Author: Rachel Tilley
As the demands on organisations grow to be more compliant, more sustainable and more efficient, automating business processes will provide a variety of benefits right across the business.
Automating business processes, which can also be called business process automation or robotic process automation, is a way of streamlining operations and reducing costs by using technology to remove repetitive and manual tasks.
Not every process is a good fit for automation, but those that are time and labour intensive or prone or error should be looked at first.
Automation is fast becoming a highly valuable way of implementing business control and with DocuWare’s document management system, paper-based and manual processes are replaced with digital workflow solutions.
DocuWare stores all business data including emails, contracts, drawings, invoices, employee records and more, in a digital and central location. Once secure in the system, documents can be easily found with simple search functionality.
Any document process can be automated with the help of our software. Emails can be saved directly into a digital cabinet with users notified, invoices matched with POs, and completed digital forms stored and processed with no manual intervention.
You can also read our full guide to process optimisation here.
Document management and workflow automation no longer require lengthy, difficult planning. DocuWare can be up and running in just days, enabling you to digitise and automate business processes such as invoice processing and employee management.
At DocTech our team of in-house experts have a wealth of experience. We have helped with process problems and specific requirements for our clients who range in size and industry. Here we discuss the benefits when organisations automate business processes.
Too much paper, office space taken up with lever arch files, documents located across network folders or lost on desks are all problems we regularly hear about.
Information that is trapped on paper or duplicated can cause huge headaches for organisations in the form of missed payments, delayed orders and unhappy customers.
With DocuWare, paper use can be dramatically reduced by digitally storing any type of document. Scanned invoices, drawings, emails and office files are stored into a single and secure electronic file cabinet.
Knowing exactly where to look and with search results back in seconds, no time is wasted looking in multiple locations to find the information you need.
Data is indexed when stored meaning it is categorised and saved by document type, name, date etc, and is the first step in being able to automate business processes.
Information can’t be lost, misfiled or named incorrectly. When DocuWare is set up, you decide the naming conventions for your documents. A purchase order can only be saved as a purchase order for example, not PO, purchasing order or any other misspelling.
Readily available, accurate data is key. There is so much information flowing through a business at any given time – the number of orders received, stock levels, invoices out for payment – whatever it may be, knowing you have the latest data is vital.
Most businesses realise that paying a human to enter information from a document into a system is not good value for money and comes with potential typing errors.
Whilst business processes differ in all organisations, they share important requirements in terms of efficiency and compliance. A good data capture solution can enable these common denominators to guide the extraction of key data to kick start digital workflows and enable the automation of business processes.
Accurate document capture is a key feature of DocuWare and is used by many of our clients to start their document processes.
When a document is scanned in, Intelligent Indexing extracts the key information and saves it as index fields. Invoice information such as supplier name, reference numbers and date are captured and a user can use that same information to search and recall the document when needed.
The more DocuWare is used for data capture, the better it gets, learning where information is placed on the page and remembering it for next time. Automating data capture enables business processes to flow more smoothly and organisations have the confidence to know that information is right from the start.
DocuWare can integrate with any other third party system enabling data to seamlessly flow through the business. Standalone solutions that don’t interact with one another can create information silos and extra work for staff to keep each system up to date.
Manual data entry is error prone, slow and let’s face it, boring. If an employee is spending hours a week transferring data from a document into a business system – what other more productive work could they be doing?
Once stored in DocuWare, information can be pushed into any other application such as HR, Finance, ERP or CRM systems enabling further automation of business processes.
With employee on-boarding for example, new starter forms can be completed digitally and when submitted by the user, the information stored automatically into DocuWare. Not only can any future form the employee fills in be auto-populated, saving them time, but their details can also be pushed into any HR or Payroll system. This level of business process automation reduces manual typing for HR or Finance teams.
Having the same or similar information stored in multiple systems means it’s hard to know which system holds the most up to date data. This presents compliance issues, audit problems and reporting errors.
With automated business processes, DocuWare can help your organisation easily manage exceptions. Digital workflows within the software can define what needs to happen in your processes when certain situations arise.
Invoice amounts may require approval from a Finance Director or a project scope needs to be signed off by a Project Manager. In these circumstances, pre-fined rules will be set up on implementation of DocuWare. If an invoice exceeds a set amount, a task will be created and the Finance Director notified. Likewise when a project scope is saved in the system, a Project Manager will be emailed to say their input is required.
Within the process workflow, time limits can be set. If a document hasn’t been approved after a week, a reminder can be sent. Alternatively, a new task can be sent to another approver who’s next in line. This means processes don’t stop when staff are ill or on holiday. It is a level of business process automation that cannot be achieved with paper.
Our clients regularly tell us how much DocuWare has helped to automate business processes. We often hear just how much time the system saves staff and how it has alleviated the pressure felt during busy periods.
“Our customer services team achieved a time saving of approximately 15 hours of filing per week”
Information Systems Manager, Manchester. 
DocTech are the UK and Ireland's most experienced DocuWare partner, with a partnership spanning over 25 years. We don’t outsource any of our work ensuring all our implementations meet our own high standards.
We know the problems caused by manual, labour intensive work and just how much automating business processes removes these problems.
If your organisation is facing document related challenges in any department, we’d welcome the opportunity to speak with you about how we can help with business process automation.
