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What Business Processes Does It Make Sense for Your Company to Automate in the Year 2020?
Business Process Automation plays a key role in the modern business world. However, automation does not work equally well for every business process. There are still many tasks that require a human touch. This includes reconciling exceptions invoices, answering complicated questions from customers or suppliers, and deciding on the future direction of your company.
Though automation cannot entirely replace human employees, your company can greatly benefit from automating certain business processes. Automating many of the core processes, such as capital project management, AP, reporting that drive your business can result in an efficient workflow, reduced costs, and increased transparency, among other benefits.
Business process automation (BPA) systems are perfect for repetitive tasks that consume employee time such as collecting and entering invoice data, checking spreadsheets for errors, and filing paperwork. The more of these sorts of processes you can effectively automate, the fewer costs and errors you’ll have to deal with in your business.
In today’s article, we’re going to focus on financial processes that NextProcess can help your business automate. One of the great things about NextProcess software is that each module is designed to work just as well together as they are on their own. That means if you choose to automate more than one process using our software, you’ll have a system that makes it easy to collaborate across departments and which streamlines your financial processing tasks. Plus, choosing a software suite for your automation needs means there are no software conflicts. You also don’t have to try to mix-and-match software from several different suppliers. It also speeds up the learning curve because the interface and dashboard maintain consistent feel.
Capital Project Management
Managing capital expenditures well is a hugely important task for a company. Capital projects typically involve large amounts of money and often involve a time commitment as well. If you can’t manage these projects effectively, then your company is at risk of losing quite a bit of money. Automating capital project management makes sense because it gives you greater insight and control into company finances, streamlines how you handle capital expenses, and helps provide accurate data regarding your budget.
Capital Project Management software works as an addition to ERP systems and speeds-up, streamlines, and eases collaboration for capital projects. Our software includes configurable levels of capital budgeting software tools and you can customize functionality to meet your company’s exact needs. You’ll also get total, real-time spend visibility as well as detailed tracking through every step of the capital project. Also, we’ve designed NextProcess to be compatible with all major ERP systems so you won’t have to worry about software conflicts.
Accounts Payable
Automating accounts payable is one of the best ways to improve how your business processes financial transactions. With AP automation, you can auto-process up to 90% of your invoices. That dramatically speeds up processing, which saves your company money by avoiding late fees and cutting down on processing time. It’s a huge improvement over manual systems.
Accounts Payable automation saves time spent on AP while cutting costs across the board with a system that reduces errors and automatically saves important documents. Accounts payable automation also provides detailed insight into AP processing and makes audits easier. Plus, the time saved on processing frees up employees to reconcile exceptions invoices and perform other value-added tasks for your company.
In addition to automating accounts payable, you also have the option to outsource your Payment Solutions with NextProcess. We’ll make sure you’re processing payments securely, accurately, and always on-time. Our system is designed for both security and accessibility to provide a quick and easy way to issue payments to your vendors.
Procurement and Purchasing
Every business needs a way to make purchases while also controlling how much employees spend. The problem is, many purchasing systems (even some of the digital ones) are hard to use. If they’re not user-friendly, then employees are much more likely to go around your system. You need a purchasing system that makes it easy to submit necessary purchases and procurement requests while also enforcing company policy.
Procurement and Purchase Order automation from NextProcess can do that. With this system, your employees can quickly place orders within the system from a list of pre-approved products and sellers. You’ll be able to customize the system to fit your company policy, as well as create saved templates and quickly generate and track purchase orders. This system also gives you instant access to reports on your spend so you can budget more accurately.
Travel and Expense Reporting
Travel and expense reporting is often a process that both companies and employees find frustrating. Poorly managed T&E reimbursements can negatively impact employee satisfaction if they find it too difficult to receive fair reimbursement for expenses. It can also result in a loss of money for the employer by letting fraud and mistakes slip through.
Using automated Expense Report Software makes sense because it provides you with a user-friendly portal that makes things simple for both employee and employer. This sort of system lets employees upload receipts and file reports from any device for automatic processing. It also lets them track their expense reports so they can see when to expect reimbursement. In addition, the system automatically enforces your company’s policy and makes it much harder for fraud to slip through.
Document Management
Digitizing your document management makes sense once you start to automate other business processes. Business process automation generates digital records anyway, so you might as well take advantage of all the benefits that come from storing and managing your files digitally. Digital document management makes it easier to search for and locate files that you need. It also takes up much less room than paper storage and is more secure.
Our Document Management System lets you keep important documents secure and easily accessible while saving storage space over paper files. With the search tools included in this software, you can find and download important records much more easily than you could look up paper files.
Why It’s a Good Idea to Automate Now
Business process automation isn’t just a new fad. It has become a vital part of the modern business world. Most major companies have either already begun automation or have plans to automate in the near future. Also, some companies who automated years ago are starting to update their automation to take advantage of new advances in automation technology.
One of the great things about automating now is that the software has come a long way in recent years. With software-as-a-service companies such as NextProcess, you can automate quickly and easily without putting any additional burden on your IT department. We’ll handle implementation for you. Plus, we keep the software up-to-date without any extra cost or effort on the part of your company.
Automating business processes cuts costs and reduces errors. In the accounts payable department, for example, BPA allows for automatic tracking of payment deadlines. This lets your company avoid late payment fees and take advantage of early payment discounts. Business process automation also saves time by automating processes that were once busy-work for employees such as capital project management and ERP. Now, your employees can focus on tasks that require human skills like creative thinking and personal interactions.
Process automation also makes it easier to keep good records. This simplifies audits and enforces accountability. Automated systems also make it easier to access those records. With digital data management systems, you can quickly look at data related to your finances and business processes.
If you’re ready to take your business processes to the next level, automation just makes sense. And NextProcess can help. Just contact us today to learn more or set up a free demo so you can see first-hand how much our process automation software can help your company.