In today’s competitive business environment, executives continue to seek ways to reduce costs, increase output, and improve shareholder value. Automating manual processes has proven to decrease costs, create time and labor efficiencies, and increase control over day-to-day processes that drive the business.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has become one of the most viable ways to connect people and processes with the information and documents that are vital to the business. The latest in Web-based document management applications provide the means to communicate and share information smartly and seamlessly while allowing business logic to drive and control business processes.

What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?

A business process describes the way work gets done in organizations – involving inputs, a transformation process and outputs. Automation describes how the work gets completed and today involves the merger of technology with manual processes. Wrap the automated process with sound business rules and workflow and the result is business process automation (BPA).

How can BPA save time and cut costs?

In accounts payable, for example, an assistant receives an invoice, creates an transaction in a general ledger application, and routes the invoice to a manager for approval — a relatively simple process unless the assistant is required to reconcile a dispute or comply with an audit. If the approval process works efficiently, the assistant reconciles the approved invoice amount to the AP transaction and pays the vendor.

How BPA can work within accounts payable

By putting smart ECM technology to work, the accounts payable tasks are transformed into an automated, rules-driven process. In the new ECM world, the assistant can effortlessly capture the invoice into a centralized document repository. On entering the system, functionality that provides zone optical character recognition (OCR) extracts key pieces of data to create an AP transaction in the general ledger application. After the transaction is created, the invoice is attached to a pre-defined workflow process and routed to the appropriate individuals for approval. When it’s time to pay the invoice, the assistant views the invoice online and simultaneously issues payment.

The results are greater control and visibility into the transaction and a cost reduction of up to 70 percent.

How BPA creates opportunities within logistics

In logistics, where the processing of proofs of delivery triggers accounts receivable and payable cycles and, in many cases, serves as a control mechanism for regulatory compliance, BPA can help compress the time-to- revenue cycle.

Consider the traditional scenario — a driver responsible for delivering shipment of goods creates a proof of delivery by having a recipient sign a bill of lading. The proof of delivery is returned to the logistics provider who begins the tedious task of calling up each shipment in a delivery management system and flagging the job as complete. Incomplete or disputed deliveries can add extra manual steps to the process including reconciliation before the logistics provider can bill their customer. Also, in many instances, proofs of delivery are filed by date only, because sorting them by any other criteria may be inefficient.

Now, imagine a new world in which proofs of delivery display a bar code that contains the data required to trigger account transactions. Documents can be scanned or faxed into an ECM application that automatically reads the bar code and uses this data to close out delivery orders, thereby triggering the accounts receivable process. An assistant may be required to deal with a few exceptions but has far greater control and visibility into the process.

The results are labor savings and reduced cycle times — as well as improved customer relations.

How to decide if BPA is right for your organization?

While there can be similarities between one organization’s business processes and another’s, BPA is most practical and beneficial when implemented in core processes that are repetitive, labor-intensive and span multiple enterprise systems.

What should I look for in a BPA provider?

Once you’ve decided that BPA is right for your organization, there are a number of features that the solution provider should offer:

1. The solution should address the entire process lifecycle.
   
2. The solution should handle paper and digital content in an equally elegant fashion.
   
3. The solution should be flexible since system integration will be necessary. Look for a solution with robust service oriented architecture and Web Service APIs.
   
4. The solution should require minimal time to implement. On-demand Software or Software as a Service (SAAS), for example, can reduce stress on your IT organization, minimize cash outlays and shrink time to value (days vs. months).

Conclusion

BPA is the next wave for organizations looking to reduce costs, accelerate process throughput, realize greater control and visibility into labor-intensive and multi-system processes. The end result is a more efficient and effective organization that allows individuals to focus on higher value tasks. What more could you ask for?

About the Author

Jeff Piper is Vice President of Client Services and Partner Development for SpringCM, the leading provider of on-demand enterprise content management. Contact Jeff at jpiper@springcm.com.

To learn more about SpringCM visit their website at : www.springcm.com.