While there may be a lot of organizations that are similar to your own in your industry, it's equally safe to say that nobody does what you do quite like how you do it. All businesses have their own unique processes that differentiate them from their competitors. These special qualities - the things that may you unique - are also what help you grow and become more successful over time.
The "secret sauce" that makes you you is one of the core ingredients for your current and future success. It's these organizations that stand to gain the maximum benefit from business process automation - particularly when it applies the best practices of automation to their processes. This is something that you simply cannot get from off-the-shelf software for a wide range of different reasons that are definitely worth a closer look.
What is Business Process Automation?
In an overarching sense, business process automation (also commonly referred to as BPA for short) is the process of using software-based technology to automate as many important-yet-menial day-to-day business tasks as possible. This frees up the invaluable time of your paid human employees so that they can focus on jobs that actually drive revenue for your company.
Most of the time, this is all accomplished through a web-based application that is developed from the ground up with your unique business in mind. Not only does it make crucial data easily accessible, but it can also support multiple users at once - something that you cannot say for most off-the-shelf solutions. For more on this topic see: What is Business Process Automation?
Why Automate Business Processes?
All told, business process automation brings with it a wide range of different benefits, essentially all at the exact same time. One of the most important comes by way of how it helps to guarantee consistency in your business processes. All tasks are handled in an easily repeatable, accurate way - something that itself helps to eliminate the dreaded "human error", among other potential issues.
Along the same lines, business process automation is also a great way to improve data accuracy. Remember that business analytics and similar tools are only as effective as the data you're feeding into these systems. If you're inputting poor quality data, you're likely going to get inaccurate insights as a result. But as the quality of your business data improves over time by way of business process automation, it allows you to derive the right conclusions at the right time - always making sure that your business decisions are fueled by fact and not gut instinct or intuition.
Most organizations embrace business process automation thanks to how it allows for a far better allocation of human resources than most are capable of on their own. Thanks to both real-time and historical reporting, you can always make sure the right people are in the right place at exactly the right time - optimizing the effectiveness of your enterprise across the board.
All told, these are just a few of the many, many advantages of business process automation - rest assured that there are more. Even taken individually, they represent a powerful opportunity for most organizations. Taken together, they're an opportunity you cannot afford to ignore. For more on this topic see: The Top 13 Benefits of Business Process Automation
Examples of Business Process Automation
Business process automation has a home in many organizations. For example, it's been used by utility construction firms to track gas piping installation accounting more reliably. It's been used by medical organizations to empower better local healthcare, to generate unprecedented visibility into legislative activities, and even to automate the management of packaging specifications.
The point is that regardless of the type of business you're running or even the industry that you're operating in, business process automation has a home in your technology stack.
Why is ASP.NET Important to Implementing Business Process Automation?
All told, both ASP.NET web development and SQL Server database solutions should be the rock-solid foundation upon which any new application is built that implements business process automation for your enterprise. In the fast-paced modern era that we're now living in, users simply prefer web applications since they gain many advantages and productivity enhancements if the application is built in the right way.
Using a foundation of ASP.NET is an ideal way to accomplish this and it should become a cornerstone of your strategy. All told, using ASP.NET for implementing business process automation brings with it a host of unique benefits, including but not limited to ones like:
- ASP.NET is a very mature, robust web technology that has been around since 2002. This means that not only do people know how to work with it, but seasoned developers also know exactly how to use it to your advantage.
- It's a web-based technology - thus making your application available anywhere, at any time and from any device with an active Internet connection.
- Making the effort to standardize a process with the right software produces consistency and uniformity - meaning that you get the same reliable results again and again.
- ASP.NET is also secure from bad actors - helping to prevent mission critical data from falling into the wrong hands.
- Data can be backed up to the cloud, making it an ideal solution for your own business continuity and disaster recovery efforts.
- Data and process steps can be accessed from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, allowing employees to be just as productive at home as they can be in the office. As we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, this is critically important.
- ASP.NET can also be role-based, meaning that each person is presented with only the data they expressly need to see at any time in the process. Not only does this go a long way towards reducing clutter, but it helps to virtually eliminate confusion in your processes as well.
- Real-time reporting gives you invaluable insight into how the process is going, allowing you to stop a small problem today before it has the chance to become a potentially bigger one tomorrow.
- This approach also gives you the ability to leverage third-party tool kits, with Telerik being a prime example. This is a great way to both improve and extend ASP.NET, all while shortening the development time as well.
- ASP.NET also gives your organization the ability to integrate with other IT systems. This is true both of those internal systems that you're already using and ones that are external to your organization.
- ASP.NET is also now an open-source technology, allowing you to leverage the expertise of a vibrant community of developers who are contributing to constant improvement and extensions to the core technology.
- ASP.NET has also developed a reputation over the years for offering exceptional performance from web applications, which in and of itself is one of the most important benefits of all.
- ASP.NET uses less code than other development platforms, allowing the process to proceed as efficiently and as quickly as possible.
- Applications developed with this technology are also easier to maintain than other development environments, thus making it less likely that you'll experience periods of significant disruption at any point.
- Web applications can also be developed in ASP.NET in a way that leverages cloud computing technologies like Microsoft Azure. Again, this makes sure that the people who need certain data to effectively do their jobs always have it, no matter what.
- Finally, the longevity of the ASP.NET technology point is a major benefit for most businesses. It was developed by Microsoft who has long been seen as a pioneer of web technologies. This goes a long way towards not only guaranteeing efficiency today, but also future improvement and support of the platform for years to come.
In the end, improving business productivity is a big part of how companies are able to deliver more and more value to their stakeholders. It isn't just about what you can do today - it's about how you can better position your company to offer clients even more in the future. Business leaders are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve their business processes because doing so has a leveraging effect on their profitability. This is due to the fact that productivity benefits are magnified by the total number of employees who use such a solution.
At the same time, those same organizations who tie in automation with their customers and supply chain stand to gain even more when it comes to productivity advances, not to mention the improved satisfaction levels they'll see from employees, customers and partners.
For years, ASP.NET has been the key enabling technology that allows all of this and more to be possible. It addresses many business process automation requirements regardless of how unique and specific they are, leaving you with something that will only get more effective - and powerful - over time.
To find out more information about our ASP.NET software development outsourcing capabilities, or if you’d like to discuss how to solve business process automation challenges with Keene Systems CEO, Lance Keene click here to book a call with him.
To learn more about the importance of eliminating human error in your business operations, please download the eBook titled "How to Automate Business Process in 7 Smart Steps."
