Business Process Automation For All
At Nobilix, our mission is to help businesses succeed without pushing them into unnecessary expenses. That’s why we’re eager to share strategies that any company, regardless of size or budget, can implement quickly to achieve cost savings and operational efficiency—without the need for lengthy projects, expensive purchases, or outsourced labor. Business Process Automation (BPA) is one such approach that you’ve likely heard of, but did you know that many impactful automations can be implemented at little to no cost? Whether you’re a small business or just beginning your automation journey, there are affordable practices available to help you save time and boost efficiency. If the term is new to you, BPA is the use of technology to automate routine tasks, reducing manual errors and allowing your team to focus on higher-value activities, while delivering a fast return on investment. Below, we explore the "low-hanging fruit" of BPA—cost-effective, easy-to-implement tools that can transform your operations quickly.
Third-party Automation Tools (RPAs)
Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Despite the sophisticated name, RPAs are actually a very simple and accessible digital toolset that can be leveraged to accomplish a seemingly infinite number of use cases. In their most basic form, RPAs are essentially bots that IT teams can quickly implement which emulate the way humans interact with technology systems. Things like data entry, business workflows, approvals, compliance reports, payroll processing, and invoice generation are some of the many ways companies use RPAs to streamline operations. Moreover, entry-level RPA subscriptions can be found as low as $100/month and the learning curve on RPA tools is pretty shallow meaning members of your IT team can ramp up and become proficient relatively quickly.
Example use cases:
Employee Onboarding: When a new employee is hired, the HR department typically handles numerous tasks such as entering employee details into various systems (payroll, benefits, IT, etc.) and setting up various accounts like chat, email, and CRM. RPAs can be leveraged to automate this process by pulling relevant data from onboarding forms and inputting that data into the systems on demand.
Invoice Processing: A company receives invoices via email which then need to be manually validated with its respective purchase order before it can be pushed downstream for payment. In this case, an RPA can be quickly developed to pull data such as Vendor IDs and Invoice amounts from invoices as they arrive by email to validate them for payment. Next the RPA will send valid invoices to the relevant accounting team member or payment system and invalid invoices generate an email alerting the accounting team of an inconsistent invoice.
RPAs are the single most powerful automation tool in the CIO toolbox. Also, because RPAs directly augment manual processes, the ROI math is pretty straightforward:
(Monthly hours spent on task * hourly cost of labor) - Monthly RPA Cost = Monthly Savings.
You’ll find it doesn’t take seismic adoption to provide major cost savings.
Tools you already have and probably didn’t know
95% of businesses subscribe to either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 so it’s probably safe to assume your organization is invested in one of these two tool suites. Both platforms provide a scalable, one-size-fits-all, business hub most commonly used for email, document management, shared calendars, and virtual meeting space, however, each suite also has some powerful (and well-hidden automation tools) your organization could take advantage of. If this sounds new to you, please allow us to introduce Google Apps Script and Microsoft Power Automate. Google Apps Script and Power Automate provide IT administrators the ability to implement some very useful automations within the ecosystem of your Office productivity suite. These tools are helpful for clerical and administrative automations such as automated reporting, document management, and bulk data entry/extraction.
Example use cases:
Automated Document Backup: Many industries, such as finance and healthcare, are subject to strict data governance policies requiring certain documents to be backed up. As documents pile up over time, it can be easy for some to slip through the cracks and not get backed up according to industry policy. For this example, a small Google Apps Script can be written to automatically copy files from the source folder to the backup folder daily ensuring that any new or modified files are backed up.
Financial Report Generation: A company tracks its financial data including revenue, expenses, and profit margins for various lines of business on an Excel Spreadsheet stored in Sharepoint. Each month, they need to generate financial summary reports for board members and investors highlighting key performance metrics. A Power Automate flow can easily be created to compile the financial data from the spreadsheet, produce the relevant performance metrics then format the data into a PDF or Word Doc for distribution.
The two significant differences between Apps Script and Power Automate are pricing and implementation. In terms of pricing, Google provides Apps Script for free to all Workspace subscribers whereas Microsoft charges an additional $15/user/month for each user in your organization that needs it. Regarding implementation, this is where the two tools differentiate the most. Power Apps uses a no-code approach letting admins create automations via drag-and-drop workflows. Apps Script is a script-driven platform that requires admins to provide small script snippets for execution. The silver lining with Apps Script is that you can handle most operations without writing too much script and Google provides a public repository containing dozens of scripts your team can quickly leverage at no cost.
Back Office Tools
No one will be surprised to hear that most of the Enterprise-grade back office tools come nested with a treasure chest of automation capabilities. Think SAP S4/Hana, Salesforce, Oracle ERP, ServiceNow, and all the other high-end products from tech blue chips. Great for big companies with 7 and 8-figure IT budgets, but impractical for most small and mid-sized businesses. If you’re working at an SMB, you probably have a combination of the more cost-aware and lightweight back office tools such as Monday, Jira, Trello, Hubspot, Asana, Navan, or Zoho to name a few. Often companies invest in these tools to aid in business operations as they scale but they’re purchased tactically to address a specific function overlooking some of the lesser-marketed automation features. For example: a company may purchase Hubspot to give their sellers an opportunity to organize better using CRM, but they may not know that their Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) can use that same platform to smartly automate their cold email or Social Media campaigns. Alternatively, a service company could be using Zoho People to help HR manage timesheets, compliance with Labor laws, and employee lifecycle, but they might not be aware they can integrate Zoho with their accounting platform to automate client invoicing based on billable hours recorded in employee timesheets.
When you’re trying to ascertain areas where you can automate back-office processes using your existing tools, take the following factors into account:
Inventory: Tools stack up quickly over time. It may seem simple, but be sure you have an authoritative list of the technology products being leveraged across your organization.
Feature Assessment: For each tool or platform your company is using, perform a review of each platform’s present-day capabilities to ascertain what features are being used and what might have been missed. You may also discover that tools have evolved since you initially subscribed and now offer additional capabilities included in your subscription.
Integration: Nearly all back office tools come with native integration capabilities with other common tools. Some of the biggest efficiency gains from automation happen when tools can pass data from one platform to the next. A common example is the integration of CRM and ERP tools: this simple configuration tweak could your organization the opportunity to manage client/customer relations from lead to invoice payments without having to ferry data between business systems. Investigate the native integration capabilities of your tech stack and you’re likely to find room to optimize.
Much of this will boil down to proof-of-concept. Once you’ve narrowed down areas that can be automated, try them in a controlled environment or with a small sample. Sometimes platform automation capabilities aren’t quite as robust or configurable as companies as advertised so you want to prove it works before committing to it.