-
Improving Efficiency and Employee Satisfaction with Business Process Automation Software
Business leaders pushed for a “year of efficiency” in 2024, and the momentum is still going this year. Making business processes more efficient is a goal that supports other business priorities, including cutting costs, fighting fraud, optimizing employee time, and improving data quality.
The right business process automation (BPA) software can enable efficiency in key areas. By streamlining financial processes, your company saves money and employees save time. When your business processes work efficiently, you get more value for the same amount of work (or even less work). Plus, employee satisfaction tends to improve with automation, making it a win-win for both companies and the people working there.
The Role of BPA
Technology is essential to keeping up in the modern business world. Automation, machine learning, AI, document imaging—all of it works together to keep modern businesses productive and efficient in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
BPA software enables your company to stay on top of financial processes. Using automation to power departments like accounts payable, procurement, and expense management streamlines processes and cuts costs. You can automate just a few departments, or boost efficiency even more with an end-to-end solution for the procure-to-pay cycle.
This type of software automates key business processes. The software takes over routine, repetitive tasks like data entry, reconciling POs with invoices, and processing expense reports. Also, the software provides robust tools for people to use. It doesn’t replace human employees, but it does make their jobs much easier.
Cost-Efficient
Cost-savings are one of the biggest benefits of BPA software. Exactly how much your company will save depends on a variety of factors, but our clients typically break even within 9-12 months of automating with our software. They then see additional reductions in processing costs over time.
Process automation saves your company significant amounts of money compared to manual processes. Take accounts payable as an example. A 2015 survey by APQC showed that “bottom performers” (with little or no automation) spent an average of $12.44 per invoice. Top performers (with higher levels of automation) spent an average of $4.98 per invoice.
In AP, as in other financial departments, cost savings come from several key areas. Faster processing and less need for manual tasks like data entry means there are lower labor costs per process. Even if employees are still working the same number of hours, they’ll be able to use their time more efficiently which means your company spends money more efficiently.
You can also save money in other ways, such as avoiding late payment fees, more effectively negotiating purchasing deals, tracking capital project budgets closely, and eliminating fraudulent expense payments. Automation streamlines your financial processes and gives you more control over managing them, providing access to direct and indirect savings opportunities.
Time-Efficient
As we’ve already mentioned, automation streamlines financial processes and lets your employees use their time more efficiently. BPA automation isn’t designed to replace employees. Rather, it’s meant to make their jobs much easier.
In accounts payable, BPA software collects digital invoices and digitizes information from paper invoices that your employees scan into the system. Then, the software automatically matches invoices with POs (if available), tracks payment deadlines, and processes the invoices so you can make payments on time, every time. You can customize the automation parameters to automatically process and pay certain invoices and route others for manual approval before payment.
Travel and entertainment (T&E) expense processing is another good example of how BPA software is time efficient. Instead of manually collecting receipts, employees submitting expense reports simply snap a picture of paper receipts or upload digital receipts directly into the T&E system using their smartphone or other internet-enabled device. Then, the software automatically checks to see if the expense matches company policies for expense reimbursement. If it does, you can set the system to remit reimbursement automatically. If it doesn’t match or exceeds a custom expense threshold, the software will route the report for manual approval. It speeds up the whole process, making things much easier for employees on both sides of the T&E process.
Employee Satisfaction
Employees benefit from automation software as much as the company does. In a Salesforce survey of almost 800 automation users in the U.S., 80% of people working in accounting and finance are more satisfied with their job and 82% report being more satisfied with their company because of automation.
Surveyed employees reported that automation tools helped them complete their work quickly, enabled easier collaboration, and worked reliably without errors. Some employees also shared that having automation solutions in their workplace helped lower their stress levels and improve work-life balance. When automation tools are working effectively, they make employees’ jobs simpler without putting their jobs at risk of being replaced by software.
Automation takes over the tasks that many people don’t enjoy about their jobs. By lightening their workload in terms of repetitive routine tasks, automation gives employees the flexibility to focus on other parts of the job. Instead of losing time on data entry and error checking, for example, they can focus on data analysis.
Check Out NextProcess
If your company wants to take advantage of the timesaving and cost-saving efficiency of BPA software, check out NextProcess. Our software modules offer a true end-to-end solution by integrating CapEx/Budgeting, Procurement, Accounts Payable, and Payment Disbursement. We also offer T&E and Document Management solutions, as well as the option to outsource accounts payable, expense report audits, and/or document imaging. All our modules integrate seamlessly with ERPs.
By implementing multiple software modules from NextProcess, you’ll get a software solution that works together seamlessly to provide real financial management solutions for mid-market and larger businesses. Contact us today to learn more and schedule a free demo so you can see first-hand how our BPA software can support your company’s efficiency goals.
