According to a global McKinsey survey conducted in 2018, 57 percent respondents have initiated business process automation at their organisations and intend to focus on scaling the effort further.
Results of the survey also suggest that larger organizations (40 percent) lead the way with implementation of business process automation compared to small companies (25 percent). Why are small to medium businesses shying away to leverage the technology even though the benefits are quite salient. Businesses investing in process automation because of the following benefits:
Significantly reduce costs by eliminating the manual and mundane tasks
The operational efficiency of the business improves as the processes more streamlined and extra slack is cut out of the processes. This means businesses can operate at lower costs and enjoy higher profitability.
Process Automation has enabled business to operate and service their customer digitally through the pandemic and onwards, contributing heavily towards the sustainability and competitiveness of the business.
Businesses who have taken the process automation route are able to service their customers faster and better powered by accurate information flowing through systems seamlessly without any manual interventions required.
As customer and enterprise data is exploding, its governance and protection has become equally important. Process automation solutions can be used to govern and apply compliance policies across organisations, even if their offices are spread across the globe.
However, the question remains that even with the above listed benefits why small to medium size businesses are not taking advantage of process automation technologies?
Small businesses cannot afford process automation
The first common misconception is that small business cannot afford process automation technologies- the licenses for the technology are expensive and the resources required to configure the technology for small business processes is scarce hence expensive. With products such as SABE(Link) small businesses can embark on their automation journey starting with a small “cost per process automated”. This means they can use the cloud automation software as a service through web-based portal. Very minimal or no capital expenditure is required for businesses to get started on their process automation journey
Automation only works for complex processes
The second misconception is that good returns on investment are only possible if the processes to be automated are highly complex. However, the truth is far from it. Even a simple process such as data entry can save a business thousand once automated. From invoice processing to scanning and processing sales order forms – SABE comes with pre-built modules that would suit most business needs out of the box so you can plug-in and get started.
For small business focused on growth process automation of administrative processes such as invoice automation, travel and expense management, employee on-boarding, payroll, leave and
holiday management can be automated to free up valuable employee time to focus on key areas of growth.
Automation is not good for humans
Small-medium business are also concerned about affecting employee morale as the common perception is that automation replaces humans. According to a recent survey, freeing your staff of mundane and administrative tasks can actually increase their motivation and increase productivity.
Automation resources are scarce and expensive
We wouldn’t deny that is true. There is a huge gap between the demand and supply of automation resources. However, low-code solutions with built-in reusable assets (such as in SABE) allows business users to rely less on technical and IT resources. It provides a simple portal for users to interact and interfaces with business applications and data sources in the background, bringing together all business information into one platform and automating the flow of information through processes.
Security concerns around process automation?
This concern is common to SME’s and enterprise business alike. However, process automation platforms such as SABE are non-intrusive to your existing IT infrastructure and offers total security of business information.
Jorge Soares: And what about helping clients to scale without so many costs, starting digital to support future growth…In the future they can move to more market platforms…focus on the 20% critical…
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