Part 1. Digitalization and Automation of Business Processes – Where Do We Stand?

Recently, I had a scheduled Teams presentation with a potential client who didn’t join the meeting. I called but received no response. Late in the evening, the potential client called back to apologize, explaining that he was unable to join and couldn’t answer the phone, being very busy. As we spoke, I could hear the rapid clicking of his keyboard, realizing that he was simultaneously writing an email while talking to me. He was multitasking because otherwise, he probably couldn’t complete his daily tasks. Does this sound familiar? Have you experienced something similar?

There are multiple reasons for this overburdening of company employees: staff reductions in the name of efficiency, lack of candidates to fill open positions, increasing demands from management, numerous ongoing projects and initiatives, endless meetings, fatigue, and a continual reduction in the capacity to concentrate.

Possible Solutions?

One possible solution is BPA (Business Process Automation). According to Gartner, BPA is defined as “the automation of complex business processes and functions beyond conventional data manipulation and record-keeping activities, usually through the use of advanced technologies.” In other words, the automatic development of a business process with advanced technology and limited human intervention.

If we managed to automate (even partially) the processes in a company, not only would we relieve employees from being overloaded with tasks, but we would also have:

Reduce execution times;

Eliminate inherent human errors;

Reduce employee fatigue and stress;

Ensure compliance with procedures;

Enable scaling when necessary without cost increases.

The list of advantages could go on, but despite all this, the digitalization and automation of processes take place with great difficulty and relatively modest results in most companies in Romania.

Why Aren’t We Automating?

There are sufficient reasons to justify the delay in adoption and modest results. Let’s list a few of them:

Conservatism and self-sufficiency (“Colleagues complain, but we will manage as we have so far!”)

Fear of evaluation (“Honestly, no one wants to evaluate the current processes. If it turns out that they aren’t optimal, someone higher up will ask us why we haven’t done anything until now. It’s better to leave things as they are.”)

Lack of management clarity (“We bought new laptops with pink mouses, isn’t that enough?”)

Resistance from employees and even management (“Will we lose our jobs after that?”)

Previous failed or modest implementations (“We tried before, and it didn’t work!”)

Additional initial effort on top of current tasks (“I can’t take it anymore; a new project is the last thing I need!”)

Lack of internal expertise (“We know how to make tires, we’re not experts in digitalization…”)

Because digitalization of processes comes before automation (“Paper is fundamental for us. We can’t operate in the factory without papers.”)

If We Still Want to Digitalize and Then Automate Processes, Where Do We Start?

Start by evaluating the current state. Where are we now? To my surprise, often, management doesn’t precisely know where they stand.

– “Do you have a map of the company’s processes?” -Radu

– “We don’t, but we’ll talk to the IT colleagues. They had one, but it’s old, we’ll find it and give it to you.”- Client

– “What processes do you already have digitalized and, possibly, automated?”-Radu

– “We have everything! We have ERP, CRM, VMS, BI, and …bip. But it’s all for nothing!” – Client

– “Those are software applications; I was referring to processes…”-Radu

The first step in digitalizing and automating the company processes is evaluating the current state. A possible sequence of steps would be:

Step 1. Analysis of existing processes and their interconnections.

Step 2. Identification of processes already digitalized (partially or fully).

Step 3. Identification of inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

This step is absolutely necessary and can be conducted:

Internally – by the management team and specialists from each department.

In a mixed manner – by the internal team and an independent consultant or from a partner IT company. Only after we have a map of the processes and an understanding of the current situation we can move on to the next steps.

Otherwise, we’ll only have a sporadic initiative, uncorrelated with the rest of the processes, which might work correctly only by chance. Most of the time, it’s doomed to failure because:

The connections with other processes and data exchanges weren’t correctly defined – so someone, somewhere, will manually enter data into an Excel file.

The optimal solution wasn’t chosen – it might have cost less in the department’s budget, but it will cost the company more in the long run.

The complexity of the IT system increased – yet another application to install, update, maintain, back up, support, grant access to, etc.

Any process changes raise problems and update costs – changes driven by other processes or external causes.

In the next article, we will continue to explore the following steps in digitalizing and automating business processes, along with best practice recommendations from our and others’ experiences.

See you soon!