The Enterprise Buyer's Guide for Business Process Automation Software
If you're reading this, it’s presumable that your organization is considering business process automation software.
With business process automation functionality, you can streamline routine, rules-based workflows. Streamlining these types of business workflows creates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), significantly better cost savings, and better utilization of your workforce.
Even though most enterprise organizations today have implemented some form of automation, digital transformation, or process development, many fail to realize the full potential of automation technology and struggle to terminate remaining time-consuming manual workflows.
While partially automated processes will give you some edge, they can also deterring 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 benefits, and the specifications you need to study when assessing BPA software.
So let's begin!
What is Business Process Automation: A Primer
Business process automation (BPA), also called business process management (BPM), is the act of using technology to streamline routine, rules-based tasks such as transmitting documents, data-entry, routing payments, or organizing documents.
Utilizing automation can drastically enhance an organization's scalability by streamlining tasks, establishing productivity, and eliminating tedious work which permits your personnel to focus on tasks that augment the business.
Advanced automation platforms, like those you're presumably evaluating, implement state-of-the-art technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA) to take care of repetitive labor on a person’s behalf.
Fundamentally, employees are still your greatest resource, but through workflow automation, your teammates can work quicker on more important tasks rather than having their time wasted by tedious manual tasks.
The Benefits of Business Process Automation
The following are just a small amount of the awesome benefits of BPA or automated software.
Eliminates Human Error
Streamlines Tedious Tasks
Eliminates Inefficiencies
Deters Fraudulent Activity
Creates Cost-Savings
Betters Vendor Relationships and Customer Satisfaction
Reduced Supplier Inquiries
Delivers Better Insight into Tasks
Higher ROI
Use Cases for Business Process Automation
Any business that has tedious, repetitive tasks can benefit from 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
Finding the process automation platform that fits your organization starts with looking at your present operating procedures, pinpointing optimal processes for automation and assessing the marketplace for systems.
1. Define Your Business Needs
Before ever assessing software options, the most important thing to do is to discern your business requirements.
Disregarding this aspect could result in purchasing technology that ultimately stagnates your business, or buying additional features that you really don't need. Gather your department stakeholders to discuss the following:
What processes are ideal candidates for automation?
Do you need the application for a specific department, or can the software be used by a number of departments?
Are there any bottlenecks that deter you from implementing a new system?
How many users will require access to the application? What are their duties?
2. Conducting Pre-Purchase Research
When you have your foundational needs determined, you can start looking for potential solutions. There are several things you can research on your own before reaching out to a vendor or entering a high-pressure sales discussion.
Here are few resources you can typically find on software websites or through 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
Once you've done some preliminary research, you can immediately request for customized price quotes from the solutions you're most interested in learning about.
While several software websites offer pricing, nearly all business process management software simply offer starting prices and will ask for more details about your organization to arrange a conclusive pricing model for you.
If your business uses a more conventional acquisition process, this would be the time to commence sending the initial requests for information (RFI) which categorically outlines your requirements for potential vendors.
When you communicate with potential suppliers, it's vital that you get all of your inquiries answered and see to it that the tool meets all of your demands. This will help you lessen vendor options during procurement later on.
4. Understanding Licensing Structures
One of the most important pricing considerations for an automation software 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 maximum 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 platform 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 works best for your organization will ultimately depend on the budget, the amount of users or site locations, in addition to the degree of flexibility you want. As an example, if you'd choose not be latched into a long-term investment, you might opt for a subscription model that you can revoke anytime.
5. Deployment Models
The deployment model is another critical deliberation as your company can have special legal or compliance-related requirements that impose you use simply one type of infrastructure.
For instance, many organizations in the healthcare and government division have precise codes which command they keep all computing and application infrastructure on-premise and that any new software be certified in compliant in a specific framework like HIPAA or FedRAMP.
A lot of vendors present multiple deployment options for this very reason. These can be partitioned into two essential groups: on-premises, off-premises, or hybrid deployment.
On-premises (Data Center): This hosting option compels your business to deploy the software with your on-premise data center environment. Accordingly, your company retains full control over the installation, architecture, administration, maintenance, and data security.
This limits the extent of risk tangled with subcontracting deployment to a third party, but it also increases your duties and involves its own level of risk.
Take for example, neglecting routine updates and backups might put your organization in a risky place if a data breach or disaster arises. But as aforementioned, for some in a compliance-heavy business, there may not be an option here.
Off-premises (Cloud-based): For organizations that are not bound by legal demands, or have administrative demands that a cloud option can fulfill, this alternative might be far more attractive.
This is because cloud deployments allow your organization to offload many of the administrative and maintenance troubles it would usually be responsible for.
Moreover, the majority of enterprise-level technology is incorporated on best-in-class infrastructures specifically AWS or Azure and offers redundancy, reliability, as well as service level agreements (SLAs) should you want more uptime guarantee.
Hybrid (Mixed) Deployment: The third alternative, for those that want to take advantage of cloud innovation but conduct in a compliance-heavy enterprise, is a hybrid or mixed deployment.
While a tad more troublesome, a hybrid environment would have all your sensitive data and related phases in an on-premise environment while your non-classified data and processes can be implemented in a cloud environment.
6. Implementation Requirements
A further key consideration is the implementation requirements, in favor of the software vendor, for your organization. Just because you can have an inclination to a certain tool, doesn't mean your current capabilities are adequate to run it. For this reason, it's crucial to look at the following:
Configurability. Does the tool come with all necessary functionality once purchased, or will it need some refining once installed? This is important to understand to guarantee you can fully utilize your investment and hit the ground running.
System requirements. In theinstance of an on-premise deployment, do you have the whole prerequisite hardware to handle the tool properly? If not, your overall investment could be at risk.
Elasticity. Can the tool scale to meet higher demand as your organization develops, if the limit on the number of coincidental users are online, or if your foundation incurs a utilization load spike? It's necessary to single out an automation tool that can scale to handle a growth or a utilization flux. Several SaaS and cloud options provide auto-scaling as the need develops, because most on-premise deployments demand that auto-routing during load spikes is implemented beforehand.
7. Integration capabilities
One more key concern is integration potential. While the idea of a packaged-deal solution is an alluring concept, it often doesn't work that way. Specifically with automation, the automation tool has to correspond with various systems and other tools contingent on how many business units are resorting to it.
For this reason, you must supply your potential vendors with an entire list of all systems and tools to ensure that your automation platform can be well-coordinated with each.
Also, if a particular tool not quoted under integrations, does the tool vendor offer an application programming interface (API) so that a developer can link your systems his or herself?
If there isn't a preformed integration in qualified for your other systems, and the API either doesn't exist or is extremely complicated to use, it most likely isn’t the best fit for your company.
8. Customer Support
One more important, yet often disregarded quality is available customer support. Oftentimes, businesses are not aware of the worth of excellent customer support until they are in dire need of it and it's not available.
Every single software vendor has its own unique customer support offering whether it’s 24/7/365 or restricted to certain hours. They commonly also have a range for their customer support services - issues they will assist and issues they won't.
More often than not, basic customer support is provided for issues linked to the tool itself, yet, issues that are customer-centric (i.e. implementation issues, best practices, etc) may solely be available at a premium, if at all.
At any rate, it's critical that you recognize what your level of customer support offers, its availability, and the options available to you (i.e. ticket service, phone, email, chat, etc). Additionally, as your team is learning to utilize automation software, it's crucial that they have training resources accessible, whether live or pre-designed.
Listed below are examples:
Webinars
Guides
Training Labs
Tutorial Videos
Instruction Manuals/Documentation
Community Help Forums
9. Security
One more important consideration is the tool security features. With an automation platform, it's almost guaranteed that it will have some sort of connection with sensitive data, therefore, you need to be sure that any data used is safe from prohibited access. Ensure that your software grants the following security features:
Access management to manage who can use the software.
Permission controls to distinguish what a user can and can't use while working with the tool.
Compliance certification (if [needed) to guarantee that the vendor has met all its obligations to abide by any legal regulations that your business is liable for.
10. Ease-of-use
In conclusion, it's important that the platform is intuitive and user-friendly for your team members. An overly complicated user interface can bring about lost productiveness as you dish out time and valuables toward having your team train on how to properly operate the platform.
Offerings like a free trial can help make certain that your employees adore the product before purchasing. In addition, demos, training resources, and process templates can contributes significantly to the rate of learning over time as all platforms, even intuitive ones, will require some sort of adjusting period.
The Procurement Process
When your business has examined the entire evaluation criteria and you are aware of what you're looking for, it's time to start taking into account your options, pegging your choices down, and ultimately buying and bringing the product about.
Listed below is a step-by-step guide to help you with the procurement process.
Step 1: Compare Your Options
It's presumable that you've already arranged a list of potential vendors during the evaluation process. It is now time to remove any that don't meet your requirements and narrow down your short-list. Just after your short-list is ready, compare your options on the basis of the following qualities:
Price
Features
Free Trial Options
Security and Compliance Capabilities
Customer Support
Step 2: Schedule Demos
With likely only 2-3 options remaining, it's now time to find out what the tool’s capable of. Not only will this help you evaluate functionality, but it will also supply you with a sense of the product's usability. If it has an extremely complex user interface or it seems like it will require a steep learning curve, it probably isn’t the best fit.
Step 3: Making the Purchase
When you've finalized your choice, don't just go along with the full selling price. There may be leeway for negotiation, and if not, there could be an extended free trial you can take advantage of before monthly or annual fees.
Moreover, pay attention to hidden pricing technicalities such as flat-rate vs per-user pricing, or paying for extra functionality you don't need.
A supplier that is opposed to negotiations, or imparts shady pricing with a lot of hidden costs is plausibly not going to be a good long-term partner for your business. Deliberate before proceeding as you may regret your decision in the future.
Step 4: Implementation
After you've made your purchase, it's time to bring about your new system. Depending on how deeply ingrained your previous software was, or how intricate the integration is, this method might be slightly more tricky. Here are a few tips to help you boost the transition.
Educate your team on the new automation platform, advise them to view demos, or attend training. It's crucial for long-term scalability that each of your employees use the platform in accordance with best practices rather than applying their own individual uses.
Involve customer support when needed for technical issues.
Hire the help of a solutions partner like Wave.
While plenty of software organizations have technical support for issues] relating directly to their software, regularly, difficulties around best practices and implementation optimization are beyond their scope.
We can help you roll out new platforms in an incremental method that makes the most sense for your company and results in as little dead time as possible while ensuring 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 leads to bottlenecks, disjointed workflows, misplaced information, and human error. This diminishes productivity, results in higher expenses, loosens your control over the business, and can eventually obstruct your long-term feasibility and scalability.
Wave assists your business to execute automation solutions and content management systems (CMS) that simplify your processes end-to-end, automate tedious, repetitive duties, and can incorporate with any ERP system of your choice.
While we work predominantly with ECM systems like OpenText, M-Files, and SharePoint, we're pleased to work with whatever system you're currently using.
Rather than tearing out deeply-rooted legacy software, we can come alongside your system and carry out supportive tooling that can correlate and enhance your current systems.
We’d gladly provide our automation software as an on-premise or cloud-based solution to correspond to your compliance demands and budget.
If you'd like to learn more about how Wave can assist digital transformation and business process automation in your company, contact us today.