When deciding which automation solutions to invest in first, start by considering the complexity of the processes you’re looking to automate and the capabilities of your organization.
Automation is the single best way to get your processes under control and, ultimately, transform your business. You know you need to automate your unmanaged, manual processes … or risk being left behind by your competitors, who are using automation to their advantage so they can focus on higher-value, customer-focused work.
But where do you start? We recommend you let the process lead the way.
Here’s what we mean by that: First, identify a handful of processes that would make your life easier if they were automated. Usually, these are processes that must be completed regularly, don’t require a lot of human insight or analysis, and take more time than you’d like. Second, get clarity around the complexity of the processes and the capability of your organization to handle their automation.
The value of automating complex processes
Often, people dip their toes into automation by starting with simple processes that affect their personal productivity: Things like automatically saving certain email attachments to their desktop or OneDrive, getting social media results for a specific keyword emailed to them every day, or attaching a Teams chat to a CRM contact. They’re usually straightforward, linear, and take less than a day to complete. Automating these processes will make an individual’s day-to-day work life easier, but won’t necessarily affect the flow of how work gets done across the organization.
Where organizations start to see the biggest return on their process automation investment is when they look for opportunities to automate business orchestration processes, which are generally significantly more complex.
These are cross-functional activities like employee onboarding, which heavily involves HR, IT, and a new hire’s direct manager; contract management and approvals across legal, finance, and lines of business; or quoting, invoicing, and approving discounts across sales and finance. They’re usually less linear, more reliant on decision or state-based tasks, and can take days, weeks, or months to complete. Because they require multiple people, they’re also more prone to bottlenecks, delays, and errors. Automating these processes can seem more daunting, but can also make a significant difference in how quickly, efficiently, and correctly work gets completed.
Then, consider capability.
The risk of overcommitting to heavy coding
Do your organization’s internal IT resources have the capability to implement, maintain, and scale a code-heavy solution? “Capability” in this situation isn’t just the ability or skill level of your employees, but their capacity. Some free process automation solutions require intricate coding to automate more complex processes, or require the oversight of technically knowledgable employees with deep insights into their product in the ecosystem to create all the workflows between the tools. Both scenarios mean that using a “free” tool ends up being far from “free.”
In these cases, the complexity of managing, integrating, and governing the process automation solution ends up outweighing the complexity of the processes themselves. For enterprise organizations with IT departments staffed by hundreds of engineers and admins, this could be an acceptable trade-off. But for midsize organizations with limited resources and bandwidth, a solution that requires coding for complex processes won’t be able to sustain the business-advancing automation you’re looking for.
It can be tempting to attempt complex, business-wide automation with a free platform from a familiar name, but for many organizations, doing so is a recipe for disaster. Committing to automation with a free platform means running the risk of getting stuck and paying a lot more than initially expected when your processes, go-to-market approach, or business needs get more complex.
Realize the value of company-wide process automation
While there are benefits to using free productivity tools for simple processes, a business orchestration solution like the no-code Nintex Process Platform can extend your automation efforts to drive real organizational change … without creating a bottleneck for precious IT resources.
If you try to rely solely on a code-heavy, IT-dependent tool for an effort that requires process documentation, management, and automation, you’ll run into roadblocks when you try to automate wider-reaching process like approval routing, employee onboarding and offboarding, quoting, invoicing, or any other process that requires branched logic.
But with a tool that can support complex needs like advanced forms logic, looping and redirects, and state machines, without adding to the IT project backlog, your process automation possibilities become truly extensible.
Don’t restrict your process automation efforts before they kick off in earnest because your “free” solution is unable to tackle the more complicated cross-system, cross-department work that will make a real difference in your bottom line. Explore a comprehensive process management and automation solution that gives you the power and flexibility you need to transform your business.
