re-enters the same approval process. With invoice automation software, you can automate the  invoice to PO verification process. Once it is approved, either automatically or by a person with approval authority, it is sent to the AP software for vendor payment.

One of the biggest reasons to automate this process is to relieve your company of paying unnecessary late fees for late payments and paying more than what you should by missing out on early payment discounts.

Invoice-Automation-Software-Demo

 

Clinical Study Data

When medical doctors are filling out clinical studies and adverse events are indicated, the automation of the routing of additional forms to collect specific adverse event information saves critical time in research and discovery on a particular disease or outbreak. Once the forms are all completed, the forms can automatically be sent to appropriate study groups to analyze further. We work with the Illinois Department of Public Health on this particular use case.

 

Continued Learning and Professional Development

Professional development events and courses happen frequently throughout the year. Completing and processing forms and payment for these types of events can become cumbersome if handled manually. With automation with an application like OpenText LiquidOffice, planning a learning/professional development trip can be approved pretty quickly. Additionally, after  the trip is completed, HR can then send out forms for follow-up with request for actual expenses and a survey to understand what was learned.

 

Hours Worked

Contractors, as an example, often times have time sheets to report the time they have worked. Automating the hours worked collection can be a major time saver. Once automated, the employee submits their time record, which is then sent to the supervisor for approval, and if there are no discrepancies, the data is sent to HR for payroll.

 

PTO Requests

Vacations, sick time, personal days, etc… Requesting time off can be a hassle. When automated, the employee can submit a time off request on a web form which is sent to the supervisor for approval, while a copy is sent to HR, the employee, and to a vacation calendar automatically. The entire process improves the speed and transparency so there is no guesswork about the status of the request.

 

Legal Workflow

Contract management is one that applies to more than just legal, but for this example:  A very complex legal intense workflow with delays and timers (must sign by _____) can fail if not acted on in a timely manner. By automating, the steps of getting a document to the signing party quickly reduces the lag in approval, and it also helps with ensuring “customer” success.

 

Expedite Accounting Records

Accounting audits: Major benefits of transforming this process include accessibility to records quickly. Very long and complex workflows to review and approve accounting records can be made much less painful with electronic access and processing. .

 

Support Tickets

IT Helpdesk requests and other forms of support tickets cannot be efficiently managed manually. Today’s world is one of immediacy. If you don’t provide service quickly enough, your customer will seek another provider. We hope that your support process is somehow automated. If it isn’t, let us help you. By the end of the project, you’ll be able to manage requests from start to finish and have visibility into the customer, how many issues they have submitted, and give you the vision into whether or not your team met your SLA requirements.

 

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Optiform offers a broad spectrum of data processing solutions customized to fit any business need. From human resource departments to the information produced through clinical trials, Optiform has a long history of maximizing the efficiency of all its clients. Optiform is here to provide  personalized support and recommendations both pre and post project, to ensure your long-term satisfaction and paper-free results. Contact us today to set up a personalized one-on-one consultation for software and business process recommendations. Already a valued Optiform client? Our customer support is ready to help.