For many companies, processing documents can take up a significant portion of your employees’ time – but it doesn’t have to. With today’s digital technology, document workflow automation can alleviate this burden, reducing your costs by as much as 90% for these tasks. To realize these benefits, you first need to select the optimal tasks to be automated.
Identifying Processes for Automation
Typically, the processes that will benefit most from workflow automation are paper-heavy tasks, such as in departments including accounting and HR. With digital filing, streamlined processes, and other technology, your tasks can be done more quickly, leaving employees to do more important tasks. At the same time, you can easily obtain information to help better manage your business and maintain regulatory compliance.
Your Managed Print Services provider can help you by deploying software to analyze your company’s paper use and determine which departments and tasks are clogging up your system. Automating these tasks often gives you the best return on investment.
Drill Down
Once you’ve identified the tasks to be automated, you want to drill down to their basic components to help with the automation process:
- What types of documents are you processing, and in what format?
- How do you want them stored and distributed?
- What volume of documents do you need to process?
- Is your current system capable of automating these processes?
- How much human involvement is acceptable?
- What management information do you want to receive?
The answers to these questions will guide your automation process. Some tasks may be able to be fully automated and stored digitally, while others may need employees to enter data, approve the process at various stages, and provide a printed report. Your MPS provider is a good resource for assisting you in realizing the most benefits with your current infrastructure, and guiding your automation choices for the future.
Document workflow automation can reduce errors, improve regulatory compliance, and reduce costs by as much as 90% for certain tasks. Carefully consider your business operations and desires to get the most benefits out of process automation.
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