The pandemic has impacted business priorities irrevocably and in far-reaching ways. Suddenly businesses found they needed to pivot on new technologies to respond rapidly to the changing factors in the market, customer & employee requirements, and new priorities. And automation technologies enabled organizations to meet the demands of the unprecedented times. Consequently, Business Process Automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) emerged among the few winners from this year’s economic turbulence. While RPA injected speed into processes and ensured resource optimization; BPA enabled organizations to balance employee wellbeing with high productivity.
Why SharePoint BPA matters?
Today, Microsoft SharePoint is used by more than 250,000 organizations around the world to strengthen their collaboration and information management. SharePoint is intertwined with most business-critical processes. As a result, the organization-wide implementation of automation can’t be complete without automating your SharePoint based business process. While SharePoint is glorified as an Intranet, information management, and enterprise collaboration solution, but it can be utilized by organizations to automate their essential business processes too.
For most, SharePoint BPA is all about workflows. Such solutions have been around for some years and have enabled organizations to streamline and accelerate their business processes. However, modern No-code SharePoint application development solutions have opened new avenues and helped organizations reimagine SharePoint BPA. Such solutions have empowered users to build SharePoint applications without any coding and IT dependencies. Thereby, such solutions have simplified and accelerated SharePoint app development, enabling organizations to meet their rapidly evolving business needs. With that in mind let us explore most prominent benefits of automating SharePoint business processes.
Benefits of SharePoint BPA
#1: Increase Productivity
The automation of SharePoint business processes reduces the time needed to complete daily tasks. This can enhance productivity across all mundane tasks, with the side benefits of freeing up employees’ time. Employees can use this saved time to concentrate on other complex and revenue-generating activities.
#2: Reduce Time & Costs
Manual tasks, essentially need to be performed one at a time and at a much slower pace than the automated tasks, leading to extra costs. Automation allows organizations to accomplish tasks utilizing fewer resources and in considerably less time.
#3: Streamline Communication
When employees try to pass on information through emails or conversations, there is a high probability of certain relevant details getting lost in translation. An automated system serves as a centralized platform for employees to access and find the information required for the successful completion of their tasks. Updates and documentation are recorded and managed so that all the information remains current. Controls remain in place to prevent overlaying of information and for role-specific access.
#4: Minimize Errors & Inconsistencies
SharePoint BPA ensures that all the actions are performed identically, leaving no room for error. Each task needs to be performed in a certain manner, without any deviations. This results in improved quality of work and removes any chances of manual errors. It further strengthens compliance adherence for any organization.
#5: Improve Process Planning
Automation systems, such as dashboards, allow employees to view and monitor where things are standing at any given moment. This helps them manage deadlines efficiently and tweak plans accordingly. For managers, this is useful in managing deadlines and for capacity planning purposes.
#6: Gain Metric Visibility
Modern businesses need to constantly monitor, evaluate, and improve their business strategies if they are to gain a competitive advantage in the industry. All of these are dependent on timely access to accurate business-critical data. The SharePoint BPA utilizing a No-code app can provide the key insights required by an organization to make data-driven decisions.
#7: Standardize Operations
SharePoint BPA systems have rigid guidelines regarding the control of documents and process actions. Such rules eliminate situations where processing steps might be missed or documents misplaced. Employees need not worry about verifying the accuracy of information and tasks; it’s all built-in to the automated system. Such capabilities significantly improve the dependability and reliability of a process.
#8: Empower Employees
Automation enables employees to stay highly productive. While Workflows remove the bottlenecks in a process, No-code automation empowers the employees to build applications that remove the tedious, repetitive, and routine tasks from their daily schedule. The employees who were too busy performing mundane tasks can concentrate on more complex, challenging, and business growth activities. Automation can boost the employee morale and accelerate personal growth.
#9: Enable Efficient Task Management
Automation helps multiple departments involved in a process to access and have better visibility into the project and tasks. Members do not have to email or call other departments requesting status. Regular monitoring and reminders can be set up within the automated system so that nothing in the process slips through the cracks.
#10: Establish Better Governance & More Reliability
Consistency is the benchmark of SharePoint BPA, allowing organizations to offer reliable processes to customers and maintain a competitive advantage in the market. The reliability of automated processes ensures that SharePoint governance issues are executed 100% of the time and in accordance with the compliance regulations.
Automation is the future of work!
SharePoint BPA is must adopt for organizations that are already subscribed to SharePoint or Microsoft 365. While workflows have long been the torchbearers of SharePoint BPA, modern-day No-code solutions are helping organizations simplify tedious and time-consuming business process. No-code SharePoint BPA empowers organizational users, unburdens IT, and delivers competitive advantage to the organization. If you are ready to get started with SharePoint BPA, just know that QuickApps can help you. QuickApps is a collection of 21 web apps for SharePoint and 9 web apps for Microsoft 365. As a No-code SharePoint application solution it can empower your business users to create applications at 80% faster turnaround with simple point-and-click configuration. Download a FREE TRIAL to experience how the product can transform your business processes
Associate Director – Product Development
Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com