Business Process Automation

1. Business Process Automation UNDERSTAND ALL CATEGORIES OF BUSINESS PROCESS THROUGH EXAMPLES: Sr. No. Nature of business decision Description of decision 1. Vision and Mission A dairy product company leading in Asian market decides to increase its turnover by double in next ten years. 2. Management Process To achieve turnover mentioned above the management needs to list down all activities to be done which may include: •Enter into new markets (Market development). •Launch new products (Product development). •Acquire existing dairies in markets where company had no presence (Acquisition). Support processes like Human resource management performs various activities including; 3. Support Process •Defining and creating a new management structure •Performing all human resource activities. Operational managers here are responsible to do actual ground work and ensure proper implementation of decisions taken above. 4. Operational Process BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION ● ● BPA is the tactic a business uses to automate processes to operate efficiently and effectively. It consists of integrating applications and using software applications throughout the organization. BPA is the tradition of analyzing, documenting, optimizing and then automating business processes. ●

2. Factors affecting BPA success (Objectives of BPA): The success of any business process automation shall only be achieved when BPA ensures the following: Objectives of BPA Timeliness Availability Integrity Confidentiality Sr. No. Objective Meaning 1. Confidentiality To ensure that data is only available to persons who have right to see the same. 2. Availability To ensure that data is available when asked for. 3. Integrity To ensure that no un-authorized amendments can be made in the data. 4. Timeliness To ensure that data is made available in at the right time. Note:To ensure that all the above parameters are met, BPA needs to have appropriate internal controls implemented. Which business processes should be automated? There is huge number of processes in an organization and all these processes are not good fit for automation. It is important for the organization to identify and automate those processes which are time and resource-intensive operationally or those that are subject to human error. To develop understanding of processes that are best suited to automation, following examples of processes may be considered. 1.Processes - Involving high volume of tasks or repetitive tasks. 2.Processes – Requiring multiple people to execute tasks. 3.Processes – Which are time sensitive 4.Processes – Involving need for compliance and audit trail. 5.Processes – Having significant impact on other processes and systems.

3. 1. Processes – Involving high volume of tasks or repetitive tasks: •In any organization there are various processes which may involve high volume of repetitive tasks like making purchase orders. •Automating such processes improves process efficiency and reduce company operating expenses and work efforts. 2.Processes – Requiring multiple people to execute tasks: •If in a process, there is need of multiple people to execute tasks then that result into high waiting time which ultimately increases the costs. Such processes are automated resulting into reduced waiting time & costs. 3.Processes- Which are time-sensitive: •Time sensitive processes are best suited to automation as these processes need to be completed in a limited period. •Take example of Online banking, Credit/Debit card payment, and Railway/aircraft operating and control systems, all these processes need to be completed in real time. •BPA of time-sensitive processes results into streamlined processes and faster turnaround times. •A streamlined process eliminates wasteful activities and focus on enhancing value- adding tasks. 4.Processes- Involving need for compliance and audit trail: •While implementing BPA, documentation is performed where every details of a particular process is recorded, which can be used to demonstrate compliance during audits. 5.Processes- Having significant impact on other processes and systems: •In an Organization, there may be some processes which are cross-functional and have significant impact on other processes and systems. •In such processes different parameters work hand in hand to achieve common goal.

4. •Automating these processes result into sharing information resources and improving efficiency and effectiveness of process.