Business process automation (BPA): Guide, steps, and best practices

Business owners have a lot to juggle every day—and it’s always changing.

Luckily, business process automation (BPA) tools can help businesses take care of time-consuming and repetitive tasks without devoting so much of their labor budget. 

Let’s take a closer look at what BPA is, how to implement it in your own business, and why adding it to your company’s structure can be a good move.

Jump to:

• Understanding business process automation (BPA)
• Business process automation types
• How to implement business process automation
• Navigate midsize business challenges and opportunities
• Business process automation FAQ

Understanding business process automation (BPA)

Business process automation utilizes digital tools and software to perform repetitive tasks that otherwise would monopolize workers’ time. The process can be customized to fit your business’s needs and to take the strain off of your team. 

Some common uses for BPA include:

• Generating invoices
• Managing inventory
• Providing customer support with chatbots

The goal of BPA is to save your company time so you or your employees can focus on tasks that take more effort, can’t be automated, or add more value to your company. 

The benefits of business process automation

Businesses that automate workflow can:

• Increase accuracy: Business automation platforms can automate the heavy lifting of processing payroll, like calculating taxes, processing forms, and reporting. Using payroll automation solutions, like QuickBooks, helps you reduce human error, which improves accuracy and saves time.
• Improve customer satisfaction: Using automation platforms to help manage customer service workflows is budget-friendly and efficient and eliminates human error.
• Accelerate growth: BPA helps ensure accuracy while giving you a holistic view of where you’re excelling, need to improve, and identify growth opportunities. Whatever goals you’re trying to meet, BPA reporting will help you get there more easily.
• Improve your employees’ experience: Employee onboarding automation can help reduce the number of time-consuming tasks and bring employees on board quickly, improving productivity and efficiency across the business.

Keep in mind that the exact benefits you’ll see will depend on the processes that you automate.

Business process automation types 

Business process automation is customizable to your business’s needs, but the task automation methods are largely the same across industries. Here are some of the most common methods you could use.

Rule-based automation

Rule-based automation is a type of BPA that applies human-made rules to computer programs to gather, sort, and interpret data to help large and medium-sized businesses complete certain tasks. This business process automation system lets you set different rules using “if-then” statements. 

Here are a few ways to use rule-based automation:

• Simplify payment collections: You could program your software to automatically send an invoice when a customer places an order. The rule you’d create would be something like this: If a customer places an order, then generate an invoice to collect payment. This can be an essential part of a comprehensive multi-entity accounting system.
• Hiring for a vacant position: You could use rule-based automation to cut down on work for your recruiters. Say you’re looking for an applicant with at least 10 years of experience. You could program your application-tracking software to weed out applicants with less experience.

Intelligent automation

Intelligent automation builds off of rule-based automation by using similar concepts while leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems like Intuit Assist. 

Rather than having to program every possible if-then situation into your software, you’re giving AI systems the autonomy to assess the data and make a decision based on each unique situation. It allows your software to automate more tasks and frees up more of your team’s time in more situations.

This type of BPA can work in dozens of situations, including:

• Inventory control: With intelligent automation, you can let AI assess orders and inventory levels to then determine if an order should be fulfilled, delayed, or refunded. You can use the same system to trigger orders to replace out-of-stock or low-stock inventory items without your team monitoring your backstock.
• Cross-channel marketing control: If you’re building marketing and advertising campaigns across different platforms, intelligent automation can help you streamline the approval process. It may even be able to help you create and post varied content for each channel based on your proposed schedule. 

Process mining

Improving your business’s processes can help you cut costs and streamline essential tasks. Though it’s possible to assess your company’s processes manually, doing so takes a lot of time and may not identify every area that can be improved. With process mining, you can automate that analysis and identify processes that aren’t as efficient as they can be. Sophisticated process mining may even be able to recommend ways to improve your business’s processes. 

Here are some ways that process mining may help your business:

• Double-check payments: With process mining, your computer can analyze recent transactions and identify duplicate payments quickly so you can fix the error. You can implement this as part of your project accounting efforts to track growth and measure performance.
• Manage orders: The sooner you can send products to your customers, the easier it is to maintain a positive customer experience. Process mining can help you monitor those orders and identify ones that might need attention for reasons like inventory issues, payment discrepancies, and shipping delays.

How to implement business process automation

Implementing a business process automation system may seem difficult, but it’s easier than you think. Just follow these steps:

1. Define your automation goals. Before you can implement a solid BPA system for your business, you need to consider what you want to automate. Take a look at your business’s main pain points and prioritize automating the tasks that take your team the most time. These are the tasks you’ll want to automate if at all possible.
2. Identify the target process. Think about the types of automation you’re most comfortable with. If you have a strong IT team, process mining or rule-based automation will be easy to implement. But if you want to get the biggest benefit out of automation in your business process, intelligent automation will likely be the best fit.
3. Establish process boundaries. Think about how you want to implement your automation and what you want it to accomplish. Be clear about your expectations to ensure the system meets your needs.
4. Map your current process. Take a long, hard look at how you’re currently handling those tasks. Map out each step of the process. This will give you a roadmap for your BPA and help you define clear roles for each automation.
5. Choose the right tools. Different programs and systems will do different things. Consider which tasks you’re looking to automate and invest in tools to help you accomplish your goals.
6. Try the tools out. Give your business time to adjust to the automation process and see how it works for your operation. You may need to try different tools down the line.
7. Make sure they’re worth the money. Automating tasks can save your business money, but for some companies, it may not save enough to justify the investment. Perform a cost-benefit analysis for each process you’re automating to measure your business’s performance and, if needed, revert to your normal methods for processes that aren’t saving you money. 
8. Monitor your processes. Once you have a clear system, monitor your processes over time. You may identify new processes that could benefit from automation and may find ways to improve tasks you’re already automating.

Key challenges of BPA and how to address them 

Though BPA can improve your company’s processes, it’s not always easy to implement or maintain. You'll likely encounter a few common challenges as you start utilizing automation in your business. 

Here are some of the most common challenges business owners face.

Resistance to change

Automating certain processes can feel like a major change for your employees who are used to things running in a certain way. You may find that some members of your team are resistant to change and less willing to embrace automation. This can make it harder to implement those processes. 

How to address: Consider highlighting the benefits of business process automation. For example, you may free up your team’s time to perform tasks they enjoy more. You may also consider giving your team raises. If they’re still resistant to change, consider hosting company-wide training sessions to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Data quality

Automation processes rely on clear, quality data. Unfortunately, the data you provide for the system may not be of a high enough quality to provide the systems with enough information for them to do their job. 

How to address: When rolling out your BPA plan, look at the types of data you’re using for the automation. Review it in detail. If anything is missing or isn’t detailed enough to provide your business process automation technology and tools with the information they need to work properly, see if you can provide more information for the tools to use. 

Using enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can help you gather the information you need.

Security and compliance

Some digital tools may send information to the developer. And some businesses may want or need to keep that information private, making it harder to implement a functional BPA plan. Worse, some businesses in high-compliance industries may not be able to use every digital tool available.

How to address: Instead of sticking to the same old processes, look at your organization’s security and compliance requirements. See if there’s a way to meet those requirements while still automating your processes. You may need to choose a different tool or work with your compliance team to make sure the tools you want to use can work with your company’s restrictions.

Navigate midsize business challenges and opportunities

QuickBooks Online Advanced can help fuel digital transformation at your organization using automation, so you have more time to focus on growth.

However, automating your business’s process with a BPA strategy is particularly beneficial for enterprise or mid-market businesses looking to scale sustainably. Choosing a more robust tool like Intuit Enterprise Suite can make all the difference.