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3 ways to optimize business process automation

Malcolm Ross, Senior Vice President, Product Strategy, Appian
August 5, 2013

Business process automation is a hot new trend that enterprises are taking advantage of to streamline workflow. These solutions take care of simple day-to-day operations automatically, allowing professionals to focus on more critical matters, time-sensitive issues and unexpected problems. Rather than having to handle these tasks in addition to "mindless" processes, employees are able to prioritize without slowing down overall workflow.

However, business process automation isn't as simple as investing in a system and letting it to its job. There are various considerations that companies have to make, including implementing the right business process management software to handle the tasks.

Related, yet separate from business process automation, Appian BPM software provides the foundation for automation as well as social collaboration, cloud support and enterprise mobility. It is the integration of all of these factors that can help companies optimize their business processes and ensure they are working to their full potential.

Collaboration

The ability to share and work together on processes has always been a cornerstone of enterprise operations. However, with the social media movement, businesses have been able to gain a new tool to add to their toolbox - digital collaboration support. With social business software in place, firms can streamline collaborative efforts by automating the "administrivia" and non-critical components that allow for collaborative efforts in the first place, allowing the workers to focus on getting their jobs done quickly and effectively.

Cloud

The addition of the cloud to the business world has sent up waves in almost every industry, and properly harnessing it can be a major boon for process automation. Rather than utilizing on-premise hardware and computing power to handle automation, companies can look to the cloud to provide for these tasks, freeing up their own infrastructure for the more critical uses. The cloud also provides redundancy, disaster protection and other advantages that firms can utilize to ensure their success with business process automation.

Mobile

Mobility trends are sweeping enterprises across the nation, and those that avoid adopting high-end mobile solutions often get lost in the shuffle. By utilizing mobile devices for BPM, companies are providing their workforce with accessible and flexible tools that can be used anywhere, not just in the office, bringing the optimization of automation efforts full circle.

Automation helps streamline workflow, but high-end business process management solutions optimize automation efforts themselves in order to ensure maximum outcomes.

Malcolm Ross

Vice President of Product Marketing

Malcolm Ross