Should startups invest in Business Process Automation?

28th June 2021

Business process automation (BPA) involves taking complex processes within an organisation and utilising technology, applications and software to automate them, functionally taking them out of the hands of human staff. In essence, it is taking work that involves manual effort and digitising that effort.

It has become very popular, especially in larger businesses looking to improve their overall productivity and efficiency, but we don’t often consider whether BPA can benefit startups and smaller businesses just beginning to grow.

The truth is that there is much that BPA can do for businesses of all sizes and at all stages of their development. As with any business investment, putting money into BPA means really establishing where you need that investment. This means that with the right understanding of the business’ needs, startups can definitely benefit from BPA.

A variety of uses

Process automation can be applied to a truly wide variety of tasks depending on the needs of company. For example, some startups are in a phase of rapid growth early on, and could therefore benefit from an automated employee onboarding process that could minimise the heavy burden of managing the paperwork.

Of course, it may be the case that you can minimise the need for hiring and spending a large early outlay on staff by automating business critical tasks. This could include anything from invoices and accounts, to customer service and more.

Understand where you can improve

Getting BPA right is a complex process that involves really understanding the systems, procedures and processes that your company uses on a day-to-day basis. This is one of the reasons that implementing BPA effectively can be – at least initially – a little challenging for brand new startups. It is important to establish first where the chokepoints exist in terms of manual effort.

The biggest benefit of BPA is taking manual effort away from employees to be able to free them up to take on more complex and business critical tasks. It is vital that you take the time to establish where staff are using up their time, and automate processes in order to minimise this.

Preparing your business for growth

Startups often find themselves in a position where they grow quickly, but simply lack the time to manage all of the work they would like to take on. It might sound like a nice problem to have, but no business wants to turn away custom early on – especially if you simply lack the time to do it. This is where BPA can be hugely beneficial to startups.

Automated processes ensure that companies minimise the time spent on time-consuming manual tasks, and free them up to take on more valuable work.

Business Process Automation Services

There is a huge range of BPA services for all types of businesses including:

An investment for the long-term

It is important to consider the benefits for the business in the long-term. BPA actually conveys a huge range of advantages to startups over rivals and that can be the difference between a successful business and one that struggles to get off the ground.

It is certainly the case that automating processes can minimise repetitive tasks, reduce mistakes, and even make it easier for businesses to be compliant with a range of laws and restrictions. Perhaps more importantly, it can free up members of staff who would otherwise be forced to take on manual jobs.

If you are interested in earning more about process automation, or want to implement BPA at your startup, get in touch with the experts at Document Options today. We have years of experience helping businesses automate a wide range of their processes, and we would love to do the same for you.