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Try Business Process Automation Instead of Hiring Temps
Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, there might come a time when you start thinking outsourcing or hiring temps sounds like a good idea. Maybe you’re having trouble finding enough skilled employees to handle tasks like accounts payable or travel and expense reporting. Maybe your existing employees are overwhelmed, and the budget isn’t available to hire additional help on a permanent basis. Perhaps you’ve heard that outsourcing can save money. Or maybe your company’s workload fluctuates, so temp employees seem like a good answer.
While outsourcing or temps can be a good solution for certain business scenarios, there’s another option you might not have thought about. Business Process Automation (BPA) software can take over a lot of the routine tasks that keep employees too busy to focus on more interesting and value-added jobs. It can also cut costs by streamlining and speeding up business processes. Plus, BPA software scales to your company’s needs. It’s also reliable, and more efficient than temps for certain jobs.
Outsourcing vs. Automation
BPA software is a system that automates key aspects of business processes. For example, BPA software in accounts payable automates invoice digitization and data capture, PO reconciliation, and invoice processing. You can even automate payment if you set up your software to auto-pay invoices that fall within custom criteria.
With BPA, you’re giving employees the tools to handle your business processes more efficiently. It can cut down on their workload, but you’ll still have in-house employees running the department that you automate.
In contrast, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) involves turning certain business processes over to an external company. Continuing with our accounts payable example, instead of having an AP department in your company you’d hire another company to handle invoice workflow and even payment for your company. There are pros and cons to outsourcing accounts payable. For many companies, BPA is a better solution because it keeps control of the process in-house while still making AP workflow more efficient.
Temps vs. Automation
There are some great reasons for hiring temporary employees. In retail, for example, hiring temp workers during the holidays provides much-needed aid in keeping up with seasonal shopping surges. You might also temporarily hire a contractor for specific jobs that are not ongoing. Or you could hire temps if you’re looking for long-term employees so that they can go through a trial period of you seeing how they fit in with the company before offering employment.
However, if you’re hiring temps for ongoing and repetitive tasks like data entry, that’s not going to be the most efficient solution. You’ll need someone to do the task long after the temp employment term expires. That can mean continuing to work with a temp agency and frequently training new workers, all of which can become prohibitively expensive. Temps aren’t a long-term solution.
For ongoing, repetitive tasks, automation is a much better solution. Returning to our data entry example, automation speeds up the process and increases accuracy. Even the most detail-oriented person can make mistakes; human error is responsible for most of the errors notoriously common in spreadsheets. Automated, digital data entry is highly accurate and much faster than manual data entry. Image indexing, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) technology work together to capture data on every important document as well as metadata about the documents.
The Benefits of BPA Software
Reliability
One of the great things about BPA software is how reliable it is. It never calls in sick, needs time off, or leaves to pursue another career opportunity. You can also rely on the software for accurate, timely financial processing.
Security
When you purchase BPA software from a reliable supplier, you know that your data is secure. Dedicated software automation companies can offer specialized security that isn’t always available to or practical for your company, especially if it’s a smaller business. Here at NextProcess, security compliance is a hallmark of our software. We’re an SSAE-16 and HIPAA- compliant provider with extensive security protocols to keep your data safe.
Efficiency
BPA software is highly efficient, and it makes the employees using it more efficient as well. With automation, you can streamline your whole financial workflow and provide employees with the tools needed to quickly process purchases, invoices, travel and expense receipts, and much more. The software can completely take over many routine processes, leaving your employees free to focus on tasks that require a human touch.
Flexibility
There’s a lot of freedom to customize BPA software. You’ll be able to work with your software supplier to customize the software solution to support your company’s policies and procedures. Plus, the software scales to your business needs. If your company starts growing or has seasonal upticks in business, the software adjusts automatically.
End-to-End NextProcess Solution
If you automate with NextProcess, you gain an additional benefit that doesn’t come with every BPA software solution out there. NextProcess offers the only suite of software with modules to power and simplify your capital project management, procurement and purchase orders, accounts payable, travel and expense, and payment disbursements. It’s a true end-to-end solution.
When you automate all your financial processes with software from the same supplier, you don’t need to worry about software conflicts. It also streamlines implementation and customer service. Plus, it’s easier for employees in different departments to collaborate since they can share data across software modules. In addition, our software is fully compatible with all major ERPs, including SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics.
If you’re interested in seeing how BPA software can help your company, contact us and set up a free demo. We’ll be happy to answer your questions and give you a no-strings-attached demonstration of how the software works.