Go Green with Document Management

How People & Processes Work Together for Better Business Outcomes

If you’re a business owner, you and your staff have developed certain activities and tasks that are designed to accomplish your business goals.  These business processes can be visualized as a flow chart of steps and are often included in daily activity details of internal job descriptions. 

 All businesses have business processes, whether they are documented or not.  Some business processes are industry specific, but many business processes are applicable regardless of the industry.  For instance, a manufacturing assembly process is likely to be specific to a product (attach widget A to widget B before tightening screw C), while accounts payable processes are similar across all industries (match the invoice with the appropriate PO, secure authorization, cut the check).

In theory, business processes sound simple – a series of steps that results in a specified outcome.  But in practice, it’s not always that easy.  However, there are challenges...

Are You Confused about Business Processes?

Introduction

There’s a lot of talk today about business processes.  We throw around terms like Business Process Improvement; Business Process Outsourcing; Business Process Management; Business Process Optimization; Business Process Automation, just to name a few.  But, just what are we talking about when we refer to business processes? While a “process” is defined as a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a goal, the definition of a business process is a bit more refined.

How to Improve Business Processes

If you're a business owner who has decided that it's time for your business to "become more productive," then we have news for you.  It's going to take a lot more than wishful thinking to turn your business into a productivity machine.  

Let's look at what increase productivity really means.  Increased productivity is a broad term meaning that your employees and your departments are putting out more "products" more quickly (and hopefully at lower costs, so the bottom line improves). It doesn't matter whether the "products" are widgets produced on a manufacturing line or financial reports from your accounting department.  Every employee, every department has a mandate to produce.

A desire to increase productivity and reduce costs is a great place to start, but without an end goal and a concrete plan, that's all it is -- just a desire.  It's rather like saying "I'm going to lose weight -- or exercise more.  Without a specific goal and a workable plan to get there it's not going to happen. 

“As companies seek to do more with fewer resources, technology investments can be a valuable way to make existing staff more productive.”

– Rebecca Wetteman, Vice President, Nucleus Research

BPA: Automating Manual Processes

Just how much would your business grow if you could help customers with process automation? Business Process Automation (BPA) is the umbrella term for software applications that help organizations streamline business processes. BPA leverages imaging and workflow applications, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Automation (IA) to automate manual tasks. RPA utilizes software robots to do standard routine tasks and IA leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to handle more complex tasks. Curious what these terms mean and how they apply to the technology you sell? Read on as we dive into detail.

Outsource to Improve Your Business Processes

What’s your core business?  Accounting?  Legal?  Medical?  No matter what it is, we’ll bet that a large percentage of your employees’ time is taken up with tasks that are not directly related to your core business…tasks like direct mail, invoicing, maintaining personnel records and a host of other processes that are necessary to keep your business going, but that do nothing to improve your bottom line. 

Smart companies are learning that by hiring a business process outsourcing company to manage their internal documents, they no longer have to spend valuable time tracking down the correct invoice, resale certificate, HR record, or any other document. While it’s true that most of today’s documents are created digitally, many companies still have file cabinets filled with old paper documents. Whether digital or paper, most organizations find that managing all of the data contained in these documents is an onerous task. 

BPI Challenges (and Solutions)

For many companies, approaching BPI is a bit like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.  Essentially, the parable states that the way you perceive a situation is based upon your viewpoint. 

This is particularly apropos when observing the internal workings (business processes) of any organization.  Your viewpoint depends upon the department in which you work and the tasks which you perform.  Management’s viewpoint is different from employees’. 

Making Sense of Business Process Solutions

Business Processes appears to be the latest buzzword for a whole host of industries and markets.  While it's today's "hot topic," the concept has been around for quite a while, according to Wikipedia:

An important early (1776) description of processes was that of economist Adam Smith in his famous example of a pin factory. Smith described the production of a pin in the following way:

One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make the head requires two or three distinct operations: to put it on is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another ... and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufacturies are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometime perform two or three of them.

Process Improvement and Paperless Technologies

“There’s gotta be a better way!”

Those were the words that the manager of one large organization uttered when he described the way his department handled the maintenance and updates of crucial insurance information for their clients. 

Here’s the way the system worked: 

• Every year, prior to the anniversary of the insurance, letters were created in a word processing system to remind the insured to renew their yearly policies.
• Two copies of the letter were printed out.
• One was mailed via US post office to the client.
• One was sent to a service that scanned the letter and saved the file electronically, as a permanent record.

Yes, you read that correctly…

The letters were generated electronically, printed onto paper, mailed and then scanned back into electronic form on another system.   

 Cloud Technology Improves Business Process Efficiency

What CEO isn’t concerned about business productivity and process efficiency?  Nearly all agree that an organization’s success is dependent upon productivity and efficiency.  And, while there may be many different strategies used by companies to achieve success, the bottom line always hinges upon the organization’s ability to successfully execute the chosen strategy.  To this end, businesses need engaged and highly productive employees executing goals that are aligned with the organization's strategic objectives.

Following this logic, if execution is the key to a successful business—is there a way to harness technology to help increase your business productivity for greater execution on your strategic goals? How do you know your business alignment and people performance are working at optimal levels to maximize business productivity resulting in the best possible results?