Four quick questions for you: Did any of your vendors send you an invoice request for approval? Do you know on what basis you want to reject or approve the quoted invoice? Do you know how many requests have been sent to you and what the record is? Is your head spinning right now?
If you find yourself answering yes to some or all of these questions, you’re not alone; many CEOs suffer from un-automated workflow processes. The problem occurs when little pieces of processes need to be followed up or looked after. That’s when misery spreads in your mind.
But what if none of this is necessary? What if through automation, and as most modern day entrepreneurs say, ‘at the tap of a button’, you have a method of keeping track of every business process without scratching your head or making any effort at all?
Of course, you can get rid of those million calendar entries. Or even keep them. Here’s why automating your business processes can increase your firm’s productivity:
Enforce responsibility: By streamlining communication and automating processes in your company, the information that tells you the person responsible for the designated process is right in front of your eyes. Approvals, rejections, initiatives – are all bound to the person responsible for the initiation.
Reduce errors and inefficiency: The management may make a mistake when noting down invoice, or ask for payments for goods and services the customer never received. Such instances might result in direct financial loss for your business. Automation makes sure these errors are minimized and never again your firm is put to humiliation because of manual noting, record keeping and reporting.
Streamline communication: You receive hundreds of messages (emails, texts, fax, etc.) in a day and it is difficult to retail all things you need to prioritize, even when you’re noting them down. Automation provides a streamlined mode of communication and brings all pending tasks in a centralized location, where all your incoming and outgoing requests are placed, along with details about which tasks are pending first.
Automating processes within your company
With automation, processes are collectively managed to improve overall productivity, adapting to changing needs, reducing manual error and clarifying responsibilities. Here are some of the processes that can be automated:
Invoice Management: There are solutions for controlling costs with automated spending compliance monitoring as well as approval routing. Handling expense reporting and paper receipts is an otherwise mundane endeavor for management. Automation solutions take the labor work out of the process by providing features that make expense reporting quick and seamless. Invoice management from Chrome River also offers analytics and real-time organizational communication.
Payroll: IRS requires companies to keep tax records for four years. Also, the US Department of Labor has the same requirement for three years. The manual system of filing the necessary data increase clutter and is time consuming. Automating payroll records and generates large amounts of payroll tax data in a fraction of the time.
Communication: Communication events within an organization can become unorganized, especially when different departments are empowered to give instructions to their concerned staff members. Automation keeps everything organized and in a single place, so that everyone knows their responsibility and senior level management can keep an eye on work processes.
What are your thoughts on automation and improved productivity? Feel free to leave comments.