Today, SharePoint is the most popular collaboration and document management system available for organizations. But apart from its leading-edge features that ensure seamless collaboration and great document management, SharePoint is also known for its flexibility. As a platform, it encourages organizations to leverage third-party solutions to maximize SharePoint ROI, automate processes and build powerful business applications.     

While SharePoint offers many out-of-the-box features, but that may not suffice to meet the use case specific business challenges. In order to overcome their business problems and maximize the potential of SharePoint, organizations do tend to build many customizations, applications and automation.  SharePoint custom development empowers employees to improve their productivity and efficiency; while enabling organizations to optimize, streamline and automate their business processes. However, the challenges for organizations is that the development and deployment of SharePoint-based applications are both a time-consuming and costly affair.   

As a part of the traditional SharePoint development methodology, organizations have to approach developers in SharePoint coding. But, if truth be told, these experienced SharePoint developers come at a cost that is way more than expected. Also, these SharePoint developers are overburdened with development requests of their own, and whenever a new request arises, it takes time to get completed and delivered. And by the time developers even start working on the requirement, a lot of time has elapsed, requirements have changed, and new requests have already been added to the pipeline. This delay in the application development process can cause a massive drop in business revenue.

No-code solutions are the most viable way to tackle the time and budgetary constraints involved in SharePoint custom development. The No-code approach mitigates the roadblocks organizations face with the traditional app development approach. This technological trend enables business users to leverage their in-depth business knowledge to build impactful SharePoint solutions without writing long lines of codes and dependence on IT. This has significantly reduced the costs and complexities associated with SharePoint custom app development processes. No-code solutions enable users to build solutions up to 80% faster with point-and-click configuration and visual-based design.

Mitigate SharePoint Online development challenges with QuickApps Online

AgreeYa’s QuickApps is a fine example of No-code development solution for SharePoint. It enables organizations to build enterprise-grade applications for Microsoft SharePoint Online and On-premise at comparatively lower costs. It delivers a suite of powerful web parts to accelerate SharePoint Online development. Business users can leverage QuickApps web parts to create applications that are easily supported, maintained, and upgraded, ensuring their long-term impact and return on investment. QuickApps for SharePoint Online delivers the following benefits to users:

• Anywhere Access: Connect with a global audience where anyone can engage.
• Cloud Utilization: QuickApps Online enables the safety and security benefits of the cloud.
• User-model Based: Ease of use serves customized needs from worker to worker.
• Easy to Procure License: AgreeYa offers enterprise licensing and licensing online.
• Expediates Development: Allows business users to build enterprise applications up to 80% faster and lower costs.
• Empowers Business Users: QuickApps’ point-and-click configuration and powerful web parts enable the business users to build applications, customizations and automation on their own.

QuickApps Web Parts available on Microsoft AppSource

At QuickApps we are dedicated to help organizations overcome their business challenges by developing applications, customizations and automation rapidly on SharePoint. Towards this, we have our eight powerful web apps listed on the Microsoft AppSource. The web parts can be downloaded for free on a 30-day trial from the AppSource. Current products on Microsoft AppSource include:

• qListView: Enables users to create dynamic lists (from multiple SharePoint lists across sites and site collections). This helps in making the lists look more engaging by using pre-packaged skins. qListView develops filters and assists in putting the list view data in a synchronized order. qListView allows viewing, grouping, and filtering SharePoint data, which otherwise is impossible without writing a single line of code.
• qListForm: Facilitates swift development of advanced list forms with a simple point-and-click configuration instead of an extensive custom code.
• qChartView: Allows the creation of visually compelling SharePoint charts and dashboards that include dynamic filtering, drill-down reporting, and a rich user experience. Given that there is no native chart web part in SharePoint, qChartView charting solutions are ideal for BI and dashboard scenarios. qChartView offers an amazing user experience and further adds value to application development.
• qMenu: Replaces the native SharePoint navigation, improving site navigation through a multi-level cascading menu bar and an intuitive collapsible panel menu.
• qCalendarView: Brings together multiple calendars, holidays, events, and even task lists in one view that includes data from non-calendar lists as well. The add-in enables users to quickly drag and drop events as per the required slot, delete the events, or do any kind of edits as per your requirements.
• qDynamicLayout: This web app maximizes valuable screen real estate of a SharePoint site, resulting in a clean and flexible site layout that meets your unique business needs.
• qSelector: There’s no native drop-down control available in SharePoint. qSelector enables users to filter QuickApps qListView and qChartView web apps quickly and easily for dashboard scenarios.
• qMultiSelector: Native SharePoint doesn’t allow users to add multiple drop-down filters to a page without custom coding. However, with qMultiSelector, users can filter QuickApps qListView and qChartView add-ins quickly and easily for dashboard purposes.

Download a FREE TRIAL now from Microsoft AppSource to transform your SharePoint app development experience.

Amit Gupta

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

In today’s data-driven world, data visualization has become increasingly important to help organizations more easily interpret information. In fact, the big data global market is expected to reach $250 billion by 2025, according to a recent Markets and Markets Research report. The rise of computing and the internet has made it possible for a massive amount of data being produced by billions of people to be processed and presented to the right people at the right time. However, to be successful, it still requires organizations to have the right tools in place to support their overall goals and objectives. That is why entities of all sizes have turned to SharePoint for its ease of use and the customization it offers.

Why Businesses Rely on SharePoint-Based Dashboards for Data Visualization & Reporting

SharePoint is used by more than 200 million users and 250,000 organizations around the world, according to Microsoft, making it the most popular platform for enterprise information management and collaboration on the market. It contains vital data and insights that can completely transform business operations and catalyze growth. However, most businesses face challenges in managing and analyzing such data to derive business value. The answer to this problem lies in SharePoint-based dashboards. 

A SharePoint-based dashboard displays vital information on a single screen in a visually appealing and easy to comprehend manner. SharePoint also enables organizations to create and use dashboards to view key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, in a centrally managed and easily accessible location. Furthermore, corporations can leverage SharePoint server tools to transform complex data sets into digestible tables, charts and graphs.

Impactful Dashboards for Informed Decision-Making

According to Bain & Company, stakeholders that leverage data visualization and reporting are 5x more likely to make decisions faster than market peers. SharePoint-based dashboards allow organizations to view crucial reports and scorecards in a single-screen display. With the data clearly presented, it enables stakeholders to make well-informed decisions quickly. These dashboards not only provide users with intelligence-based data insights but also allow managers in organizations to discover information timely without complete dependency on other teammates.

How Organizations Can Use Dashboards

A SharePoint-based dashboard displays complex data in real-time visuals and charts, while also providing interactive options to make it easy to manipulate based on goals and objectives or for comprehension. Depending on the business requirements, users can customize dashboards and charts to explore data in individual reports and scorecards. Users can also view the default information on their dashboards and then customize it using various web parts or apply filters to view higher or lower levels of information.

How to Leverage a Chart

Once an organization aggregates the data, it is important that users can easily comprehend the information. Charts are often the best medium to simplify information. With SharePoint, users have various charting options to showcase information based on the specific use case. Not only can users customize the charts available on SharePoint, but they also have the option to embed charts from other sources.

How to Create a Dashboard

Building a hyper-responsive SharePoint-based dashboard that displays the full list of the company’s KPIs is both straightforward and uncomplicated with several tools like Performance Point Dashboard Designer, Chart Web Part, Excel, web part page, etc. Depending on the requirement, users can choose from the list of extended tools offered by SharePoint and create a dashboard that reports updates, helps with big data analysis and business intelligence. The table below outlines the key tools and applications available to help users get started with a customized SharePoint-based dashboard tailored to meet your business needs.

Apart from the out-of-the-box SharePoint tools, organizations can leverage a plethora of no-code SharePoint application development solutions to build powerful dashboards. Such solutions enable organizations to pull data from various SharePoint sites and external sources and display information in elaborate dashboards using 2D and 3D charts.

Get Started with Microsoft SharePoint Dashboard and Charts

The SharePoint-based dashboards and charts enable organizations to get maximum value from collected data. With a huge volume of vital enterprise information stored, SharePoint can serve as a great source of prompt data-driven decision-making. It also enables organizations to automate the reporting process, remove dependencies and liberate employees from mundane tasks. Dashboards and charts can be connected with Microsoft SQL databases and other Microsoft Services to deliver insights constantly and keep the business ahead of the curve.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, AgreeYa has been enabling organizations to maximize their SharePoint investment, leverage SharePoint data to transform decision-making and gain a competitive edge. QuickApps, a part of AgreeYa’s award-winning product suite, accelerates time and reduces costs of SharePoint dashboard creation

Amit Gupta

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

More than 90 percent of organizations agreed that digital technologies are disrupting the financial sector to a great extent. Yet a majority of the financial institutions surveyed do not believe their firms are ready for this disruption.

—Deloitte Survey

The financial services industry (FSI) is on the cusp of digital transformation. Many firms are becoming holistically digital to improve customer experiences and enhance the efficiency of their business processes. They realize the significance of innovation for the competitive positioning of their firm. Therefore, many financial institutions are adopting SharePoint (On-premise or Online) to digitize and automate their business processes to address their challenges.

However, the road to digital transformation isn’t a cakewalk for financial institutions. Developing an application or automating a process on SharePoint leveraging the traditional approach is a time, resource, and cost-intensive undertaking. As a result, many financial services providers are holding back and persisting with their outdated legacy systems. The new-age No-code SharePoint application development solutions provide a panacea for such problems. 

With No-code solutions, financial institutions can swiftly develop applications and automate processes on SharePoint. Such solutions empower the organizational users to build apps leveraging their business knowledge and without a single line of code. No-code solutions enable financial organizations to extend the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint and leverage it to automate time-consuming yet business-critical operations. No-code solutions allow financial institutions to leverage SharePoint to achieve their digital transformations goals.

Benefits of No-code Solutions for Financial Institutions

#1: Creating a more valuable customer experience

According to Gartner, “banking customers are increasingly demanding authentic human interactions.” Customers are no longer loyal to financial brands. The unfulfillment of their ever-increasing expectations to get personalized experiences is making them switch to a different financial brand. To boost the level of customer satisfaction and retention, financial service providers need to be present for customers anytime anywhere.

Though the concept of automation doesn’t seem to help in the cause directly, it is a way that can make human interaction with customers possible. By automating redundant backend operation processes, financial institutions can free up their employees for tasks that require human intelligence or interaction. While the employees are free, they can have one on one interaction with the valued customers, give them an amazing customer experience, increase their loyalty, and help the brand gain a competitive advantage.

#2: Identifying and resolving business inefficiencies

Identifying inefficiencies in existing business processes can be a challenge for financial institutions as they have loads of manual tasks. Back-office tasks such as routine check validation procedures, bank account maintenance, customer data updates, address changes, accounting reconciliations, loan processing, KYC updates, etc. are done manually. Manual data entry leads to longer business processing time and inaccurate report generation.

By automating such paper-based manual tasks, financial institutes can not only reduce the risk of human errors which otherwise would go unnoticed but also get the tasks completed faster.

#3: Removing legacy barriers to digital innovation

Legacy software and applications are reliable, but to keep up with the changing market scenario and customer demands, the applications need to be updated and maintained regularly which costs financial institutions 70% of their IT budgets. These outdated systems also deliver poor customer experiences which lead to decreased customer retention. Removing such legacy solutions on time by replacing them with new-age solutions enable firms to stay ahead of their competition.

#4: Harnessing Innovation and delivering rapid time to market

Today, technology is moving at a breakneck speed and financial institutions need to keep pace or risk losing out in the market. Consequently, innovation has become an imperative for the growth of financial institutions. Irrespective of what an institute aims to achieve; customer loyalty, profitability, reduce inefficiencies, or digital adoption, innovation is the key.

No-code solutions allow business users to leverage their process knowledge to build applications and automation that solve longstanding problems. And this can be achieved without any reliance on costly SharePoint development resources or reliance on the IT department. Additionally, a robust No-code solution empowers organizations to launch an application or automation on SharePoint up to 80% faster than the traditional development approach. With No-code solutions, financial institutions can achieve the agility required to thrive in the present-day market.

Transform Business Operations on SharePoint with QuickApps

AgreeYa’s QuickApps is an award-winning No-code SharePoint application development and business process automation solution enabling financial institutions across the globe to transform their business operations and gain a competitive advantage. The solution delivers a suite of web apps and pre-built templates that accelerate the application development time and reduce efforts.

Amit Gupta

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

Undoubtedly, the swift adoption of digital technologies delivers a competitive advantage to organizations, but does it guarantee success? To maximize the returns on technological investments, organizations need to spend smart instead of spending big. They have to identify business areas where leading-edge technologies can leave an impact. In the fast-paced market, organizations need to invest in technologies that can speed up development cycles, time-to-market, and simplify the development process. Additionally, organizations need to embrace technologies that can unburden the IT teams from suboptimal tasks. No-code technology has emerged as the most viable solution to the above requirements. 

How No-code is changing the face of SharePoint development?

When a SharePoint-based process automation requirement arises in an organization, utilizing SharePoint as their default choice of Intranet and Document/Content Management platform, the business manager approaches the IT department with a list of requirements. The IT department adds the development request in its generally long list of service requests. After a few weeks, a professional with expert coding skills would be assigned the development request. The developer would process the requirements and send the app for approval to the business manager. Upon assessing the automation solution, in most instances, the business users will have many feedbacks and requests for modifications. The loop of feedback and modification goes on for some more weeks until both parties are satisfied with the outcome. However, by this time, a lot of time has elapsed, most requirements have changed, and new needs have already been shared with the IT department. As a result, the new automation has lost its priority. This is the fate of most process automation built leveraging the coding-based SharePoint development approach.

No-code approach to process automation platforms bridge the skill gaps and empower business users to develop SharePoint applications and implement process automation. Business managers no longer have to wait in queue for their automation requests to be addressed. Users with the process and SharePoint knowledge can leverage SharePoint web parts and point-and-click configuration to build their own automation. By adopting No-code solutions, organizations can fast-track their BPA endeavours by up to 80%. As the automation is not based on heavy coding, it can be easily customized to address future requirements.

According to Gartner, the need for business-driven hyperautomation will be one of the top three drivers for No-code adoption through 2022.

How No-code Process Automation is Empowering Organizations?

#1: Enables organizations to cope with the existing talent shortage

Shortage of technical talent is a roadblock for many organizations today, and unfortunately, this crisis will not be resolved sometime soon. To stay competitive, in the existing scenario of acute talent shortage, organizations need to adopt technologies that can bridge the skills gap between two important employee groups – employees who code and business users who understand what to code. No-code solutions are solving this skills gap by allowing business users to build solutions without any coding. 

The No-code movement is addressing the skills shortage radically. It has transformed the conventional, arduous, drawn-out application development and process automation methods, making it easier for the non-coders and business users to build complex applications simply using point-and-click configuration.

#2: Allows developers to focus on strategic work

The emergence and rapid popularity of No-code platforms have caused panic among the development community. There’s quite a buzz that No-code solutions will soon replace the developers! However, when considered carefully, such solutions are facilitators for developers. No-code solutions not only empower the business users but also liberate the developers from spending their hours performing mundane tasks too. It helps them evolve and contribute more heavily to strategic tasks with growth opportunities. Additionally, leveraging No-code process automation solutions, developers can complete a part of their development tasks in rapid time, deliver faster, and impress their superiors.

#3: Supplements Remote/Hybrid Working

With the COVID-19 cases across the U.S. flattening, many organizations are planning to return to the workplace soon. However, a recent Harvard Business School survey uncovered, 81% of professionals today prefer to work from home and would rather have a hybrid model going forward. Thus, it is clear that the Hybrid/ Remote working culture is here to stay.  

The popularity and adoption of No-code solutions skyrocketed during the pandemic. Such solutions enabled most organizations to protect their business continuity and build the automation required to move the work forward. No-code automation platforms will continue empowering the non-coders to create essential business applications leveraging an intuitive visual interface and point-and-click configuration sitting within the comforts of their homes.

#4: Improves business agility and enhances productivity

According to a recent McKinsey report, the pandemic has speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years. In a fast-paced digital-first world, organizations need to rapidly respond to their technology requirements. No-code solutions enable organizations to accelerate development and time-to-market. The application and process automation can be implemented when they are most required. Such solutions save time and cost while allowing organizations to remain agile and flexible to the business and market requirements. 

Embrace the Future of Work Today! AgreeYa’s QuickApps is an award-winning No-code solution that enables organizations to automate mundane business processes on SharePoint without writing a single line of code. QuickApps delivers a rich assortment of 21 web apps to help business users implement automation in rapid time. Download a free trial today to watch the product in action.

Amit Gupta

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

Hyperautomation is here to stay.

– Gartner’s IT Automation Predictions for 2022

The concept of business process automation (BPA) isn’t new for businesses today. It has been there for quite some time now, with an improbable concoction surrounding it that automation will eliminate jobs and replace humans in the workforce. Workers, for a long time, were apprehensive about their organizations adopting automation. But despite the common narrative, many enterprises have adopted automation in the last few years to improve their overall productivity and efficiency, evidencing that BPA isn’t a competitor for human jobs. 

BPA can do a lot for organizations of all sizes, be it startups or big businesses with deep pockets and at all stages of their development. Unlike multi-million-dollar corporations, startup leaders might think twice before investing in automation, or they might consider it an unnecessary investment, but that’s completely understandable, as a series of minor overspends can add up fast, becoming a nightmare for the startup leaders.

Taking their fear into consideration, in the subsequent sections, we have discussed why business process automation is worth investing in and how it enables employees to be more efficient, benefiting the startups in more ways than one.

How BPA delivers a competitive advantage to Startups?

The global startup ecosystem is getting stronger with every passing year. However, according to a National Business Capital report, startup failure rates are around 90%. 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year. The reason for such high failure rate is intense competition in the space. 

The basic mantra for a startup to stand strong in the market is to ‘outperform the competition’. In order to stand ahead of its competitors, a startup has to do better in all the underlying areas. 

• Address the customers’ pain points proactively
• Curate a compelling selling story that connects with the consumers 
• Focus on unique selling propositions and add value to customers
• Serve customers with a smile 24X7
• Keep up with the market trends

BPA helps a startup to improve in all the aforementioned critical areas. For instance, the data related to customers’ interests and behavior, when analyzed with the help of automation, can shed light on the customers’ needs. Leveraging the data, startups can create a selling story that will actually impact the customers. And finally, automation enables startups to serve the customers better and faster with reliable products and services. Thus, automation strengthens the effectiveness of all business operations.

How can BPA help startups gear up for success?

In the book, Deep Finance, veteran startup finance expert Glenn Hopper says, “Automating parts of your process can help you scale faster. Lost productivity from manual tasks means it will be difficult to scale operations as a company grows. Manual processes are people-intensive and not scalable. You may have to start manually in the beginning, but today there are so many apps that give businesses the ability to start with automated processes. It is possible from day one to be automated.”

Let’s see how BPA benefits startups.

#1: Delivers more and faster­­­

Automation gives startups the super-power to deliver more in comparatively lesser time and improve their customer satisfaction rate. When the processes that are performed manually are successfully automated, they are processed by means of programmed commands combined with automatic feedback control to ensure proper execution of the instructions, which means the employees will now be able to invest their time in areas that require human intelligence. Theoretically, automation can double the speed of deliveries. 

#2: Automation helps in cost containment

By 2024, organizations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyperautomation technologies with redesigned operational processes.

– Gartner’s IT Automation Predictions for 2022

Leveraging technology to automate organizational business operations helps startups to manage the payable hours of their workforce and thoughtfully reduce expenses to improve profitability without risking long-term damage to the company. 

#3: Establishes standardization of business processes

Standardization is achievable with automation. Whether it is the standardization of workflows or quality of products and services. By removing human interference from the processes, the chances of manual errors are dissolved. Therefore, all the operations are performed according to a predefined set of rules ensuring top-quality and error-free.

#4: Increases scalability

Automation improves business scalability. It empowers a small team of employees to perform tasks that generally require a large team by handling all the repetitive, tedious tasks on its own. Thus, scaling a company for more productivity and efficiency. 

#5: Extracts data and delivers actionable insights

Analysis of data is essential for every organization. But, if a startup is stuck in analysis-paralysis, it will probably fail in making critical decisions timely. Automation technology combined with AI can help the stakeholders to analyze the data and make decisions faster, based on which the team members can perform operations at a faster speed. Businesses can get to know the customers more, identify the areas of improvement, and maximize the return on their investments.

Still, wondering if your young business needs automation?

BPA will continue to be a core focus for growing organizations in the coming years. It is more than just a convenience. It enables organizations to overcome various daunting business challenges, bolster productivity, and increase customer satisfaction.

AgreeYa’s suite of intelligent automation solutions has enabled organizations to increase process efficiency, enhance customer experience, optimize operations, amplify workforce productivity, reduce process costs and risks. Our award-winning No-code SharePoint BPA solution – QuickApps – enables organizations to automate their business processes on SharePoint and Office 365 with its powerful suite of web apps. It enables startups to automate their cumbersome processes and maximize SharePoint or Office 365 investment. Download a free trial today, to learn more.

Amit Gupta

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

“In 2022, organizations will require more IT and Business Process Automation (BPA) as they are constrained to accelerate digital transformation plans in a post-COVID-19, digital-first world.”

– Gartner

The pandemic has altered the business landscape and continues to encourage innovation and technological adoption. Before the pandemic, organizations looked at technology as a beneficial way to improve and automate their business processes, increase productivity, and engage with customers effectively, yet they never considered it a mandate. But the repercussions of the pandemic have dramatically sped up digital adoption by several years. In the last couple of years, BPA solutions have witnessed broader adoption across all business sectors.  

As we head into 2022, the growth story of BPA will continue to rise further. Organizations will be more focused on implementing specific BPA solutions to improve efficiency and profitability in key areas of their businesses. 2022 will see new BPA trends emerge, like all previous years. Below we are listing some of the anticipated BPA trends to watch out for in the upcoming year.

Top Business Process Automation Trends in 2022

#1: Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) adoption is the future of enterprise resilience

The popularity of LCNC development platforms has skyrocketed in the post-pandemic world. Such a visually integrated development environment (IDE) allows professional developers as well as business users to develop an application without complex coding using simple point-and-click configuration. Given the intense demand for new applications in the market and an acute scarcity of software development talents, it’s easy to predict that LCNC will continue to gain popularity in the coming years.

AgreeYa’s experts believe that LCNC solutions will be more extensively utilized to build applications that automate mundane yet essential business processes. Such solutions will empower the business users to unburden themselves from the routine tasks and contribute towards more challenging work with higher growth opportunities. Additionally, organizations that keep persisting with the traditional, code-based development approach will lag, while others that embrace LCNC solutions will experience a surge in productivity and efficiency.

#2: Adoption of automation in new employee onboarding will be widespread

An organization’s onboarding process determines how an employee perceives the company in terms of values, work culture, and environment. A faster and smoother transition in an organization gives a fulfilling experience to the employee. Our experts believe that 2022 will be the year when automation of new employee onboarding will go mainstream. The adoption of BPA in this essential process will pave way for a structured, comprehensive, and engaging onboarding process to make an excellent first impression on the employee. It eliminates tedious paperwork, manual errors, unreasonable delays, and employee dissatisfaction. The new hires can easily understand the organization, its vision and onboard to the specific team with excitement.

LCNC solutions will enable organizations to rapidly automate and streamline the new employee onboarding process. Automation of this manually handled and document-intensive routine will inspire the recruitment team to put their energies into other high-value tasks.

#3: Automation to emerge as an enabler of employee growth 

For decades, there has been a lot of buzz around the future of work and automation. For years, employees have feared automation as something that has arrived to steal jobs and take over from humans. However, various researches prove that such assumptions are wrong. Though there are many benefits offered by automation, at the end of the day, robots won’t ever fully replace humans in the business landscape.

We believe that with the widespread adoption of automation across all sectors in 2022, employees will finally be able to get over years of skepticism. Automation will emerge as an enabler for employee growth and work satisfaction. It will allow humans to move to more strategic positions where employees can utilize their skills and intelligence to contribute towards organizational growth.

#4: Proactive approach to Cybersecurity will be essential

Everyone knows that the complexity and nature of cyber threats are increasing every day. Today, cybercrime poses a threat to organizations of any size and industry. While large organizations have been securing themselves and their system with security automation, but that is hardly followed by medium and small organizations. Most organizations still do not understand the severity of cybercrime and underspend on cybersecurity.

However, advancements in security automation solutions enable organizations of all sizes to stay proactive and sense a threat early. BPA helps in creating a security blanket around an organization that detects cyber-crime before it enters or harms the system. Security automation solutions capably automate and validate all ongoing processes and identify a threat increasing overall cyber resilience.

#5: AI-powered BPA will transform the way organizations work

In 2022, the existing process improvement platforms will converge and be challenged by new AI-led entrants; investment to address global worker shortages will be prioritized; and to address the future head-on, enterprises will embrace an automation fabric to fuel extreme innovation.

– Forrester

In the near future, different tools such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Digital Process Automation (DPA) will be integrated to enhance the power of Business Process Automation. AI-powered BPA will redefine the possibilities of automation, transform digital workflows, increase productivity, and accelerate deliveries. It will enable organizations to get more done with less.

Business Process Automation will continue to be a core focus for growing organizations 

New trends emerge every year and some of them shape the way organizations operate. 2022 promises to be a huge year for BPA. Automation of processes will progress from good-to-have to an imperative for business growth. Organizations can overcome various daunting business challenges, bolster productivity, and increase employee satisfaction by embracing BPA.

AgreeYa’s suite of intelligent automation solutions has been enabling organizations to increase process efficiency, enhance customer experience, optimize operations, amplify workforce productivity, reduce process costs and risks. Contact us to discuss your process challenges.

Amit Gupta

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

Data-driven organizations are not only 23 times more likely to acquire customers, but they’re also six times as likely to retain customers and 19 times more likely to be profitable!

– McKinsey Global Institute

Implementation of an enterprise-wide data and analytics strategy help organizations to stay ahead of the competition. SharePoint dashboards are transforming the way organizations store, organize, share and have access to crucial data on a real-time basis anytime anywhere. Dashboards serve as a one-stop source of business-critical information demonstrating all the key performance indicators (KPIs), report updates, and big data analytics. Impactful SharePoint dashboards allow the users and management to perform predictive analysis using the power of all the data they already have.

As more organizations are becoming data-driven, SharePoint dashboards are also becoming more sophisticated, offering more opportunities to businesses to streamline business activities and enhance productivity.

Exceptional Business Benefits of SharePoint Dashboards

The Microsoft SharePoint dashboards can deliver various transformational benefits to organizations. It is secure, intuitive, scalable, collaborative, customizable, and insightful. Some of its business benefits are discussed below:

1. Empowers data-driven decision-making: With SharePoint dashboards, the management and the stakeholders can access all the transactional and operational data in one place and view it on the SharePoint dashboard at a glance. The presentation of all the relevant data in an organized format (in the form of charts, graphs, and tables) makes it easier for the stakeholders to streamline and accelerate decision-making.
2. Enables actionable reporting: One prominent feature of the SharePoint dashboard is to accumulate data from numerous sources, consolidate it, and convert it into actionable reports. Data from various sources are presented in a visually appealing format that is easy to comprehend and actionable.
3. Allows performance monitoring: SharePoint dashboards have status indicators that help in measuring the performance of every team member involved in a project. This ensures that the team members work in collaboration towards a common business goal and contribute quickly to deliver the project. This also enables managers to proactively identify the areas which are lacking and need to be addressed. With pre-defined color-coding indicators and advanced warning signs of business downturns and upswings, managers will not be blindsided anymore.
4. Helps track competitor performances: Keeping an eye on the competitors is one thing but studying their every step in the game gives enterprises a competitive edge. Organizations can analyze their competitors’ data and perform a SWOT analysis to identify their strengths and weaknesses. They can compare their performance with their competitors; get insights into how they are performing in the market, what’s their growth potential is, and whether it is on the rise or in decline.
5. Delivers significant time savings: In an organization, manual business processes, manual errors, and redundant processes are responsible for a bulk of time wastage which can be otherwise invested in performing productive tasks. Dashboards facilitate the automation of business-critical SharePoint data. It allows organizations to automate the mundane processes, reduce the possibility of manual errors and focus on other important tasks that generate revenue.
6. Enables seamless customization: Another significant advantage of SharePoint dashboard is that organizations can customize them according to their business requirements using a variety of tools. They can create SharePoint applications using No-code solutions and enhance the power of SharePoint dashboards. The applications can help them to segregate their data, see valuable information accurately on a single screen and hide unnecessary data. Enterprises can also choose a template to build their SharePoint dashboard from a set of pre-defined templates.

Did you know?

According to Microsoft, more than 250,000 organizations use SharePoint, including over 85% of Fortune 500 companies who use SharePoint Online as part of Office 365.

And these organizations churn out an exorbitant quantity of business data, which when analyzed can take their business operations to the next level. SharePoint dashboards enable organizations to achieve more with data. It keeps the employees and the management proactive by providing a simple and updated mechanism to view data that matters. With impactful dashboards, organizations can turn SharePoint into a hub for business intelligence.

The benefits of investing in creating a SharePoint dashboard are far-fetched and deliver exponential growth capabilities.

Amit Gupta

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

Modern workplaces have undergone a seismic shift due to the ongoing pandemic, with remote and hybrid working becoming the norm. The COVID-19 crisis has made it mandatory for organizations to transition from physical to digital workplaces. However, the changing business models are posing various challenges towards employee collaboration, teamwork, and productivity. Towards this end, the corporate world is looking to embrace innovative technologies that can help redefine their workplaces and implement a digital strategy to keep their workforce integrated and collaborative.

According to a recent McKinsey global survey, 85% of organizations believe that a push towards automation is vital to take their digital workplace capabilities to the next level. The adoption of automation technology will help build a more intelligent, digital, and futuristic workplace. It will catalyze collaboration and empower employees to be more productive and engaged.

Why Automate Business Processes with SharePoint?

Over 200 million users rely on SharePoint as their platform for information management and enterprise collaboration.

– 2020 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant Report

Today, SharePoint is delivering a growing number of experiences across Microsoft 365 enabling teams to adjust and thrive in the new way of work. From files, lists, and videos to engaging sites, custom apps, and knowledge solutions on the desktop, web, mobile, and increasingly, inside Microsoft Teams, SharePoint is enabling better content collaboration and allowing employees to teamwork seamlessly from their homes or offices, anytime. As a top-rated and trusted product, SharePoint will remain the backbone of your organization’s digital future. Thereby it is essential to optimize the platform to meet the present and future business requirements.

SharePoint Business Process Automation (BPA) enables organizations to reimagine the utilization of SharePoint and address the modern workplace requirements. It helps streamline and accelerate various document-intensive routines, thereby allowing organizations to boost productivity, increase process transparency, and achieve cost savings. With SharePoint BPA, organizations can also increase process management visibility by transforming manual, paper-based processes into electronic, automated processes to improve outcomes.

Benefits of SharePoint BPA in the Post-Pandemic World

Pushed into uncharted waters by the Pandemic, organizations across industries are relying more on process automation.

– Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work study

The study further found that more than 24% of routine, rules-based tasks executed by humans today will be automated by 2023. Automation that emerged as the biggest facilitator of business growth during the Pandemic, will be a lynchpin for post-pandemic business success.  

As a very flexible platform, SharePoint can be leveraged to automate human-dependent, rules-based and mundane business processes. It can be used to create an infrastructure of the future. SharePoint BPA will deliver a competitive advantage to organizations and keep them ahead in the post-pandemic business world. Anticipated benefits of SharePoint BPA towards post-Pandemic business success include:    

• Productivity Surge:SharePoint BPA 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.
• Time & Costs Reduction: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. Process automation allows organizations to accomplish tasks utilizing few resources in considerably less time.
• Mitigation of 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.
• Process Planning Improvements: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.
• Standardization of Operations:BPA systems followrigid 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 system. This greatly increases the dependability and reliability of the process.
• Boost in Employee Experience:Automation allows employees to stay highly productive. It removes some of 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 revenue-generating activities.

Predictions for SharePoint BPA in Post-Pandemic World

• The Rise of No-code BPA: No-code solutions will dramatically fast-track the implementation of SharePoint BPA in the post-Pandemic world. Organizations will leapfrog their competitors by using No-code SharePoint BPA solutions. Such solutions will enable organizations to implement automation eight times faster than the traditional coding approach. It will enable organizations to easily integrate automation to transform employee experience, productivity, and operational efficiency.
• Focus on Quick Data Processing: Data is already the fuel of modern business processes. In the post-Pandemic world, business success will depend on how quickly and accurately organizations can process and act on data insights. SharePoint BPA leveraging No-code solutions will simply SharePoint reporting and allow organizations to get timely insights to make data-driven decisions.
• Expansion in SharePoint BPA Use Cases: Experts predict the proliferation of use cases for SharePoint BPA. Presently, the benefits of SharePoint BPA are confined to a few departments. However, in the future, SharePoint BPA will be a pervasive technology helping fast-track tasks across multifarious departments. The adoption of SharePoint BPA will be fueled by No-code solutions. Such solutions have already empowered everyone with business knowledge to automate SharePoint processes.
• Rush to Automation can cause Failures: Increased investments in automation technologies will continue. However, haphazard and rushed moves to automation can expose the businesses adopting it to high risk, causing monumental failures and harming an organization’s reputation. Experts believe after the Pandemic, around 30% of businesses will increase their focus on the quality of automation by proper due diligence and planning. The goal would be to embrace a product with a proven track record and robust capabilities.

Catalyze Productivity and Collaboration for Post-Pandemic Business Growth By now you understand that SharePoint BPA is the way forward for organizations that want to thrive in the post-Pandemic world. AgreeYa’s award-winning product – QuickApps allows business users to automate SharePoint-based business processes without coding. Organizations can leverage their assortment of powerful web apps and pre-built templates to automate tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. With QuickApps, business users can create automation at 80% faster turnaround time with simple point-and-click configuration. Contact us to learn more.

Amit Gupta

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

Why Automate Virtual Employee Onboarding with SharePoint Business Automation?

“74% of organizations plan to permanently shift employees to remote work even after the COVID-19 crisis ends.”

– Gartner CFO Survey

While 2020 may be considered the year of remote work, it was just the beginning as the trend would continue in 2021 and beyond. According to an Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) report “the percentage of employees permanently working from home is expected to double in 2021“. However, one of the most challenging changes organizations are facing in the present remote working scenario is onboarding employees remotely.

Starting an employee’s journey in your organization off on the right foot is one of the most important processes to get right. The traditional employee onboarding processes are no longer relevant while welcoming employees in the remote working world. The lack of personal touch and absence of face-to-face interactions with team members on-premise makes it difficult for an organization to undertake employee onboarding processes. Consequently, most organizations are today exploring technology opportunities to revamp and overcome the challenges of the remote employee onboarding processes.

Importance of Effective Virtual Employee Onboarding

“4% of employees quit after a bad first day.”

– Deloitte Employee Perspective Survey

Let’s imagine a scenario where your organization has just hired a new team member who will be working remotely. This new employee was head and shoulders above the other candidates in terms of expertise, achievements, and career history. But if you can’t guarantee that their first experiences in their new role are satisfactory, you risk wasting your new talent and may even result in them rethinking their decision. Employee onboarding is the second touchpoint between the employer and the new hire, and it’s the one that makes a lasting impression. This process sets the tone for an employee’s career with your organization and that’s why it should be designed with care.

Benefits of an Effective Virtual Employee Onboarding

• Higher Employee Engagement: The first few weeks are crucial for an employee after joining your organization. This is the time that determines their engagement with the organization. If you successfully onboard the new employees, they will genuinely believe in your vision and feel motivated to log in to work every morning. 
• Higher Employee Productivity: Higher engagement leads to higher employee productivity. When your new employees are motivated enough to work towards your organization’s vision, they will put in their best efforts in whatever they do, leading to increased productivity.
• Higher Employee Retention: Poor remote onboarding can result in new employees leaving your organization. One of the most critical factors affecting employee retention is holistic onboarding. If your employees are comfortable working with you and are getting along just fine with everyone in the company, they tend to stick around for long.
• Well-informed Employees: The last thing you would want a new employee to be is clueless and lost when joining your company. Effective onboarding helps you provide all relevant information to your employees about their roles, responsibilities, and the company they are working for. This allows them to be equipped and prepared from day one.
• Promoting Inclusiveness: When you onboard your employees effectively, it makes them feel a part of your corporate family and included in the team. An attribute that often goes unnoticed, a genuinely warm welcome to the new employees, promotes a culture of inclusiveness within your organization that lasts for an extended period.
• Building Healthy Relations with Existing Employees: Onboarding processes often provide managers and team leaders to establish healthy relations with their new employees. It is their responsibility to train the employees well and provide them with all relevant information to work effectively.

Why Automate Virtual Employee Onboarding?

As evident, employee onboarding is a vital process for any organization. However, onboarding new employees can be a tedious process involving a lot of people and resources. For just one candidate, an entire host of small tasks have to be completed as part of the employee onboarding checklist. An automated onboarding process is a sigh of relief for HR representatives who are entrusted with this process. Automation ensures that onboarding a new employee in the remote working world doesn’t have to be a groan-inducing process. An automated employee onboarding process ensures new employee satisfaction, performance, as well as the general efficiency of the organization.

For Organizations

• Reduces Costs: This is definitely something that the management board of every organization loves to hear. Onboarding automation eliminates the redundancy that paperwork brings to a process. On average, companies have about 15 to 20 forms and papers to read, review, and sign as part of standard employee onboarding procedures. Automation removes such hassles.
• Saves Time: Employee onboarding usually takes a toll on other administrative roles. Automation can accelerate and save a lot of time which would have otherwise gone into manually performing various onboarding tasks. The responsible HR personnel does not have to spend too much time with the new hires.
• Streamlines Data Collection: Automation enables organizations to collect data more efficiently. With an automated onboarding process, you can gather information about the new hires more efficiently. You can also store the collected data in SharePoint or integrate it with other HR software.
• Reduces Errors: Automation of new employee onboarding brings the precision of a machine to the process. There are set parameters to an automated process that largely eliminates the chances of errors.    
• Ensures Data Security: Employee onboarding can be a sensitive process as it includes important employee data. With onboarding automation, organizations can ensure that all information collected from new employees stays confidential and locked in a virtual database and out of reach from any kind of physical access.

For New Employees

• Enables a Friendly System: Many new hires get overwhelmed in the absence of an efficient onboarding process. An automated process delivers the right kind of information to the new employee, at the right time.
• Delivers a Fulfilling Experience: The traditional onboarding process usually leads to an ugly imbalance where some new hires receive a great onboarding experience while others get a hurried walkthrough. An automated onboarding process ensures that the employee onboarding process is consistent for every new person that joins the team.   
• Allows New Hires to Get Started: The faster the onboarding process is over, the sooner a new person can start working on a team. Automated onboarding shortens the time for a person to transition from training to start working on their very first assignment.

Leverage SharePoint to Automate Virtual Employee Onboarding

Does your organization leverage SharePoint? Even though SharePoint is glorified as an Intranet, information management, and enterprise collaboration solution, it can be leveraged by organizations to automate various manually handled and document-intensive routines. Today, SharePoint has evolved to be the most preferred choice among organizations to meet their HR needs. Apart from strengthening collaboration across various HR tasks, SharePoint is also being used by the department to automate and streamline various tedious tasks. And it can be utilized to transform new employee onboarding experience.   

Change the Way You Onboard New Talent with QuickApps QuickApps, a No-code solution that enables organizations to automate business processes rapidly on SharePoint, has been empowering various organizations to automate their remote employee onboarding process with its rich assortment of award-winning web apps and point-and-click configuration. With QuickApps, business users can swiftly and efficiently automate their cumbersome business processes on SharePoint and tackle the requirements of a remote working world. Contact us for a FREE DEMO.

Amit Gupta

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

It is common knowledge that SharePoint is the ultimate choice of Intranet and Content Management System for organizations across the globe. However, as a very flexible platform, SharePoint can serve as an ideal starting point for an organization’s automation journey too. It can enable organizations and their teams to streamline tasks, automate and integrate processes seamlessly.

What is SharePoint Business Process Automation?

SharePoint Business Process Automation (BPA) is a strategy used by organizations to automate business processes on SharePoint. It involves the integration of powerful applications with SharePoint to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks. Efficient SharePoint BPA allows organizations to boost productivity, improve efficiency, accelerate speed, increase process transparency, optimize resource capabilities, achieve cost savings, and transform business operations overall. It can narrow down a “huge” list of recurring tasks that your employees perform daily. SharePoint BPA can also increase process management visibility by transforming manual, paper-based processes into electronic, automated processes to improve outcomes.

Why SharePoint Business Process Automation Matters?

The pursuit of Business Process Automation (BPA) across organizations, small to large, has continued to remain strong during 2021. Most C-suite leaders are today hinging heavily on automation to adjust to market dynamics, recessionary pressures, support hybrid business operations, achieve business growth, and cope with new business realities in a post-pandemic world.

As the most popular information management and enterprise collaboration platform used by more than 200 million users and 250,000 organizations, SharePoint has emerged as a focus area for BPA. While out-of-the-box SharePoint has some serious limitations when it comes to aiding various process automation scenarios, the flexible platform allows organizations to leverage a reliable third-party engine on top of SharePoint to automate their vital business processes. No-code SharePoint process automation solutions fit the bill ideally. Such solutions empower business users to easily create applications and visualizations required for process automation with simple point-and-click configuration.   

Benefits of Automating Business Processes on SharePoint

SharePoint is often the first platform that comes to mind when organizations are seeking to automate and transform their business processes for better business outcomes. As a large repository of business knowledge, SharePoint data is leveraged by most departments within an organization as a part of their day-to-day tasks. The platform also serves as a connective fabric binding together the operations of organizations spanning across various departments and multiple locations. Logically, successful SharePoint BPA can deliver a far-fetched positive impact. Some such benefits include: 

• Increases Productivity:The automation of business processes on SharePoint 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.
• Accelerates Time & Reduces 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 time and costs. Automation allows organizations to accomplish tasks utilizing fewer resources and in considerably less time.
• Improves Efficiency and Minimizes Errors: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.
• Optimizes Resource Capabilities: Automation on SharePoint liberates employees from performing tedious, repetitive, and routine with the least growth potential. Organizations can re-align employees in other high-value tasks which require human intellect and carry career growth opportunities. It removes various bottlenecks in the process and enables employees to stay highly productive.
• Standardizes Operations: Business process automation 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 system. This greatly increases the dependability and reliability of the process.
• Increases Process Transparency: 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.
• Enables better Governance & More Reliability:Consistency is the benchmark of automated business processes, 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.

Characteristics of Ideal Processes for SharePoint BPA

One of the first steps in the SharePoint BPA journey includes selecting the best business process to automate. When choosing the right process for an organization’s BPA program, the goal is to look for traits that will ensure successful results. Here is a small checklist of aspects that make a business process ideal for automation:

• High volume and repetitive: Choose processes that account for high transaction volume and routine processes that run periodically (daily or weekly).
• Rule-based: Select standardized processes based on predictive rules that drive decision-making.
• Mature and stable: Pick processes that are well documented, stable, and with predictable operational costs.
• Low exception: Avoid automating low variation scenarios in the activities that could lead to different handling of procedures.
• High ROI gains: Choose processes that involve hours of tedious work, so that employees can be freed to do more value-added activities.
• Not subject to methodology changes: Avoid automating processes that may undergo fundamental changes to interface or configuration in the short term.

Rapidly Automate Processes on SharePoint with QuickApps

By now you know that SharePoint BPA is the unavoidable future of business operations. Let us introduce you to, QuickApps which allows organizations to automate SharePoint business processes rapidly and seamlessly. The solution delivers a rich assortment of powerful web apps, which can be leveraged to create (but is not limited to):

• Employee Onboarding System to simplify HR process
• IT Ticketing System to streamline IT support
• Claims and Billing System to enable easy Accounts calculations and tracking
• Sales Reporting Automation to provide timely insights for better decision-making

Download a FREE QUICKAPPS TRIAL to build SharePoint automation rapidly and easily.

Amit Gupta

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