SymQuest Tech Talk

How Workflow Automation Can Increase Business Efficiency

Written by Rick Zampini | November 23, 2020

Optimizing costs and increasing efficiency is a continual challenge in the business world. Companies want to get the most productivity out of their time and employees, but it can be a hurdle to squeeze more out of already hard-working employees and established work practices.

The solution to efficiency problems, however, doesn't lie in how hard your employees are working, but rather what they are working on. Workflow automation can take the busywork out of the hands of your trusted employees and give them the opportunity to be more productive on tasks that really move your business forward.

Benefits of Automated Workflow Solutions

There are many benefits to implementing automated workflow solutions in your organization from saving time, to increasing document security measures.

Automate Manual Processes

As employers find new ways to increase employee productivity in a changing workforce, oftentimes too much focus is put on communication rather than actual tasks that their team is doing. While communication solutions are important, employees still spend much of their time searching for documents and manually processing routine documents.

Automated workflow solutions handle filing, requests, claims, assignments, and routine emails on the schedule and with the specific requirements you want. If employees are spending their time on tasks that could easily be automated by document management services, that's time wasted that could be applied to more essential tasks, and time wasted equates to money wasted. Gartner estimates that businesses can see a 40% document-related cost deduction after implementing a document management system. These cost savings can make a big difference for a business's bottom line. 

Automating these processes not only allows employees to get more substantial work done, but less tedious busywork for employees means a happier, more engaged workforce.

Simplify Document Storage

Anyone who has worked in an office environment understands the pain of document storage. Cloud storage solutions help keep things organized, but if employee practices for organizing digital documents are inconsistent, it can be as frustrating as tearing through a file cabinet to find an out-of-place file. This problem can be further exacerbated when multiple employees are responsible for filing documents, which can create harmful inconsistencies.

Implementing workplace technology solutions such as document management services can be a crucial step in ensuring that your document organization is simple, organized, and easy to use. Less time looking for out of place documents or determining where the best place to store documents means that your employees have access to the tools they need. Automation software can deliver consistent results without human error causing damaging setbacks and mistakes.

Increase Document Security

The security of your business's documents protects company assets, employees, and clients, alike. Oftentimes, however, human error can be the largest cybersecurity threat posed to your document library.

Document management services are designed to provide consistent security for all documents contained in your files. Security for different categories can be customized specifically how you want it, meaning that company interests are never at risk because of forgotten encryption or other employee negligence. Employees make mistakes but automated workflow solutions take that risk out of your document security. This improves the security of your entire file system and in turn, allows IT personnel to work on more substantial matters, rather than spending their time chasing down human error in storage to eliminate security risks.

Improve Teamwork and Collaboration

As teams are increasingly disconnected by remote work and multiple workplace locations, communication on collaborative projects can pose real challenges that threaten to decrease efficiency. Especially during the current pandemic where employees are working from home, automated workflow solution software can help with the challenge of our changing workforce.

Real time communication between team members is absolutely necessary to deliver high-quality results. Most workflow automation software offers internal communication solutions so that team members can be automatically notified when phases of a project are done, or when necessary documents are uploaded. Dedicated communication channels within software offers teams the ability to communicate without having to continually reach for the phone or repeatedly open up their inbox. Taking the tedious challenges of collaboration off employees' plates opens their time to do what they do best - collaborate with their teams to deliver great results.

Using Workflow Automation For Your Business

Workflow automation can revolutionize the way your workplace functions. Taking mundane tasks out of the hands of employees eliminates wasted time, inconsistencies, and human error from the equation that can cause inefficiencies to dominate a company's productive output.

Controlling how much time your employees spend on routine tasks that can easily be automated by document management services and other workflow solutions can increase collaborative output, efficiency, security, and employee happiness. Your employees work hard for you. The solutions to get more out of your workforce isn't to demand more production from your loyal employees, but rather to acquire the tools so that they can spend more time on needed tasks and less time on busywork. Thankfully, those tools already exist. Document management services and workflow automation can help your business increase productivity by working smarter rather than harder.

If you need a place to start bringing new automated efficiency to your company, automation experts are available to help. Don't fall behind the competition in efficiency, stay up to date with workflow automation.