There are dozens of processes that every employee must participate in during the typical work week. Review the budget, create the report, enter the new contract. When does it make sense to automate that process?
If the process happens every day all day, yes, automate it. If the process is complicated and prone to errors, yes automate that. What if the process only happens once a week or once a month? Let’s look at a few other key reasons to automate.
Having a flexible solution might help grow the company by attracting new business or expanding in a current area of focus. For instance, if a process requires a special skill set but those employees are difficult to hire, having a cloud based workflow might allow you to offer a work from home option.
Some processes have a very high value and might have a strict compliance requirement. For instance, FDA approval for a drug is a very costly process and requires strict security and compliance. Therefore, having a workflow process is important to ensure all steps were taken, reviewed and approved, even if only one drug a year is submitted.
Look at all of your processes and create a matrix of Frequency, Value, Risk, Compliance and Flexibility and weight each process from High to Low in each of these categories. You should be able to quickly spot the low hanging fruit and focus in on processes that deserve a full evaluation. At the end of the day, you will be able to justify some automation.
Compliance, risk, value and flexibility are all good reasons and may have little to do with tangible costs. The intangible cost of litigation or penalty for non-compliance might be very high. Of course, there always needs to be a cost benefit study, including an analysis of the current process and an estimate of the cost of any technology solution. Do some homework, it will pay off.
Millennia Group, LLC, www.mgdocs.com, info@mgdocs.com, (630) 279-0577 x122, www.collectdocs.com
