Finding The Best Business Process Automation Software Guide For Enterprise Buyers
If you're reading this, it’s probably that your organization is taking a look at business process automation software.
With the capabilities of business process automation you can streamline tedious, rules-based workflows. Mechanizing these types of business workflows generates more productivity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), larger cost savings, and better utilization of your human resources.
Even though most enterprise companies today have applied some form of automation, digital transformation, or process development, many fail to understand the full scope of automation technology and struggle to phase out remaining time-intensive manual workflows.
While partially automated workflows will provide you with a slight edge, they can also costing you in the end.
In this enterprise buyer's guide, we'll clarify what business process automation is, how it works, its benefits, and the criteria you have to look at when evaluating BPA applications.
So let's dive right in!
What is Business Process Automation: A Primer
Business process automation (BPA), also called business process management (BPM), is the action of using technology to streamline routine, standards-based tasks such as sending documents, data-entry, sending payments, or organizing documents.
Taking advantage of automation can substantially improve an organization's sustainability by streamlining workflows, improving competency, and eliminating tedious work which permits your personnel to focus on tasks that develop the business.
Up-to-date automation platforms, like those you're probably gauging, implement breakthrough technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA) to take care of repetitive work on a human's behalf.
Conclusively, humans are still your most powerful resource, but through workflow automation, your colleagues can work more rapidly on more productive tasks rather than having their time wasted by tedious manual tasks.
The Benefits of Business Process Automation
Written below are just some of the formidable benefits of BPA or automated software.
Reduces Human Error
Streamlines Monotonous Tasks
Eliminates Inefficiencies
Deters Suspicious Activity
Enhances Cost-Savings
Enhances Vendor Relationships and Customer Satisfaction
Reduced Supplier Inquiries
Delivers Better Insight into Workflows
Higher ROI
Use Cases for Business Process Automation
Any business that has tedious, frequently recurring tasks can reap the rewards of process automation tools. Some of the most conventional business and industry use cases include:
HR New Employee Onboarding
CRM Processes
Social Media
Evaluation Factors for Business Process Automation Software
Choosing the process automation platform that fits your organization starts with looking at your present workflow, finding optimal processes for automation and assessing the marketplace for applications.
1. Define Your Business Needs
Before ever evaluating technology options, the most important thing to do is to understand your organizational needs.
Neglecting this step could result in purchasing technology that ultimately restrains your organization, or buying additional features that are irrelevant. Gather your department stakeholders to discuss the following:
What processes are ideal candidates for automation?
Do you need the technology for one department, or can the application be used by a number of departments?
Are there any blockers that keep you from implementing a new system?
How many employees will require access to the tool? What are their duties?
2. Conducting Pre-Purchase Research
Once you have your core needs established, you can start looking for potential solutions. There are various things you can review on your own before reaching out to a vendor or entering a high-pressure sales discussion.
Here are few resources you can frequently find on technology websites or from a Google search that will aid in conducting your initial research.
Recorded demos
Pricing/Licensing Tiers
Product Pages/Data Sheets/Explainer Blogs
Product Comparisons
Peer Reviews
Partner Referrals
3. Submit RFIs to Potential Vendors
After completing some precursory research, you can now ask for customized price quotes from the solutions you're most interested in learning about.
While numerous software websites offer pricing, nearly all business process management tools simply offer starting prices and will need more information about your organization to arrange a final pricing model for you.
If your organization uses a more standard procurement process, this would be the time to begin sending the initial requests for information (RFI) which specifically drafts your requirements for potential vendors.
When you communicate with potential sellers, it's imperative that you get all of your queries answered and see to it that the tool meets all of your needs. This will help you lessen vendor options during the final decision later on.
4. Understanding Licensing Structures
One of the main important cost considerations for an automation software is the licensing structure. There are a variety of user models that tool companies use and it can have an extreme impact on the total cost of ownership. Here are some of the most commonly used structures:
Per-seat or per-user licensing: means that pricing is set per person. This is why it's very important to determine your maximum number of users.
Maximum user licensing: This is total pricing with the complete number of users allotted with additional users available for an additional cost.
Site licensing: As a substitute to per user, this type of licensing allows you to use the platform at a single (or multiple) predetermined locations.
Ongoing vs subscription licensing: Ongoing licensing is most often pay once and use indefinitely, whereas a subscription price will need to be renewed
The pricing model that works best for your organization will come down to the budget, the number of users or site locations, in conjunction with the amount of flexibility you want. As an example, if you'd prefer not be latched into a long-term investment, you might opt for a subscription model that you can revoke should you feel the need.
5. Deployment Models
The deployment model is one more important deliberation as your company might have specific legal or compliance-related requirements that impose you use only one type of infrastructure.
For instance, many businesses in the healthcare and government division have meticulous regulations which stipulate they hold all computing and application infrastructure on-premise and that any new platform be certified in compliant in a specific framework like HIPAA or FedRAMP.
Many vendors present multiple deployment options for this very reason. These can be partitioned into two main groups: on-premises, off-premises, or hybrid deployment.
On-premises (Data Center): This hosting option compels your business to use the software through your on-premise data center environment. Accordingly, your company retains complete control over the installation, architecture, administration, maintenance, and data security.
This limits the scope of risk concerned with outsourcing deployment to a third party, but it also increases your duties and involves its own level of risk.
For instance, disregarding routine updates and backups might set your organization up in a risky situation if a data breach or emergency arises. But as stated previously, for some in a compliance-heavy industry, there may not be any other choice here.
Off-premises (Cloud-based): For businesses that are not bound by legal demands, or have administrative demands that a cloud option can satisfy, this option can be a lot more tantalizing.
This is due to the fact that cloud deployments allow your organization to offload much of the administrative and maintenance concerns it would otherwise be responsible for.
Furthermore, the majority of enterprise-level technology is deep-seated on best-in-class infrastructures specifically AWS or Azure and supplies redundancy, reliability, not to mention service level agreements (SLAs) shall you want more uptime guarantee.
Hybrid (Mixed) Deployment: The third choice, for those that want to take advantage of cloud innovation but conduct in a compliance-heavy enterprise, is a hybrid or mixed deployment.
Albeit being a bit more complicated, a hybrid environment would handle all your sensitive data and related phases in an on-premise environment while your non-classified data and processes can be executed in a cloud environment.
6. Implementation Requirements
Another crucial deliberation is the implementation requirements, in favor of the software vendor, for your organization. Just because you may have an inclination to a certain tool, doesn't suggest that your existing capabilities are adequate to run it. For this reason, it's crucial to look at the following:
Configurability. Does the platform come with all necessary functionality out of the box, or will it need some refining once installed? This is important to recognize to guarantee you can fully utilize your investment and start off on the right foot.
System requirements. In theinstance of an on-premise deployment, do you have the entire prerequisite hardware to run the platform correctly? If not, your entire investment could be jeopardized.
Elasticity. Can the tool scale to meet higher demand as your business cultivates, if the maximum number of coincidental users are online, or if your framework causes a utilization load spike? It's necessary to single out an automation platform that can scale to handle a growth or a utilization flux. Several SaaS and cloud options supply auto-scaling as the need emerges, whereas most on-premise deployments require that auto-routing under load spikes is implemented beforehand.
7. Integration capabilities
A further key consideration is integration potential. While the notion of an all-in-one solution is a beautiful concept, more often than not, it doesn't work that way. Particularly with automation, the automation tool will have to correspond with different systems and other software in accordance with how many business units are taking advantage of it.
That being said, you must provide your potential vendors with a full list of all systems and tools to guarantee that your automation platform can be well-coordinated with each.
Alternatively, if a specific tool is not listed under integrations, does the tool vendor provide an application programming interface (API) so that a developer can bridge your systems his or herself?
If there isn't a preformed integration in place for your other systems, and the API either doesn't exist or is taxing to use, it most likely isn’t the best fit for your business.
8. Customer Support
One more critical, yet often disregarded aspect is convenient customer support. Frequently, businesses don't realize the worth of great customer support until they really need it and it's inaccessible.
Every single software vendor has its own different customer support offering whether it’s 24/7/365 or limited to certain hours. They usually also have a scope for their customer support services - issues they will assist and issues they won't.
More often than not, basic customer support is offered for issues connected to the software itself, yet, issues that are customer-oriented (i.e. implementation issues, best practices, etc) may exclusively be accessible at a premium, if at all.
Regardless, it's important that you recognize what your level of customer support provides, its availability, and the options at your disposal (i.e. ticket service, phone, email, chat, etc). Moreover, as your employees are learning to utilize automation software, it's crucial that they have training resources accessible, whether live or pre-made.
Listed below are examples:
Webinars
Guides
Training Labs
Tutorial Videos
Instruction Manuals/Documentation
Community Help Forums
9. Security
Another important consideration is the tool security features. With an automation platform, it's probable that it will have some sort of connection with sensitive data, for this reason, it’s important to be positive that any data accessed is safe from unwarranted access. Be in no doubt that your software offers the following security features:
Access management to regulate who can access the tool.
Permission controls to determine what a user can and can't access while utilizing the tool.
Compliance certification (if [required) to ensure that the vendor has met all its responsibilities to adhere to any legal regulations that your company is responsible for.
10. Ease-of-use
In conclusion, it's of the essence that the platform is intuitive and user-friendly for your colleagues. A convoluted user interface can result in lost productiveness as you appropriate time and resources toward having your staff train on how to utilize the platform.
Offerings similar to a free trial can help make certain that your teams appreciate the product before purchasing. Also, demos, training resources, and process templates can contributes significantly to the rate of learning over time as all software, even intuitive ones, will call for some sort of adjustment period.
The Procurement Process
At the same time that your company has examined all of the evaluation criteria and you distinguish what you're in pursuit of, it's time to start deliberating your options, narrowing down your choices, and ultimately buying and bringing the product about.
Below is a step-by-step guide to aid you with the procurement process.
Step 1: Compare Your Options
It's likely you've already prepared a list of potential suppliers during the evaluation process. Now it's time to take off any that don't fulfill your requirements and taper down your short-list. Just after your short-list is prepare, compare your choices on the basis of the following traits:
Price
Features
Free Trial Options
Security and Compliance Capabilities
Customer Support
Step 2: Schedule Demos
With probably only 2-3 options standing, it's now time to figure out what the tool's capabilities are. Not only will this assist you to measure functionality, but it will also give you a sense of the product's serviceability. If it has an excessively complicated user interface or seems as if it will require a steep learning curve, it probably isn’t the best fit.
Step 3: Making the Purchase
When you've made your final selection, don't just settle for the full selling price. There may be room for negotiation, and if not, there might be an expanded free trial you can use before monthly or annual payments.
Moreover, pay attention to hidden pricing minutiae such as flat-rate vs per-user pricing, or paying for nonessential extra functionality.
A seller that is completely unwilling to negotiate, or offers shady pricing with a lot of hidden costs is likely not going to be an excellent long-term partner for your company. Bear this in mind before going through with it as you may regret your decision in the future.
Step 4: Implementation
After you've purchased, it's time to implement your new system. Depending on how deeply embedded your previous platform was, or how intricate the integration is, this method might be a bit complex. Here are a few suggestions to help you boost the transition.
Educate your team on the new automation platform, have them view demos, or acquire some training. It's crucial for long-term scalability that each of your staff use the tool according to best practices as opposed to applying their own individual uses.
Consult with customer support when necessary for technical problems.
Enlist the help of a solutions partner like Wave.
While many software companies have technical support for problems] relating directly to their platform, regularly, difficulties around best practices and implementation optimization are out of their scope.
We can help you roll out new software in a gradual procedure that makes the most sense for your company and results in as little downtime as possible while guaranteeing that everyone knows how to use the tool according to best practices.
Start Your Organization’s Digital Transformation with Wave
Manual business processes impede your business, which results in bottlenecks, disjointed workflows, missing information, and human error. This diminishes productivity, results in upscaled expenses, loosens your control over the business, and can eventually limit your long-term stability and scalability.
Wave assists your business to enforce automation solutions and content management systems (CMS) that facilitate your operation end-to-end, automate tedious, repetitive duties, and can incorporate with any ERP system you choose.
While we work profoundly with ECM systems like OpenText, M-Files, and SharePoint, we're perfectly willing to work with whatever system you're currently applying.
More willingly than tearing out deeply-rooted legacy tools, we can cooperate with your system and implement supportive tooling that can correlate and greatly improve your present systems.
We can also deliver our automation software as an on-premise or cloud-based solution to correspond to your compliance requirements and budget.
If you have any inquiries about how Wave can help support digital transformation and business process automation in your organization, contact us today.