AUTOMATION

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Purchase Order Automation: What’s Actually Changed and Why it Matters
Purchase Order Automation: What’s Actually Changed and Why it Matters 950 661 Xcelpros Team

Introduction

We’ve worked with teams where the purchase order (PO) process is still 80% manual. Buyers chasing signatures across three systems. Finance triple-checking totals in Excel. Vendors confirming orders by email days after they’ve supposedly shipped.

These aren’t outliers. These are real companies – many of them large, growing, and equipped with big-name ERPs. Some have even “automated” their processes.

But here’s the thing: the cracks still show.

Today, the problem isn’t the lack of tools. It’s that the tools don’t reflect how people actually work. Until that gap is closed, purchase order automations remain slow, error-prone, and frustrating.

Most Common Misunderstanding in PO Automation: “We’re Already Automated”

Almost every company says this at the start:

“Our POs go through the system. It’s all automated.”

But when we sit with the team, here’s what we actually see:

  • Requisitions start in email, Slack, or someone’s notebook.
  • Buyers copy-paste from old POs or pull data from a spreadsheet.
  • The ERP creates the PO – but it’s downloaded and manually emailed to the vendor.
  • Approvals happen in Outlook threads or are fast-tracked unofficially.
  • AP finds out about the order only after the invoice shows up.

This isn’t automation. It’s manual work happening inside a digital system.

True automation means the request, approval, dispatch, acknowledgment, and receipt all happen in sync – without switching channels, without double entry, and without someone having to follow up manually.

That’s the gap. Most teams are still sitting in it. According to recent industry reports, companies that fully automate their PO process can reduce processing costs by up to 80% and cycle times by 70%. This translates to significant savings, often turning a $30+ manual PO cost into under $5 per automated PO. Even for large enterprises processing hundreds or thousands of POs daily, these efficiencies add up rapidly.

Persistent Challenges in Purchase Order Automation Across Industries

We see the same issues whether you’re a pharma manufacturer or a regional distributor:

  • Duplicate vendors – Created because naming conventions weren’t followed. This alone can lead to up to 5% of invoices being delayed or misrouted, a common pain point for mid-sized companies with expanding supplier lists.
  • Missing PO fields – Because templates didn’t evolve with the business.
  • Approvals rerouted – Because someone “urgent-ed” their way around the system.
  • Receipts not logged – So AP has to guess if the order arrived. In fact, studies show that manual PO processes can lead to error rates as high as 15-20%, directly impacting bottom lines and leading to reconciliation issues for nearly 30% of invoices, a challenge faced by companies of all sizes, from growing SMEs to complex global operations.

And none of these issues show up in dashboards. They show up when something goes wrong, and everyone scrambles to find out why. In fact, studies show that manual PO processes can lead to error rates as high as 15-20%, directly impacting bottom lines.

The biggest myth?

“If it’s in the ERP, it must be right.”

We’ve seen ERPs full of outdated vendor records, incorrect payment terms, mismatched GL codes, and errors that don’t surface until they cost real money.

What AI Is (Actually) Doing in PO Automation

We’ve been in enough demos to know when AI is being oversold.

Here’s the reality:

  • AI isn’t writing your POs.
  • It’s not handling negotiations.
  • It’s not replacing buyers.

What it is doing, quietly and effectively, is flagging what people miss.

We’ve seen AI:

  • Suggest vendors based on historical delivery reliability.
  • Prompt buyers when required fields are missing or inconsistent.
  • Alert finance when an invoice doesn’t match the PO, reducing manual reconciliation time by up to 60-70% for many organizations, freeing up finance teams for more strategic work.
  • Recommend reorder points based on seasonal or production trends.

These aren’t hypotheticals. We’ve seen it live in midsize manufacturers, chemical distributors, and high-compliance environments. The key? Clean data. Stable process. That’s what makes AI useful for purchase order automation.

The challenge isn’t “how do we use AI?”

It’s “how do we set up the foundations, so AI has something to work with?”

Explore how AI can enhance your existing PO workflows without a complete system change.

Book a Demo

Why Purchase Order Automation Still Matters?

We’ve worked with businesses that skipped the PO process altogether, because their vendor relationships were strong. Many smaller businesses rely on strong personal relationships with vendors, but this approach quickly breaks down as they scale, leading to increased risk and lack of control.

Until they weren’t.

One deal goes sideways. One delivery gets delayed. One audit flags undocumented pricing. That’s when it hits:

The PO isn’t just a form. It’s the line between what was agreed and what was assumed.

Without it:

  • Disputes turn into legal problems.
  • Budgets blow up.
  • Trust breaks down.

It’s not about process for the sake of process. It’s about having a clear, traceable signal that the business is aligned; buyer, supplier, finance, ops.

What the Future Actually Looks Like

It’s not flashy. It’s not some next gen “smart” procurement experience. It’s basic, reliable, and invisible in the best way.

The future of purchase order automation looks like this:

  • The PO request starts in tools people already use: Outlook, Teams, Slack – and syncs back to the ERP automatically.
  • Approval workflows adapt to risk and value, not just hierarchy. This can cut approval times from days to hours for 90% of POs, a critical improvement for fast-moving sales or production environments.
  • Suppliers receive POs and send acknowledgments through shared portals, in real time. Leading companies are moving towards 98% “touchless” order processing through integrated supplier portals and APIs.
  • AI surfaces gaps and anomalies, but stays out of the way unless something’s off.

The best PO processes don’t need applause. They just keep things moving. Cleanly, quickly, quietly.

Where to Start (If You’re Not There Yet)

We’re not here to sell a massive transformation. But if:

  • You’re still emailing POs,
  • You’re tracking receipts manually,
  • Or finance finds out about orders from the invoice.

Research indicates that companies without effective PO automation can spend up to 2-3 times more per PO compared to highly automated peers, often leading to overspending by 5-10% on unmanaged purchases. This is particularly noticeable in growing companies struggling to keep pace with transaction volumes.

Then you’re bleeding time, accuracy, and visibility.

You don’t need to rebuild everything. You just need to fix what is real.

That could mean:

  • Cleaning up your vendor master.
  • Updating approval rules to match how business actually gets done.
  • Connecting your supplier portal to the PO system.
  • Turning on basic AI triggers common mistakes.

This is how real teams get better. Not by tearing it all down, but by layering in smarter workflows on top of what already works. Many successful implementations start with automating low-value, high-volume POs first, proving ROI before scaling up. One manufacturer, for example, reduced PO processing costs from $25-$100 per line item down to $0.25 through automation.

Final Word

Purchase orders aren’t sexy. But they’re where money leaves your business. If that’s not tight, everything else, inventory, margins, relationships, eventually suffers.

The future of purchase order automation isn’t about tech. It’s about control, clarity, and consistency.

Get that right, and the rest follows.

Now’s the time to modernize your PO process. Let’s do it together.

Talk to a Procurement Expert

Streamlining Operations in an Automotive Company
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Streamlining Operations in an Automotive Company
Streamlining Operations in an Automotive Company 700 500 Xcelpros Team

By the Numbers

  • 10.5 millionThe projected sales of fully electric and electric/gas hybrid passenger vehicles in 2022 worldwide. China accounts for nearly 6 million followed by Europe at 30 percent with the U.S. in third.
  • 6.5 million and less than 4 millionThe number of these vehicles sold in 2021 and 2020.
  • 75 percentThe anticipated increase in zero emissions delivery van and truck sales in 2022.
  • 2000,000The production cap per manufacturer for a full $7,500 credit per vehicle. As of Jan. 19, Tesla and GM had already hit it. Toyota, Ford and possibly Nissan may also reach the cap this year.
  • Less than 1 millionThe total number of electric passenger vehicles sold worldwide in 2015.

Introduction

Automobile manufacturers and the thousands of people who supply and service them daily are amid three simultaneous revolutions. Each one of these revolutions by itself is set to be a significant disruptor. Managing them all together will require even established companies to rethink how they do their business. Even incremental improvements to efficiency will be paramount to success.

These growing revolutions include:

  1. 1.The rise of Electric cars
  2. 2.The development of autonomous and connected vehicles
  3. 3.The growth of Digital mobility

The rapid adoption and sales of electric vehicles will only increase as gasoline prices continue to rise, thanks partly to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022.

As computer controls become increasingly commonplace—backup cameras, for example, have been a required safety feature in all new American-made cars since May 1, 2018—computerized versions are replacing mechanical linkages and parts.

A 2019 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) concluded that while ‘rear cameras alone reduced collision rates by only 5 percent, combining a camera with rear parking sensors reduced the backup collision rate by 42 percent, and adding automatic rear braking to the camera and parking sensors lowered the collision rate by 78 percent.Hagerty stated

These autonomous controls are now becoming commonplace. One study shows backup cameras in the Honda Fit LX. Its base model had a list price of $16,190 in August, 2020.

So what do these numbers mean for companies in the automotive industry, especially operations managers?

They mean the former way of running a shop isn’t going to cut it any longer.

Diversifying the Supply Chain

Improving operations management in the automotive industry requires focusing on ways to streamline operations and improve efficiency. A critical area is supply chain management. Today, that means building a supply chain that looks radically different than it did ten years ago.

Ongoing supply chain nightmares leftover from Covid-19 still impact every industry, including consumer electronics. These days that includes cars, not just computers.

Quoting a U.S. Department of Commerce study, the median inventory of computer chips consumers held, including automakers, fell from 40 days in 2019 to less than 5 in 2021.

“If a COVID outbreak, a natural disaster or political instability disrupts a foreign semiconductor facility for even just a few weeks, it has the potential to shut down a manufacturing facility in the US, putting American workers and their families at risk,” the report noted, a danger that isn’t lost on car companies,” Cnet states.

The ramifications, especially for electric car manufacturers, means an inability to meet demands. Projected shortfalls for some major automakers, in large part due to the chip shortage, include:

  • 1.25 million vehicles: Ford’s shortfall last year
  • 1.15 million vehicles: Volkswagen’s shortfall
  • 1.1 million vehicles: the shortfalls for GM and Toyota

Relying on a single supplier or vendor for a key part is no longer viable. Car manufacturers need a supply chain that is robust and has alternative suppliers for all critical parts, including computer chips.

Lacking critical parts in any industry, not just the automotive, can put the brakes on production.

Learn how you can streamline the operations of an automotive company

Learn more

The Car Manufacturing Process

The car manufacturing process includes stamping sheet metal components for each vehicle’s side frames, doors, hood, and roof. A gasoline vehicle’s engine, transmission, and gearbox are key pre-assembled components. In an electric car, they are much simpler motors.

The Tesla Model 3 electric cars use one or two centrally-mounted drive units. Each drive unit has a three-phase electric motor, inverter electronics, reduction gears and open differential that drives a pair of wheels in a simple arrangement. Vehicles with two drive units have one in front and one in back, providing all-wheel drive. Tesla’s Model S/X Plaid uses three traction motors: one for the front and one for each rear wheel.

These differences can cause logistical headaches for automotive supply chain, warehouse, and vendor managers, especially when using individual software packages.

Automation in Automobile Manufacturing

“There is very little in the assembly line or supply chain that is not fully optimized, and even less left to gain,” one business insider states when speaking about automating the automobile industry.

According to this article, U.S. automakers buy one of every two industrial robots sold globally. The robots handle everything from welding to assembly and painting on the production floor. Their computerized “cousins” are also common in sales, handling customer queries in finance company call centers, scheduling service appointments, sending alerts and running diagnostics.

All of this automation consumes and creates one product: data. “A self-driven car produces about 1 GB of data per second,” this article states.

Managers do their best trying to make sense of this information to ensure their supply chain delivers what is needed, when and to the right location. They are also responding to inquiries from sales, letting warehouse managers know what products are coming in and going out.

The only effective way to manage this deluge of data is by working with a supply chain management software product designed from the ground up for data integration.

Using Software for Data Integration

Modular software designed with data integration reduces bottlenecks and speeds decision-making. How? By taking information from multiple points—the inventory of computer chips in the warehouse, the number of outstanding electric vehicle orders, vendor deals on a specific paint color, the number of available skilled technicians for key assembly steps—and presenting it as a uniform whole.

A modular, secure cloud-based system can provide insights to business leaders by processing information in close to real-time. It can help explain where supply meets demand. What key components are critically low in store, and which are adequately stocked?

Using technology tied to these modular software components prevents automobile decision-makers from pushing products they can’t produce while letting them use business intelligence to respond to changing demands.

Final Thoughts

The days of car makers cranking out gas-guzzling giants are already over. Electric vehicles are quickly becoming the new kings of the road. Taking advantage of the new technology requires stepping up your supply chain management software so you can respond to change when it happens.

A modern, modular enterprise resource planning (ERP) package has more than enough under the hood to help your automotive-related company keep running smoothly.

streamlining-the-label-management-process
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Streamlining the Label Management Process
Streamlining the Label Management Process 700 500 Xcelpros Team

At a Glance

  • $10 million: The average cost of recalls to food companies that can are caused in part by inaccurate labels.
  • $65,000: The average cost of incorrect labeling based on a 2020 survey. Of that group, 61 percent said mislabeling costs exceeded $50,000.
  • 10-26%: The number of products mislabeled every year according to a survey of 300 IT directors in the U.S., UK, France and Germany.

Introduction

Labels serve three primary purposes in a consumer’s eyes. Labels help to:

  1. 1.Identify the contents of a product
  2. 2.Identify the product name
  3. 3.Promote the brand image

In combination with well-designed packaging, certain label parts could be considered one component of an effective marketing campaign. From a business perspective, though, labels need to do much more than tell consumers what is inside. Efficiently labeling and tracking is the best way to monitor a product’s performance, along with ensuring customer safety is the best it can be. This is especially true when it comes to certain industries like pharmaceuticals.

Packaging and Labeling

There are many key points to note when it comes to packaging and labeling, including the following:

Definition:

Labeling refers to the text, design, symbol, logo, instructions and use suggestions printed on the product package. Labels are designed to inform and attract customers by providing information.

Objective:

Labeling provides all information required by the governments in the geographical location where the product is marketed, sold and used.

Focus:

While exterior packaging is about appearance, labeling focuses on what’s inside. For example, products are required to accurately list the primary ingredients and their nutritional value when it comes to food. Labels on medicines must include active and inactive ingredients, allergic reactions, and harmful side effects.

Label designs are usually simple and formal. They may follow a government or company template. These can require a set list of data fields such as country of manufacture and expiration or “use by” date. Hazard information is typically posted where a customer can see it before making a purchase.

Effective label designs also include inventory tracking options while also meeting government requirements.

Inventory Tag Controls

“When paired with a competent asset or warehouse management system, inventory tags can be scanned to inform your supply chain of changes in your current inventory. This practice helps build end-to-end visibility among all parties, from supplier to customer, as your inventory moves through your warehouse,” according to a blog post by CamCode.

Inventory tags can be integrated into a product’s label design. The most common inventory labels we see doing this are bar codes. Barcode are a series of vertical lines—generally black—of varying widths interspersed with white gaps. QR (i.e., quick response) codes are a form of bar code generally in a square or rectangular format with black blocks and white spaces.

Speed is the main advantage of using a barcode or QR code label. Handheld and machine scanners can read the barcode information, sending it to inventory tracking software. That software can then automatically update inventory counts, eliminating the need for manual checks. The result is a fast, more accurate inventory update. A critical part of inventory tagging with barcodes is using the right type. Before creating any labels, companies should ensure they understand any regulatory or equipment-based requirements for the barcode type, label size, and label material type.

Figure: 1Components of a Barcode

Example of a Barcode

Schedule a consultation to streamline your label management process.

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Different Types of Barcodes

Barcodes primarily come in three different types:

  • Numeric only with a row of numbers beneath the bars
  • Alpha-numeric with a row of letters and numbers
  • Two-dimensional (QR is one example) using a series of small dots arranged in a unique pattern

The type of barcode a company chooses often depends on its industry and how the product will be used. For example, the Postnet format encodes destination information using long and short lines. Retail items often use the Universal Product Code (UPC).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has several requirements for barcodes. While the FDA does not require a specific code format, it mandates the barcode include the drug’s national drug code (NDC) number. Machine-readable information on blood and blood components must be on those labels.

“This new system is intended to help reduce the number of medication errors that occur in hospitals and health care settings,” according to the FDA.

These FDA rules apply to manufacturers, repackers, labelers, and private label distributors of human prescription drug products, biological products, and over-the-counter (OTC) drug products to protect consumers from dangerous side effects or worse.

Labels alone are not enough. However, companies need to be able to accurately track their inventory as well as safely manage any recalls or other issues with products. This only works when you have the right software in place.

Inventory Tracking Software

Software like Microsoft Dynamics 365’s Supply Chain Management includes several powerful inventory management features helping these businesses thrive today. For example, Supply Chain Management can automatically assign serial numbers based on manually entered (or scanned) batch numbers.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management also makes creating and tracking barcodes for released products easy. This modern inventory management software also works with the GS1 bar code and QR formats for use on shipping labels.

Microsoft says, “Unlike older bar codes, GS1 bar codes can have multiple data elements. Therefore, a single bar code scan can capture several types of product information, such as the batch and the expiration date.”

With a system like Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, you can use a predefined list of application identifiers to define the meaning of your data and connect it with GS1 codes. Microsoft suggests, “The setup of the application identifiers defines how the system should interpret a bar code and save it as a value in the system.”

The Bottom Line

With today’s focus on consumer safety, proper labeling and tracking of products, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals and medicine, will continue to be of utmost importance, including efficiently dealing with government regulations. Today’s businesses need to ensure they’re taking advantage of inventory tracking software that lets them easily create labels that help track the flow of raw materials, from work in progress to finished goods.

Programs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can create unique QR codes that contain a list of ingredients, allergy information, serial and batch numbers, hazardous warnings, and safety data sheets. Solutions like these let your warehouse staff scan products and send information wirelessly to any device on the network more efficiently than ever before. Is your labeling solution up to speed?

Resources: Packaging vs Labeling

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Service Keys Benefits
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Service: Keys Benefits
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Service: Keys Benefits 700 500 Xcelpros Team

At a Glance

  • Customer support professionals face constant challenges trying to understand customer requirements while making connections on an emotional level.
  • Emotional connections with customers has become an extremely important requirement for companies looking to boost their bottom-line.
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) for customer support coupled with machine learning (ML) helps analyze large volumes of customer data using tools like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and advanced voice recognition, to generate.

Introduction

Today’s customers want more affordable, convenient services that cater to their unique needs. Significantly more business is transacted seamlessly across both physical and digital channels. This is a result of increased trust in day-to-day technology which has led to increased sales, along with an easy way for customers to recommend products and services to other people, creating a whole new network of promoters. To take advantage of this change in behaviour, more companies are working harder than ever to deliver better services and provide great end-to-end customer experience.

67%

of customers are willing to switch brands looking for a better customer experience.

Source: Forbes

A lot of brands fail to create a positive emotional experience which directly impacts customer loyalty. This dissatisfaction results in customers switching between brands due to a poor customer experience.

Companies that excel in customer experience can uplift their revenues by 4%-8%.Source: Bain

Understanding this, more companies are beginning to come around to the benefits of investing in AI-automated technologies, with some choosing to focus on boosting their revenue, and others favoring customer experience over price and quality. This doesn’t ignore pricing, but let’s companies place more emphasis on the user experience. Additionally, most of these systems can be automated, further increasing the benefits.

80%

of the customer interactions will be handled by AI eliminating the presence of human agents by 20202

Source: A Gartner Study

Enhancing the customer experience with AI

In a digital world where every minute is important, it doesn’t make sense to have multiple virtual customer service agents set up to manage small issues. Using AI-based solutions to answer simple questions can help control costs to your company along with offering a host of additional benefits such as:

  • Providing faster issue resolution
  • Answering customer questions 24/7
  • Sorting and routing messages
  • Ability to transfer to live support as necessary
  • Freeing of asset availability to manage high value incidents

This is accomplished by analyzing large volumes of data much faster than a human. AI also uses high-level voice recognition to identify the voices of customers, understand the problem and provide the necessary responses. This all allows for faster prediction of market requirements with much higher accuracy.

Another tool born of AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), analyses human language to understand context and determine outcomes seamlessly, and often undetected. NLP works in a union with voice recognition to ensure faster problem resolution for customers, reducing frustration. These solutions are deployed as bots and can even be set up to transfer to a human assistant in the event the system is unable to assist. This is important to remember as AI isn’t a replacement for human interaction, just a tool that facilitates an improved experience.

Using AI for enhancing customer experience helps organizations achieve a number of sought after benefits including minimizing pain points, and reducing the number of hours spent by customer agents on simple tasks. AI driven automation with advanced machine learning helps empower your support agents to do their job more efficiently, creating more opportunities for up-sell and cross-sell activities designed to increase sales.

In today’s Age of the Customer, personal, emotive customer interactions play a critical role in bridging the gap for what disruption and digital innovation alone cannot solve. For brands to compete – and win – in CX in 2018 and beyond, service leaders must ensure their teams optimize processes and communication in ways that create positive emotional experiences for customers.

Dennis Fois | CEO of NewVoiceMedia

Harness the power of AI for effective customer services. Get started with a assessment.

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Exploring options – How Dynamics 365 can help

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Service insights let’s businesses leverage AI-driven insights to improve their customer service experience. Microsoft has included the following innovative features designed to help track performance across various channels

  • Dashboard Reference
  • Data Subject Rights (DSR) requests under GDPR

The dashboard reference comprises of various dashboards such as –

1.KPI summary dashboard This offers a macro-view of customer service experiences in your company, displaying topics currently generating the highest volume along with emerging issues.

2.New cases dashboard This is an overview of all the newly added customer cases in your system.

New cases dashboard

3.Resolutions dashboard This is a company-wide view of all case resolutions. AI helps identify the issues that impact resolution time.

Resolutions dashboard

4.Customer satisfaction dashboard Offers an overview of all the customer satisfaction scores in your company using AI automation to track the topics which have the highest impact on CSAT scores.

Customer satisfaction dashboard

5.Topic details dashboard This is a detailed overview of key performance indicators(KPIs) for specific topics using AI automation to showcase the impact by product and channel on customer satisfaction scores and resolution time.

Topic details dashboard

Aside from built-in dashboards, visual filters, and interactive charts that give an overview of operational data across all channels, Dynamics 365 also offers actionable insights based on critical performance metrics and emerging trends from your customer service system, highlighting areas that could benefit from improvement and could significantly impact business growth.

Dynamics 365 AI for Customer Service Insights provides a number of valuable benefits including

Improving customer satisfactionBuild brand loyalty by resolving issues before in a timely fashion. Gain a comprehensive understanding of CSAT scores used to calculate customer satisfaction.

Increasing operational efficiencies Streamline operations with insights from case resolutions, historical comparisons, and backlog trends to evaluate customer service agent performance. Monitor case volumes and expected support topics to optimize efficiency.

Enhancing visibility Dynamics 365 helps with effective visualization of customer engagement patterns, customer service operations using various AI-automated dashboards, machine learning capabilities and agent performance, and more. Discover and share critical insights using interactive charts and filters with AI for customer service.

Key Takeaways

While things like sales, pricing and quantity is often the main focus of businesses, it’s important to understand that developing good experiences with customers is just as important, sometimes more. Satisfied customers become extremely effective promoters of the brand simply by recommending your products or services to people they know. This helps businesses expand as loyalty leads to an emotional connection.

As we continue to see newer, more advanced technologies designed to simplify and enhance customer service experiences emerge, understanding the simple fact that people never forget how you made them feel will be even more important. The future of AI in customer service is indeed very bright.

Also Read: Artificial Intelligence in Insurtech : Reshaping the Insurance Industry

ENTERPRISE PROCESS AUTOMATION TRENDS
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Upcoming Process Automation Trends That Will Transform Your Enterprise
Upcoming Process Automation Trends That Will Transform Your Enterprise 700 500 Xcelpros Team

Introduction

The ultimate goal of any enterprise is that of speeding up processes, reducing errors, and increasing business output for better revenue generation. With the onset of the digitization era, companies have upgraded their technological prowess to adapt to process automation. It is important to understand that in the rapidly transforming world, process automation is not just a technological ability to speed up processes but a strategic movement towards better use of software to streamline workforce, introduce better work practices and mitigate cost inflations. Since COVID-19, process automation has turned into a need of the hour to improve operations that are built with adherence to process compliance and yield better outputs with a limited workforce. This means process automation will transform enterprises at a larger scale to increase agility and reduce dependency on manual work.

Manual Vs Automation

Is your business still operating through manual handoffs, excel macros, and cumbersome reporting? As businesses are integrating automation in more rapidly in different facets right from HR to Marketing, Production, Sales, and Information Technology; there is a considerable reduction in human intervention for mundane and simpler tasks. A component of efficiency will be introduced with the implementation of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in process automation. According to a leadership piece by Sogeti (1), enterprises will look into integrating robotics process automation (RPA) with AI to extract more business value. Read on to know why an enterprise should consider intelligent process automation for complete transformation and the latest trends that will help businesses along the path of said transformation.

Why Embracing the Latest Process Automation Trends and Techniques is a Necessity for an Enterprise?

As an enterprise, you need to ask yourself a key question: Where should the business’ attention be?

While at face-value this question may seem trivial, the entire enterprise architecture revolves around this key aspect. The more attention your skill base gives towards the latest trends like the Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, Cloud, Advanced Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and automated-integrated workflows, the better streamlined and agile your workforce would be. Hence it is highly significant for enterprises to explore deep into the latest process automation trends and make their employees acquainted with these trends for a competitive edge.

There is no doubt about the fact that legacy systems need upgrades and modernization to encompass latest trends of digitization, modern technologies and to become aligned with the fast-paced, changing business demands. Process automation plays a key role here. If not for process automation, the IT systems would face the brunt of not being able to keep up with business process improvements (carried out usually at a large-scale), leading to lesser productivity and overall loss of revenue. Automation helps you form ‘bundles’ of data and migrate them to platforms for systematic records management. Process automation can help your enterprise reduce the error rate, and increase productivity at a lower cost. But one point to remember is that the process automation described above would only make sense if your company has already transformed into a modern ERP system.

Figure 1 8 Reasons to Automate Your Business Processes

Reasons to Automate Your Business Processes

1.Handling the Unstructured Data Challenge: While data on systems has been very much taken care of by current process automation tools, enterprises and their related facets still struggle with unstructured forms of data such as hand-written notes, bills, invoices, images, etc. With the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence, businesses are digging up automation solutions that will not only recognize this type of data (with the help of Robotics), but also assimilate and use it in processes similar to structured data.

2.Low-Code Solutions for Faster Results: Robotic process automation when integrated with low code solutions forms a golden bridge of zero human intervention and faster application development. These low code solutions enhance efficiency as well as help in transforming core processes like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

3.Integration of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with Business Process Automation (BPA): Interdependent workflows have always been a part of large enterprises and the IT skill set in an organization has mostly been at the helm of managing these interconnecting processes in a complex workflow system. The latest automation tools will help in integrating RPA with BPA resulting in the formation of intricate workflows and implementation of all the related processes.

4.Real-Time Automated Decision Making: Enterprises will see more and more management of big data with the help of artificial intelligence and this will facilitate the way for flexible tools for IT operations that will preempt glitches and provide real-time solutions. This will help in better resource-allocation, lesser communication gaps, and fewer outages.

5.A Chance Towards Skill Set Upgrade: When computers were introduced as a tool to reduce human effort, they were met with a lot of apprehensions. In fact, many considered them as machines that would make a human contribution to technology obsolete. Similar apprehension and even cynicism can be seen in the case of process automation tools and software. After all, process automation eliminates the need for human intervention, making many technical jobs outworn.

However, enterprises are now looking up to this advancement in process automation as a chance to upgrade the skill set of their current employee base and make them adept in the latest technologies and tools. This will not only help the IT personnel move from labor-intensive, monotonous jobs to skill-based, dynamic ones, but it will also create a learning curve in the industry resulting in more innovations. When put in perspective, automation is not the cause for losing jobs, it is instead an opportunity for companies to fill the skill set gap and enhance the expertise of their IT personnel for innovation and better strategic output.

By 2023, AI-enabled automation in data management will reduce the need for IT specialists by 20%Source: Gartner report

The Changing Landscape

An enterprise cannot deny the fact that adapting to the need of the hour with the latest process automation trends is going to work in favor of its core business value. Numerous users across organizations will gain access to data, automated workflows that will be systematically prepared, and actionable insight that will aid towards building an agile enterprise. In the current market being agile as a company will be your strong suit. As they say, the cards are laid on the table; it is up to the businesses now to play their hand wisely!

Remote work is becoming more prevalent post-COVID-19. Companies are looking for more ways to streamline operations, engage the workforce, and yet meet the needs of customers. Process automation plays a major role in volatile market conditions during COVID-19. A combination of Microsoft’s Power Platform, AI – ML, Dynamics 365 for Sales and Dynamics 365 ERP, integrated with Teams allows users to streamline their processes and build needed visibility for management to effectively view the progress of operations remotely.

In fact, a successful use case off-late within various companies is to integrate Dynamics 365 with flow, teams, planner, and SharePoint to enhance compliance of process, coordination with team members remotely, track processes that are running in each department and provide task execution clarity for each employee within a department. More companies are adopting this suite of tools to improve productivity and simplify workforce engagement. All major functions of a company – be it Procurement, Sales, Manufacturing, Quality, Finance or HR, when unified together help a business stay afloat during challenging market conditions and support the over well-being of a business.

Key Takeaways

  • Introduction of Automated workflows, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, Big Data, Machine Learning, and Advanced Electronics has changed the face of process automation for better and faster results.
  • Enterprises will need to invest more in advanced process automation tools to stay ahead in the competition and to gain critical business value.
  • Evaluate low-cost solutions for process automation that is easily customizable for your business and build enhanced visibility of how your company is performing in a challenging market.

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