Getting more done faster and with fewer errors

According to 42% of business leaders, tasks get completed faster with process automation than when completed manually. In fact, 70% of business leaders believe they could save up to 30 hours every month with workflow automation, while nearly 80% believe that employees would save 60 hours a month.

Almost a third of business leaders believe that automating tasks would reduce labor costs or enable the rerouting of effort to value adding activities, this is because automation reduces administration and cuts down repetitive tasks. On top of that, 40% of business leaders believe that digitizing document processes boosts employee productivity, meaning more high-quality work gets done in fewer hours. But that’s not all. Automatic validation means that incorrect data isn’t moving through the workflow. This reduces the extra time staff needs to remedy wrong information. Plus, automatic routing means staff no longer have to spend time manually delivering paperwork or chasing approvals. All these things considered, smaller teams can do more work, which reduces the need for large staffing budgets.

Manual processing is littered with errors. Not only do people fill forms out with the wrong information, but it can also be difficult to read handwriting. Staff members also make mistakes when entering data into systems. Errors does not only lead to delays in processing but can also result in compliance issues. Plus, if errors go unchecked, you’ll see poor outcomes at the end of the process. According to half of business leaders and employees, automation can help solve this issue by reducing manual errors. 38% agree that automated workflows result in better product quality.

Clunky approval processes slow down entire workflows. When manual approvals are needed, staff often spend hours delivering documentation by hand and chasing approvers. Digitization and process automation streamlines approval processes. Not only does automatic routing send documentation to the right approver based on custom logic, but approvers can also sign documents online thanks to e-signature technology. To prevent delays, automatic approvals within thresholds and notifications that alert approvers to new documentation, while reminders automatically signal that approval is still pending.

The only way to scale manual processes is to hire more people or increase each person’s workload. However, when you scale manual processes, you need to deal with an increase in errors. By automating workflows, scaling becomes easier. According to a report by Deloitte: “Organizations that have achieved scale are those with a clear vision, strategy, and approach to capturing value from automation.” Automatic workflows enable more repetitive tasks to occur at once, meaning less human labor is needed while processes still complete quicker. With much higher efficiency levels, it’s easier to increase the output of these systems without incurring huge jumps in staffing costs or significant feedback from errors.

Low hanging fruits of interdomain workflows

Most organizations have seen the value of automating internal workflows ranging from invoice management to staff on- and offboarding. Many have moved on to also automate core processes where the benefits and cost reduction is easy to calculate. The next frontier of similar low hanging fruits lies in the intersection between different organizations, what is known in IT-architectural terms as interdomain communication. Implementing smart workflows that leverage logic for information routing and decision making has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency and quality of work for entire industries.

One key difference between automation of internal processes and sharing data between organizations is the inherit lack of trust and legal responsibilities of the parties involved. This is one of the reasons that enterprise blockchains are best of breed technology for the use case. By agreeing on cryptographically signed smart contracts as well as creating immutable log of actions taken between organizations, within the privacy of the interacting parties, creates perfect conditions for collaboration.