Finding The Best Business Process Automation Software Guide For Enterprise Buyers
If you're reading this, it’s most likely that your business is taking a look at business process automation software.
With the capabilities of business process automation you can expedite routine, rules-based workflows. Mechanizing these types of business tasks generates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), larger cost savings, and improved utilization of your workforce.
While most enterprise organizations today have implemented some form of automation, digital transformation, or process development, many fail to recognize the full potential of automation innovations and struggle to phase out remaining time-intensive manual workflows.
While partially automated tasks will deliver minimal edge, they can also costing you in the end.
In this enterprise buyer's guide, we'll shed some light on what business process automation is, how it works, its superiority, and the criteria you must look at when assessing BPA applications.
So let's dive right in!
What is Business Process Automation: A Primer
Business process automation (BPA), also known as business process management (BPM), is the process of using technology to establish routine, standards-based tasks such as transmitting documents, data-entry, sending payments, or archiving documents.
Taking advantage of automation can drastically enhance an organization's scalability by streamlining workflows, creating productivity, and eliminating manual tasks which enables your personnel to focus on tasks that grow the business.
Modern automation platforms, like those you're probably evaluating, implement state-of-the-art technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA) to perform repetitive tasks on a employee’s behalf.
Fundamentally, humans are still your greatest resource, but through system automation, your associates can work more rapidly on more productive tasks instead of having their time wasted by tedious manual tasks.
The Benefits of Business Process Automation
Beneath are just a few of the awesome benefits of BPA or automated applications.
Prevents Human Error
Streamlines Tedious Tasks
Reduces Inefficiencies
Deters Fraudulent Activity
Facilitates Cost-Savings
Betters Third-Party Relationships and Customer Satisfaction
Lessens Supplier Inquiries
Enhances Better Visibility into Tasks
Improved ROI
Use Cases for Business Process Automation
Any business that has tedious, continual tasks can reap the rewards of process automation tools. Some of the most common 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 technology that corresponds to your organization starts with examining your existing business processes, pinpointing opportunities for automation and searching the marketplace for tools.
1. Define Your Business Needs
Before ever assessing application options, the key thing to do is to discern your organizational needs.
Neglecting this aspect could result in obtaining application that ultimately restrains your organization, or buying additional features that you really don't need. Gather your department heads to discuss the following:
What processes are ideal candidates for automation?
Do you need the software for one department, or can the technology be used by a number of departments?
Are there any blockers that keep you from deploying a new system?
How many users will require access to the tool? What are their duties?
2. Conducting Pre-Purchase Research
When you have your base needs pinned down, you can start looking for probable solutions. There are several things you can learn on your own before reaching out to a vendor or entering a high-pressure sales negotiation.
Here are few resources you can frequently find on software websites or via 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
Subsequently accomplishing some fundamental research, you can immediately request for customized price quotes from the solutions you're eager to learn about.
While many software websites offer pricing, the majority of business process management tools simply offer starting prices and will ask for more information about your business to arrange a conclusive pricing model for you.
If your company uses a more standard acquisition process, this would be the time to start sending the initial requests for information (RFI) which specifically outlines your requirements for potential vendors.
When you communicate with potential vendors, it's imperative that you get all of your questions answered and see to it that the software 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 platform is the licensing structure. There is an assortment of user models that tool vendors use and it can have a significant impact on the total cost of ownership. Here are some of the most generally 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 complete number of users.
Maximum user licensing: This is total pricing with the maximum number of users allotted with additional licenses available for an additional cost.
Site licensing: Rather than per user, this type of licensing allows you to use the tool at a single (or multiple) predetermined locations.
Ongoing vs subscription licensing: Ongoing licensing is typically pay once and use indefinitely, whereas a subscription price will need to be renewed
The pricing model that best suits for your organization will ultimately depend on the budget, the number of users or site locations, as well as the level of flexibility you want. As an example, if you'd choose not be locked into a long-term investment, you might go for a subscription model that you can revoke should you feel the need.
5. Deployment Models
The deployment model is another important consideration as your business could have special legal or compliance-related requirements that prescribe you use simply one type of infrastructure.
For example, many companies in the healthcare and government section have strict regulations which demand they keep all computing and application infrastructure on-premise and that any new platform be licensed in compliant in a specific framework like HIPAA or FedRAMP.
A lot of vendors present several deployment options for this very reason. These can be separated into two essential groups: on-premises, off-premises, or hybrid deployment.
On-premises (Data Center): This hosting option requires your company to set up the software through your on-premise data center environment. That being the case, your company maintains outright control over the installation, architecture, administration, maintenance, and data security.
This restricts the scope of risk tangled with outsourcing deployment to a third party, but it also furthers your obligations and includes its own level of risk.
For example, neglecting routine updates and backups might set your organization up in a precarious situation if a data breach or disaster arises. But as aforementioned, for some in a compliance-heavy business, there may not be any other choice here.
Off-premises (Cloud-based): For organizations that have no compliance commitments, or have regulatory standards that a cloud option can fulfill, this choice might be far more attractive.
This is due to the fact that cloud deployments grant the organization the opportunity to get rid of a lot of the administrative and maintenance troubles it would under other conditions, be responsible for.
Not to mention that, an abundance of enterprise-level technology is deep-seated on best-in-class infrastructures like AWS or Azure and offers redundancy, reliability, and even service level agreements (SLAs) if you want more uptime guarantee.
Hybrid (Mixed) Deployment: The third alternative, for those that prefer to make the most out of cloud innovation but work in a compliance-heavy business, is a hybrid or mixed deployment.
Albeit being a bit more troublesome, a hybrid environment would handle all your sensitive data and related aspects in an on-premise environment while your non-classified data and processes can be executed in a cloud environment.
6. Implementation Requirements
Another important consideration is the implementation requirements, for the software vendor, for your organization. Just because you may want to use a certain tool, doesn't suggest that your existing capabilities are enough to run it. Therefore it's important to look at the following:
Configurability. Does the tool come with all necessary functionality out of the box, or will it require some tweaking once installed? This is relevant to recognize to guarantee you can get the most from your investment and hit the ground running.
System requirements. In thecase of an on-premise deployment, do you have the entire prerequisite hardware to operate the software properly? If not, your overall investment could be jeopardized.
Elasticity. Can the tool scale to satisfy higher demand as your company develops, if the maximum number of concurrent users are online, or if your foundation incurs a utilization load spike? It's necessary to single out an automation platform that can scale to accommodate growth or a utilization flux. Many SaaS and cloud options supply auto-scaling as the need emerges, whereas most on-premise deployments require that auto-routing during load spikes is implemented ahead of time.
7. Integration capabilities
Another important consideration is integration potential. While the idea of all together solution is a wonderful concept, it usually doesn't work that way. Specifically with automation, the automation tool has to correspond with different systems and other tools based on how many business units are resorting to it.
That being said, you have to provide your potential vendors with a full list of all systems and tools to guarantee that your automation tool can properly incorporated with each.
On the other hand, if a particular tool is not listed under integrations, does the software vendor grant an application programming interface (API) so that a developer can connect your systems his or herself?
If there isn't a pre-built integration in qualified for your other systems, and the API either doesn't exist or is taxing to use, it most likely isn’t the greatest fit for your business.
8. Customer Support
Another critical, yet often disregarded quality is available customer support. Frequently, organizations don't realize the significance of great customer support until they really need it and it's not available.
Every single software vendor has its own different customer support offering which can be 24/7/365 or restricted to certain hours. They commonly also have a scope for their customer support services - issues they will facilitate and issues they won't.
Almost always, basic customer support is offered for issues linked to the software itself, nonetheless, concerns that are customer-centric (i.e. implementation issues, best practices, etc) may only be accessible at a premium, if at all.
At any rate, it's important that you understand what the amount of your customer support offers, its availability, and the options at your disposal (i.e. ticket service, phone, email, chat, etc). Moreover, as your staff is learning to use automation software, it's important that they have training resources conveniently attainable, whether live or pre-made.
Listed below are examples:
Webinars
Guides
Training Labs
Tutorial Videos
Instruction Manuals/Documentation
Community Help Forums
9. Security
Also a critical consideration is the tool security characteristics. With an automation platform, it's almost guaranteed that it will get in touch with sensitive data, for this reason, you need to be confident that any data accessed is safe from prohibited access. Ensure that your software provides the following security features:
Access management to manage who can use the software.
Permission controls to identify what a user can and can't have contact with while utilizing the platform.
Compliance certification (if [needed) to ascertain that the seller has met all its commitments to abide by any legal regulations that your organization is in charge of.
10. Ease-of-use
In conclusion, it's important that the tool is intuitive and easy to use for your colleagues. An overly complicated user interface can result in lost productivity as you allocate time and resources toward having your team train on how to properly operate the platform.
Offerings similar to a free trial can help to ensure your employees appreciate the tool before purchasing. Additionally, demos, training resources, and process templates can do a great deal for the learning period as all platforms, even intuitive ones, will require some sort of adjusting period.
The Procurement Process
When your organization has analyzed all of the evaluation criteria and you know what you're looking for, it's time to start considering your options, examining and reducing your choices, and ultimately buying and actualizing the product.
Listed below is a step-by-step guide to assist you with the procurement process.
Step 1: Compare Your Options
It's presumable that you've already arranged a list of potential sellers during the evaluation process. Now’s the time to eliminate any that don't meet your requirements and taper down your short-list. Just after your short-list is developed, compare your choices based on the following characteristics:
Price
Features
Free Trial Options
Security and Compliance Capabilities
Customer Support
Step 2: Schedule Demos
With probably only 2-3 options left, it's now time to find out what the tool’s capable of. Not only will this assist you to assess functionality, but it will also give you some perspective of the product's serviceability. If it has an excessively intricate user interface or seems as if it will require a steep learning curve, it may not be the best fit.
Step 3: Making the Purchase
When you've finalized your choice, don't just go along with the full cost. There may be leeway for negotiation, and if not, there may be a prolonged free trial you can use before monthly or annual payments.
Furthermore, pay attention to hidden pricing technicalities 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 charges is plausibly not going to be an excellent long-term partner for your business. Think strongly before following through as you may regret your decision in the future.
Step 4: Implementation
Once you've purchased, it's time to bring about your new system. Contingent upon how deeply ingrained your previous software was, or how complicated the integration is, this procedure might get a bit complicated. Here are a few hints to help you ease the transition.
Train your team members on the new automation platform, have them view demos, or acquire some training. It's critical for long-term scalability that each of your employees use the platform in line with best practices instead of enforcing their own individual uses.
Consult with customer support when required for technical problems.
Enlist the help of a solutions partner like Wave.
While plenty of software companies have technical support for difficulties] in connection to their tool, usually, problems around best practices and implementation optimization are out of their range.
We can help you roll out new platforms in an incremental approach that makes the most sense for your company and results in as little layoff as possible while guaranteeing that everyone knows how to use the software according to best practices.
Start Your Organization’s Digital Transformation with Wave
Manual business processes slow your business down, which results in bottlenecks, incoherent workflows, missing information, and human error. This reduces overall productivity, results in greater expenses, weakens your control over the business, and can eventually hinder your long-term sustainability and scalability.
Wave helps businesses like yours to execute automation solutions and content management systems (CMS) that facilitate your operation end-to-end, automate tedious, monotonous duties, and can integrate with any ERP system of your choosing.
While we work profoundly with ECM systems like OpenText, M-Files, and SharePoint, we're pleased to work with whichever system you're currently using.
Instead of tearing out deeply-rooted legacy tools, we can go hand in hand your system and execute supportive tooling that can add to and develop your current systems.
We’d gladly provide our automation platform as an on-premise or cloud-based solution to work with your compliance demands and budget.
If you are interested about how Wave can assist digital transformation and business process automation in your company, contact us today.