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( votes)Business process automation is not state-of-the-art. Maybe 10 years ago a business might gain a competitive advantage from automating routine business processes such as accounts payable or financial reconciliation. But now those types of automation are table stakes. The new state of the art is making widespread automation easy to implement.
This distinction is worth noting because many businesses think they are ahead of the curve or at least keeping pace by automating key processes and using an enterprise resource planning solution. But they’re not.
Every business uses automation today, and most businesses of any significant size are running operations and financial management with ERP. What separates modern businesses with modern technology from trailing businesses using yesterday’s technology is the scope of automation. Modern ERP makes automation much easier to roll out, which means businesses on the leading edge are automating far more than what was standard even five years ago.
There’s nothing new about automation. What’s new is how easy automating a business has become.
The New Business Process Trend
The typical business uses ERP and automation, but roughly half of an employee’s time is still spent in spreadsheets and handling manual processes. This is a huge waste of time, and it represents the low-hanging fruit for added operational efficiency.
The problem is that setting up automation is hard.
Automating invoice payments, for instance, used to require expensive optical character recognition technology and a bunch of coding. Making an automated customer order workflow would require stitching together backend systems and defining complex field matching and data connections between accounting, inventory, and logistics.
These things were done in the name of operational efficiency, but setting them up was not easy. So only a relatively small percentage of business workflows took advantage of the system-wide automation potential within the typical ERP solution.
What has changed is that setting up process automation is now a lot easier with a modern ERP solution such as S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Some might say it is now crazy easy.
With the automation potential already there within most ERP solutions, the emphasis has shifted now to making this automation easy to roll out and thus more widely deployed.
With a modern, cloud-based ERP, many common automations now come standard out of the box. Businesses don’t have to design and invest in things like invoice payment or order processing automation because document extraction and turnkey automation come standard and pre-defined by default.
Automating routine processes that are particular to a line of business has also gotten much easier.
Setup wizards for automation are baked into all areas of the ERP so employees can quickly automate the monotonous tasks they used to perform in the system. Third-party automation routines can be downloaded and quickly added from the SAP Business Technology Platform. More complex automation can be defined in the drag-and-drop, low-code SAP Build development environment. The SAP Integration Suite easily connects ERP automation with third-party systems.
AI Makes Automation Even Easier
Along with easier automation setup, modern ERP solutions also leverage artificial intelligence to assist with automation creation.
Before a business even recognizes that a process can be automated, an AI assistant within the ERP solution can suggest automation opportunities worth exploring. This lowers the bar for automation even more, and uncovers operational efficiencies from automation that might have been missed.
With the help of AI and machine learning, modern ERP solutions also are assisting with the setup of these automations. In the near future, with the help of the AI engine agnostic SAP Joule assistant, an employee or department head can have the ERP solution reconfigure itself for a requested automation. Instead of having to do it themselves, employees can have the AI assistant write the code or configure the ERP system to meet the automation needs of the business for a given process.
Lower the Bar on Automation Creation
The more automation a business can employ, the faster it can move and the more staff time can be devoted to high-order tasks. Businesses know this. They just haven’t been able to leverage their ERP systems fully in most cases. That is why the cutting edge with automation today is making it much easier to automate tasks within ERP.
This trend can be likened to the Apple model. People rarely use iPhones because of cutting-edge technology, they use iPhones because Apple has made the technology easy to use. When a technology is easy to use, it gets used.
So don’t settle for manual processes and a few key automation. Today’s ERP solutions have lowered the bar on automation, making it possible for much wider levels of automation.
Learn more about this trend and discover how your business can get more efficient with automation by calling one of our experienced ERP consultants at (801) 642-0123 or writing us at info@nbs-us.com.
www.nbs-us.com | info@nbs-us.com | (801) 542-0123
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