V Balakrishnan is Executive General Manager (ITS Business Division) at Konica Minolta Business solution India PVt Ltd. He has been associated with Konica Minolta India for more than 7 years. With over 25 years of experience in Sales and Marketing, he has played a vital role in creating and implementing business strategies for growth at various companies in India.
Technological enablers like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning (DL) or Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are no longer buzzwords but a key necessity of organisations looking to transform their existing workflows and leverage the benefits of Digital Transformation. Process Automation platforms streamline existing processes, automate repetitive tasks and minimize the role of human-in-the-loop and thereby bringing in better efficiency, productivity and process compliance – providing a competitive edge over all the enterprises that are yet to embrace the Digital Transformation.
According to a study, employees waste 40% of their time on administrative tasks that can be addressed through automation. As a result, industry leaders and every other player is actively looking at automating most of the manual chores so that employees can focus on other critical tasks, remain productive and deliver quality outcomes during work hours. This is where Digital Process Automation (DPA) comes into the picture.
But what is DPA?
Digital Process Automation (DPA) is a method to leverage digital technologies to automate and optimise the workflows and processes of an organisation. It is considered as an evolution of Business Process Management (BPM) solutions and provides capability of enabling Digital Transformation of wide range of established processes in an organisation by creating opportunities to re-engineer processes around customer needs, deliver seamless customer and employee experiences and quickly adapt to changing expectations while improving efficiency and managing risk. The availability of low code platforms that allows for quick deployment at affordable cost leads to successful adoption.
What are the benefits of DPA?
Collaboration
DPA enhances workflow management by enabling employees to interact and share information real-time and work concurrently on tailoring or optimizing a workflow. This makes collaboration more seamless and helps all stakeholders to make better informed business-critical decisions. The need to effectively collaborate was realized even more acutely during the pandemic and Digital Transformation picked pace with DPA platforms as enablers.
Resource optimization
By automating repetitive tasks which are mundane in nature and by optimizing workflows which thereby minimizes the waste and redundancy in the process, DPA has contributed towards efficient resource utilisation and better focus on business-critical tasks. This has helped organisations to leverage the human resource to its full potential and deliver better productivity and quality.
Risk minimization
All businesses have to contend deal with human errors, especially when it comes to data entry tasks. However, with DPA, many such tasks can be automated and thus, the chances of human errors would be drastically minimised. This would allow business to provide services with lower defects and process deviations, which will ensure better customer satisfaction and their long-term retention. Similarly, organisations can also become agile using DPA as it enables them to adapt to changing business environments and stay prepared for uncertainties.
Time-saving
By digitising most manual processes, DPA helps employees work, collaborate, access and exchange information more seamlessly than ever. Likewise, DPA also optimizes the approval processes as employees can quickly access anything anytime, thus causing no delays at work. This saves a lot of time and makes decision making faster and more informed.
Example – Talent acquisition is a long and time-consuming process involving steps – identifying an opening, collecting data of talent pool, shortlisting applicants, interviewing and negotiations etc. and ultimately leading to the on-boarding journey. The task traditionally was done manually and involved paperwork and no automation leading to higher cost of talent acquisition. With DPA enabled talent acquisition and employee on-boarding workflow, the entire journey is now much simpler, faster and hassle free.
Conclusion
For years organizations have relied on BPM software to extend key processes, and in turn, BPM software has done that by streamlining important business processes and managing costs through its integration, monitoring, and tracking capabilities. But now, the focus has moved from managing costs to enhancing customer experience. The world is evolving at a pace faster than ever and rapid adoption of Business Process Automation will allow organisations to remain competitive and relevant in an ever-changing and turbulent market landscape.