What is Best Practice When Approaching an Automation Effort?

What is best practice when approaching an automation effort?

We get this question a lot. It is one thing to know that it is time to start automating, but another thing to know where to start.

It can be intimidating if you are just starting out with your first automation. Not to worry – it is actually a lot easier than it may seem initially.

We put together this guide to make the process easy. Just follow these easy steps for what is best practice when approaching an automation effort:

1. Define business processes.

   Every business has processes or ways of completing certain tasks. A business process is simply your organization’s way of doing something. Your business processes may involve phone calls, emails, or walking over to your co-worker’s desk. However informal it may be, these are all still processes and things that happen to take a task from beginning to completion.

2. Pick an automation approach.

   Many organizations choose to begin an automation effort focusing on one specific department. Others prefer to roll automation out company-wide, automating across all departments, one process at a time. The only “wrong” approach is trying to automate every task at once. Trying to do everything at once rarely if ever works, so just focus on one automation at a time. Aside from that, it really comes down to what works best for your organization’s specific goals. There is no wrong answer here.

3. Narrow your focus.

   Once you have identified your approach, it is time to narrow your focus and decide how you will prioritize which business processes to automate.

   You may want to focus on the most common business processes or perhaps the most tedious. You may feel particularly motivated to automate tasks that tend to have a higher margin of error or those that affect the most people. Any of these approaches are fine and good things to consider when prioritizing your approach.

   If focusing on the HR department, for example, you will probably find there are some fairly common tasks such as leave requests, payroll, and onboarding/offboarding. You may want to look at starting with one of those processes as they affect the HR department strongly and employees company-wide as well.

   Again, there is no wrong answer here. You just want to pin down some sort of rationale that you can use as your roadmap as you work through prioritizing the various business processes.

4. List processes.

   Now that you know how you will prioritize your approach,  make a list of each business process you may consider automating.

   Take at least a few days to go through and list each process employees engage in. Don’t hesitate to involve employees in the process as well. You can have them list each task as they go about their day.

   You may also find it helpful to ask for employee feedback on which processes they find the most time-consuming or repetitive as they may have insights you wouldn’t have considered. Also, having employees buy in to the automation process early on may be an added benefit when it is time to launch your solution.

   

5. Pick a process to start with.

   Now having narrowed your focus and also identified all the processes up for consideration, it is time to identify which exact process you would like to start with for your first automation effort. Once again, there is no wrong answer.

   Take our HR example from before. Perhaps we have decided to start with automating the leave request process since it affects the HR department as well as other employees.

   Whether you start with the simplest automation or the most complex, just getting started is a win.

6. Break it down.

   Next, let’s identify the exact steps involved in the process currently. For example, let’s take our request for PTO that we discussed earlier. Let’s say we have an employeed named Janet. Janet wants to request time off. Here is what that process may look like:

   1. Janet emails HR to find out how much PTO she has available.
   2. HR advises Janet she currently has 60 hours of available PTO.
   3. Janet emails HR requesting 40 hours PTO on specific dates.
   4. HR calls Janet’s boss to get approval on these specific dates.
   5. Janet’s boss approves her requested dates.
   6. HR emails Janet back, approving her PTO request.

7. Pick a tool.

   Congratulations! You are through the most tedious part of answering “What is best practice when approaching an automation effort?”

   Now you just need to pick a tool.

   Investing.com reports that “More than 95% of Fortune 100 companies trust Microsoft Azure.” They go on to explain, “Four out of every five Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Office 365” and Microsoft Teams users “jumped from 20 million in 2019 to 115 million in 2020.” It is safe to say the majority of businesses use Microsoft 365, Teams, and/or SharePoint so we will focus on that.

   Implementing a tool that integrates fully with the environment your employees already know and use is an important factor to consider as automation is only effective if employees actually use it.

   Something as simple as eliminating the need to log out of one system and into another can help a great deal. Simply being able to submit a request via Teams, for example, is an easy way to get employees on board and make sure your automation effort is successful.

   That’s exactly why we built NITRO Studio in M365, Teams & SharePoint. Learn more about our #1 business process automation solution here.

8. Implement & repeat.

   Congratulations! You now know what is best practice when approaching an automation effort.

   Now you can simply implement automation with the tool you selected, and repeat.

   If you would prefer to have an automation specialist guide you through this process, Crow Canyon Software is here to help. Business process automation has been our speciality for over 24 years and we truly enjoy helping others with our automation insights and experience. Contact us here to approach your automation effort with our full support and guidance.