Back office automation can help you take your business to the next level.
By automating repetitive tasks, you can free up time to focus on more important aspects of your business.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the ways back office automation can help you grow your business.
What Is Back Office Automation
Back office automation is a set of software that extracts, sorts and processes data in order to automate or streamline your business. Back office automation can serve as an extension of the front office.
It helps to improve the efficiency of your business by reducing human error and increasing productivity.
According to EY estimates, back-office automation may save organisations 20% to 60% of their baseline full-time employee (FTE) expenditures.
How To Automate Your Back Office
Before you can get started with back office automation, you’ll have to take some important considerations into account. The first thing you’ll have to do is set the scope of your project.
You’ll need to decide on which activities should be automated and which should not be automated. The project scope will depend on the budget you can allocate for it and how important each activity is.
If you want to automate all your back office activities, you’ll need a budget of at least $50,000 or more compared with a few thousand dollars that would be required when only a few specific tasks are automated. It is also important for you to think about what will happen if the project fails to deliver the expected results.
This would be the time when you can add more features to improve the performance of your back office or change the entire solution used for back office automation. It’s always a good idea to identify which tasks can be automated and which ones are better off handled by humans so you have a clear picture of what your company needs in this area.
According to one report, 60% of consumer unhappiness stems from the back office. It’s also important for you to check with your software provider on what level of integration between different applications is possible.
Your company may already have several applications in place, and you’ll want all of them integrated with new back office automation solutions that are put in place.
Back Office Automation Software
No matter how well prepared your back office is, if it isn’t fully automate, you will have a hard time improving your efficiency and lowering costs. First of all, you’ll need to consider which processes should be automated and which ones can stay manual.
Automation is not always the answer to improve your efficiency as it’s important to know whether automation is needed in the first place. The best back office automation software has all the features that you need for your business such as email integration for managing customers’ orders or support for multiple currencies.
It can also provide real-time data management so you’ll get instant access to important information about your supply chain every time you want it.
It is also believed that 10-20% of all transaction volumes in a contact centre are the consequence of back office execution difficulties.
Benefits Of Back-Office Automation
Robotic process automation (RPA) is an upcoming technology that has the potential to revolutionize business operations. RPA can automate tedious and time-consuming tasks that are currently performed by human resources, freeing up these employees to focus on more strategic tasks.
RPA is also scalable and can be easily implemented into existing business processes. There are a number of process automation tools available on the market, and businesses should carefully consider which tool is right for their needs.
A single accounts payable clerk may handle more than 22,500 invoices per year in firms that have implemented accounts payable automation, where at least 70% of invoices are received electronically and subsequently processed via automated workflow.
1. Reduction Of Manual Labor
The amount of work your employees have to do increases as the number of customers increase. This is especially true in small businesses where there are a limited number of resources as compared to large companies that have quite a lot more staff.
When you automate back office activities, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of manual labor required for each worker.
2. Enhanced Employee Performance
Back office automation provides an opportunity for your employees to use their expertise and experience in running the business. An automated back office can also allow them to pursue their career ambitions and create wealth for themselves before leaving the company after reaching retirement age.
Automating back office processes can provide a source of motivation for employees who want to become owners of their businesses as well as tool for training. This can be very helpful in fostering a culture of entrepreneurship.
3. Enhanced Customer Service Quality
With improved customer service, your customers are likely to continue buying from you. You’ll be able to offer them more accurate and timely payment methods, and make sure that the transaction is wrapped up in the shortest possible time.
Also, by reducing the number of errors and increasing accuracy, you’ll also get a chance to increase revenue through more sales over time.
4. Boost Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is a very important factor for your business. When you have an automated back office, there are several things that you can do to increase customer retention and reduce customer churn.
Customer feedback will help you improve the product quality and enhance the value of your brand. An improved product quality will also help you retain customers who already have a good relationship with your firm as they will stay loyal to trust you more as compared to other companies.
5. Higher Service Quality
When you automate repetitive tasks, you’ll be able to improve customer service quality as your employees will be able to concentrate on tasks that require a high level of expertise. Automating back office activities can help in reducing the time spent on low productivity activities like data entry.
Not only that, it can also make sure that your most valuable employees spend their time creating more value for the company.
6. Reduced Human Error
One of the valuable benefits of automation is that you don’t have to worry about human error when dealing with large amounts of data.
When humans handle data entry or information processing, they’re bound to make mistakes at times due to lack of focus or attention. You’ll be able to automate all these tasks so there are no chances of human errors.
7. Flexibility To Add New Customer Services Without Facing Heavy Downtimes
Today, businesses are bound by the terms and conditions of their suppliers and customers. If a commodity is very popular, there’s a high chance that each business you work for has specified what it can do or not do on that product.
Automating your back office activities will help you take advantage of this opportunity as you can create new services without facing any disruptions. You can add new products or services with full confidence in the knowledge that your back office will automatically process the data in the same manner every time.
8. Low Maintenance Cost
When you automate back office activities, there are no more chances of human errors. This means that your back office will only take care of processes that don’t require a lot of regular maintenance and attention.
This can save you a lot of money while allowing you to devote more time to building your business.
9. Improved Supply Chain Efficiency
In today’s business environment, the supply chain management is the key to business growth and profitability. When the supply chain management is improved with automation, you’ll only have to deal with a small number of suppliers instead of a big number as would have been required in the past when everything was manually managed.
10. Reduced Overhead Expenses
Automation can provide significant cost savings that allow you to allocate more resources to customers, marketing and other business activities. Using automation will reduce the number of employees needed as well as required office facilities and other costs that come with running a company.
Automation frees up time for you so you can focus on growing your business. You’ll be able to take advantage of this resource in order to build a more prosperous future for your business.
How Back Office Automation Can Help Your Business Grow
Office automation refers to the various computerized processes that are used to streamline the operation of an office. This can include anything from automated processes, such as data entry and storage, to back office automation tools, such as document management and workflow systems.
By automating manual processes, office workers can free up their time to focus on more strategic tasks.
According to Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends survey, 22% of the best-performing HR firms are presently or have recently embraced automation, compared to only 6% of the worst-performing organisations.
Today, back office automation can help you grow your business in many ways:
1. Improved Inventory Management
Inventory management requires the continuous monitoring of the inventory levels. When an employee checks the inventory and updates it on a regular basis, there are a number of chances for human error as some employees may either skip a line or enter an incorrect value in the inventory records.
With automation, you can forget about all these problems as every time your employee checks items in or out of stock, the system will automatically update its quantity. This will ensure that your company never runs short of items while also keeping track of your inventory on a real-time basis to avoid losses due to theft and other reasons.
2. Improved Customer Payments
Payments are sometimes delayed due to a lack of information about the customer’s chequing and banking account details. When using a Web-based solution such as Intuit Payroll, this problem can be easily solved as you’ll be able to provide your customer with the required information without any problems.
Also, these systems allow you to provide all the information needed for payments instantly, meaning that you can speed up your business processes for better performance and reduce errors at the same time.
3. Better Supply Chain Management
In business, it’s important to maintain a good relationship with all your partners and suppliers to ensure smooth delivery of products or services across the supply chain. When you automate inventory management and other back office activities, you’ll be able to gain access to more information about your suppliers.
For example, you can use various features such as automated invoice validation and supplier verification to ensure maximum control over your supply chain processes. This can help you make sure that everyone is playing by the rules so there’s a smooth functioning of the whole process from ordering products through to the final delivery at the destination location.
Final Note
According to the Deloitte poll, over half of HR global shared services executives believe RPA would save their companies 10 to 20%, with 9% predicting savings of 40% or more.
With the help of back office automation, businesses can benefit in many ways. You’ll be able to decrease overhead costs and boost efficiency for better profitability. Your company will develop better relationships with its suppliers and partners, and you’ll be able to handle the entire process from order management to payment processing.
If you want your business to develop properly, back office automation is an integral part of it. Remember that it’s important to have a strong back office so you can focus on putting in place other important activities without worrying about how things are running as automated systems will take care of all these tasks for you.
Last Updated on September 29, 2023 by Parina Parmar
