As digital technologies have seamlessly integrated into our workforce, they've propelled us into an era of efficiency and intelligence. The journey has been almost instantaneous and benefits abundant. Yet, there are still organizations out there riddling their processes with manual checks and repetitive, routine tasks. So, it just makes sense for us to start working in a way that fits both technology and the needs of human workers. Where does that bring us? To our favorite topic: automation!

What Is Workforce Automation?

Workflow automation is the use of automation software technologies to handle the workflows and processes in an organization.

When we talk about automation technologies, we mean intelligent automation (IA), which is made up of different cognitive technologies like robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), optical character recognition (OCR) and so on.

Not every task needs to be done manually. By deploying these technologies in your workflow, it frees up your skilled employees to spend time on other value-added, complex activities. Think of it this way, automation helps you use your talent in a much smarter and strategic manner.

Examples of workforce automation

You’re probably already dabbling in some workforce automation solutions or come into contact with a few as technology keeps rolling out new ways to streamline our work. Here are a few common workplace automation examples:

• Customer service: The use of chatbots and email automations to support your customer service team, also known as customer experience automation. Chatbots can point customers to the right department, gather qualifying information or route to an agent. This saves your agents time transferring calls around or gathering basic information. Email automations also helps your agents follow up with customer enquiries quickly.
• Human resources: You can have office automations for several workflows and business processes in HR, such as onboarding, offboarding, payroll, etc. Digital workers can help HR teams streamline the entire process, removing any manual, tedious tasks so that your HR team can focus on more strategic initiatives and interactions.
• Finance and accounting: Financial teams can employ automation for tasks like data entry, invoice processing and reconciliation. Automated software can categorize expenses, generate financial reports and even detect fraudulent activity in real-time, reducing the time and effort required for manual processing from teams.
• Marketing and sales: Marketing and sales automation can support lead generation, nurturing, engagement activities. For example, you can use customer relationship management (CRM) automation integrated into your CRM software to automatically capture lead information, score it based on criteria and follow up with personalized communications.

What’s the aim of workforce automation?

There’s a misconception that workforce automation means all human workers will be replaced with robots. This isn’t the case — far from it actually. Instead, workforce automation is here to help human workers be better at their jobs.

Not all jobs need to be done by skilled professionals, like data entry, data copying and reconciliation. These types of tasks take humans a lot of effort for little reward. But for digital workers? It doesn’t require much effort at all. In fact, they can do these types of jobs in seconds, more accurately and non-stop. Human workers can then use their time more productively, efficiently and effectively.

Benefits of Workforce Automation

One of the most widely recognized benefits of workforce automation is how it improves employee experiences. Deploying workforce automation allows employees to focus on less menial, brain-draining and repetitive tasks, and gives them more time to focus on more valuable and strategic projects. Other benefits:

Increased efficiency and productivity

Repetitive and manual tasks are highly suitable tasks for automation. By delegating these types of tasks to automation, it reduces the human effort and time it takes to complete them. This streamlined approach not only accelerates processes but also empowers workers to make the most of their time, boosting overall employee productivity.

Saves costs

By automating tasks that would otherwise require manual labor, organizations can reduce their labor costs. Additionally, there are hidden cost savings by mitigating the need for reworking errors and fines due to non-compliance.

Improved compliance

Having an automated workforce support your human workforce can be extremely beneficial from a compliance standpoint. Automation can enforce standardized processes and procedures, reducing the risk of human errors, duplications and non-compliant work slipping past. Furthermore, digital workers meticulously log everything they do for simplified auditability.

Scalability

A sudden increase or spike in workload? Automated systems can easily scale up or down to accommodate fluctuations in work without the need for additional human resources to support your team. This means your workforce can seamlessly adapt to changing business needs without the added stress.

Improved customer experience

All these other benefits trickle down and can also be passed on to your customers for improved customer satisfaction. Automation helps make interactions between your business and customers more efficient, personalized and smooth. Like our chatbot example earlier, that can help get employees the information they need more quickly. Human employees also have more time and support to approach customers more effectively.

How To Implement Workforce Automation

Here are six steps we recommend following to successfully implement automation in your organization:

1. Find processes to automate.
2. Get organization-wide buy-in.
3. Choose the right automation software.
4. Develop an implementation plan.
5. Test your solution.
6. Rollout and transform.

For workforce automation specifically, ensure you address the following questions:

• What business needs or processes do I need to address?
• How do I prepare my people?
• How do I select the right automation tools?
• How will I split the roles and responsibilities?
• How can I track success?

We cover all this and more in our IA implementation blog, or you can download our step-by-step automation guide.

Automate Your Workforce With SS&C Blue Prism

Workforce automation is a great strategic initiative to help your workforce be better, it’s the logical next step to take if you’re growing your business. By streamlining tasks and freeing up valuable time, workforce automation not only enhances efficiency and effectiveness but also equips your workforce to be more empowered than ever before.

Start your automation journey today.