How to Automate a Business: Your Ultimate Guide for 2025
MHC Marketing 
July 29th, 2025
Table of Contents
- The Tangled Web of Workflows Before Automation
- What is Automation in Business?
- Why Automate Your Business in 2025?
- How to Pitch Automation to Employees, Managers and C-Suite Stakeholders
- How To Determine Which Process to Automate
- Basics To Begin Automating Parts Of Your Business
- Automation in Different Industries – How to Tailor Automation to Your Business Type
- How to Get Your Team to Embrace Automation
- Your 7-Step Roadmap to Business Automation
- How to Measure and Report on the Success of Automation
- Automate Your Business With MHC
The Tangled Web of Workflows Before Automation
Picture the average office workday without access to automated systems. You’ve settled into your desk and are making last-minute edits to this afternoon’s finance slide deck, adding some of your own meeting updates. You catch some numbers that don’t quite look right. A handful of your invoice payments appear to be duplicates.
You want to get this resolved quickly, but it’s not obvious how to go about that. Processing an invoice requires input from multiple employees and approvals from several managers. Most prefer electronic approvals and checkpoints, but there’s still one “old school” manager who wants printed paper.
Even if you figure out who to talk to, you still need access to the invoice receipt spreadsheet to check it yourself. That might be a problem, since the person who would need to grant you access is out of the office for the day.
While you’re trying to figure it out, you receive a notification about a company training module that needs completion. Upon logging in, though, you realize you’ve already completed this training, but human resources has no record of it.
Later on, your manager needs your help hunting down a paper trail of original vendor shipment invoices. You quickly discover they aren’t saved in a central repository as you thought but instead sprinkled throughout multiple folders saved in disparate locations. It’ll take you a few hours and a few more emails to dig your way out and find what you’re looking for.
Automating Your Way to More Productive Workflows
Clearly, there are a lot of inefficiencies in the workday described above. The amount of time spent digging through papers, tracking down people for approvals, and trying to access data across multiple locations adds up to a lot of wasted money. In an era where automating many of those day-to-day functions is easy and affordable, there’s hardly an excuse not to automate a business.
An automated software solution that integrates smoothly with your existing ERP and other systems provides an immediate boost in efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. Optical character recognition (OCR) tools automatically pull necessary data directly from any source.
Automatic workflows make sure documents are routed for approval quickly and always to the right person. A centralized dashboard makes all of the information you need available in the same location. Automation takes over all of the most repetitive and least stimulating tasks, freeing your team to increase productivity and focus on more engaging work.
“Only 9% of all AP departments today are fully automated, where invoices flow into the organization, are processed touch-free, and posted directly to an ERP. On the other end, about 5% of organizations are completely manual and paper-based. That means most of us are somewhere in between.” ~ Mark Brousseau, Brousseau & Associates
“If your organization has multiple checks and balances regarding who should approve things, automated review and approval workflow capabilities are key. You can make sure before it actually gets distributed that it passes all reviews and approvals, and you can track the history of those approvals. Better yet, you have version control, so you can always see what was distributed when and what it included.” ~ Gina Armada, former CEO of MHC
What is Automation in Business?
There are as many business automation definitions as there are businesses, but there are some universals that apply in any industry. When deciding how to automate a business process, it pays to consider three questions:
- What are the routine, daily operations we perform that allow us to provide the goods and services we do?
- How are these operations completed, and by whom?
- Are there new ways we can simplify, speed up or straighten out said operations to better align with our broader business goals?
These core questions help determine the best ways to automate your business. They allow employees and managers to step back and survey the way tasks are accomplished with fresh eyes and curious minds.
Business process automation is about more than convenience. It ultimately prioritizes people by freeing personnel from mundane tasks so they can perform more meaningful functions.
By using the “Three Rs” approach, you can begin to define strong points of automation for your business, marrying the technological with the human to streamline everyday business operations.
1. Redefines Roles
When you learn how to automate business processes, you’re really learning how to unlock human capital. People are no longer tied up in monotonous, routine or low-skilled tasks. The best-automated business processes help redefine your overall approach by:
- Identifying unnecessary or overlooked process checkpoints
- Analyzing redundant roles and related activities
- Simplifying superfluous steps and bottlenecks
2. Reshapes Infrastructure
Making your business automated sharpens the way you use and manage in-house technology, allowing those redefined roles to function the way they’re meant to.
After you’ve outlined specific places and points where activities can be more efficient, you can outfit those points with problem-solving technology. A department equipped with the right tools, both digital and physical, is a department where roles are more comfortable, more intuitive, and less repetitive.
This is perhaps the most tangible aspect of automating your business. Automated applications, programs, and software change the way you manage your network and data. Technology is a key that unlocks personnel potential, not a replacement for it.
3. Revitalizes Operations
A well-tuned automated business solution that harmonizes the right roles with the right technology will ultimately save you time and money. A new standard operating procedure (SOP) complemented by the right tools becomes the operational backbone for your business. That might include inputting new client data, recording vendor invoices, managing customer service complaints, or dispatching rush orders efficiently.
Revitalized operations also help align these updates with real business metrics and short and long-term goals. When all parts of your business work together for a broader strategic purpose, not a series of broken tasks or isolated responsibilities, real growth can begin.
Remember the Three Rs — redefine, reshape and revitalize — and you’ll have a blueprint to start implementing successful business automation today.
Why Automate Your Business in 2025?
If you’re in the market for business automation tips, here are just some of the benefits of implementing automated, streamlined business processes throughout your organization:
1. Better Quality Control
Standard operating procedures don’t just ensure all employees know what they’re doing and when to do it. When paired with a well-defined team, straightforward action steps and up-to-date technology, SOPs provide a formula for cohesive quality control across your products and services. That consistency can turn clients into evangelists and keep all your operations airtight.
2. Improved Efficiency
From more successful project management workflows to decreasing product order lead times to finally creating a central invoice management repository, you can address all the efficiency pain points in your industry with automation software.
3. Reduced Operating Costs
Automatic data-inputting software is faster, more accurate, and less error prone than manual processes. Automated inventory management systems and point-of-sales trackers better structure your vendor shipments and forecast reorders. Digitally automated form systems safely funnel client info to your private network. All these examples illustrate the way automation manages your cash flows to reduce operating costs.
4. Enhanced Compliance Documentation and Oversight
With digital systems taking care of many repetitive tasks, there’s less chance for costly human errors to strike. This also means reduced risk for noncompliance or data mismanagement. Those are particularly pressing concerns for heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, food and beverages and pharmaceuticals industries.
5. Data-Driven Strategic Decisions
Automated systems generate metric-based, quantitative insights on everything from billing and sales cycles to new employee onboarding operations. You can tailor operational changes and organizational processes with actionable, data-backed solutions, the key to selling your team on these changes.
Must-Have Business Automation Features for 2025
Technology is moving even faster than usual in our current moment. Tools that were mostly theoretical just a few years ago are now necessities for any competitive business in 2025. As breakthroughs like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning change the ways we define automation in business, these features have become must-haves in nearly every industry:
➡️ Automated workflows: Eliminate outdated processes like manual data entry and time-consuming approvals routing.
➡️ Automated document generation: Pull from a deep library of templates and reusable content fragments to create quick, error-free documents.
➡️ Interactive forms: Boost accuracy and customer engagement with intelligent forms that simplify complex workflows.
➡️ Smart documents: Build documents with embedded audio and video, downloadable PDF forms, clickable links, and more.
➡️ Document accessibility: Start your process with pre-composition accessibility that ensures that your documents are usable for all audiences.
How to Pitch Automation to Employees, Managers and C-Suite Stakeholders
Business workflow automation is a universal need. To stay competitive and cost-effective, you need your employees and your technology working in tandem for simpler day-to-day functionality. Even so, it’s not always easy to get your direct managers or C-level stakeholders to buy into business automation. We’ve got a few suggestions for selling your team on streamlined solutions that benefit every employee.
- Stick With the Data
Only about 30% of American workers report being actively engaged with their jobs. One major culprit? Repetitive tasks, the very thing automation aims to take off their plates.Sit down with your team and gather information on what they find redundant, inefficient or downright frustrating across each of their daily responsibilities. Use these insights to generate a numbers-backed data report on the excesses and inefficiencies currently at odds with higher organization goals. C-level executives and managers operate at this wavelength. Give them data that speaks to it.
- Stress What It Can Do, Not What It Can Change
Depending on your industry, automation stands to reduce data management costs, labor costs, lead and turnover times, communication backlogs, workflow chokepoints, points of error and more. These are further selling points to any member of your organization. Focus on the results automation can bring, not how processes will change.
- Cut To the Chase
When it comes to business processes, automation is not an impending boogeyman that will eradicate jobs and displace workers. In fact, it does the opposite. Automated solutions are cost-effective and virtually inevitable for any industry, and they can be broken down into step-by-step outlines that are approachable and scalable. Make sure stakeholders know this.
How To Determine Which Process to Automate
How to determine the right processes to automate in your business is all about asking the right questions with the right group of people, listening to their answers, and pairing them with a long-term business goal.
STEP 1
Outline places where you see the most problems or inefficiencies
Start with any processes you know are still being done manually, large or small: employee mileage tracking, expense reporting, accounting invoicing, network surveillance tasks, customer service touchpoints, social media posting, email marketing funnels, trainings and onboarding tasks, meeting scheduling, processing returned items, even filling out employee time sheets. Break down every stage it takes to currently complete this target task, as well as who’s involved and what technology is used.
STEP 2
Outline ideal goals and solutions
What would your ideal workflows look like? Ideate their exact steps (or lack of them) that would be required to make your business processes flow the way you want them to. Then assess how that’s different from the process currently in place. Ask for insights from team members who work directly with those processes.
STEP 3
Assign numbers to your goals
Allot an improvement metric for the whole team to get behind. Want to decrease the time it takes to re-itemize a warehouse item returned by a customer? Aim to cut it by 30%. Wish you could speed up the process of logging human resources forms for new hires? Look for employee onboarding software that can do this in one hour versus one afternoon.
STEP 4
Get team feedback
You might have some pretty solid insights into process headaches at work. To get the most comprehensible and adaptable automation solutions, though, you must make sure everyone else experiencing pain points gets a seat at the table as well. Add team feedback to your outlines and move onto the final stage.
STEP 5
Research tools and equipment to help reach the new process goal
Whether it’s computer software, an updated program feature, a collaborative suite of work documents, or equipment installed into your company vans or mobile assets, technology will define the way you move toward successful business automation.
Common Business Processes That Can Be Automated
Every business has its own process pain points, but these areas can benefit from automated processes and streamlined workflows no matter your industry.
1. Finance And Accounting
Financial and accounting processes require precision, but inputting all those numbers can be monotonous. This department is perfect for automation.
- Accounts payable and accounts receivable progressions, especially approval workflows
- Enterprise content management (ECM) documentation systems
- Data inputting, data query, and data extraction practices
- Secure data storage, both for your own information and that of your clients and customers
2. Human Resources
Your employees are your company’s greatest asset, and they likely generate the greatest amount of paperwork. Simplify your HR systems by going digital.
- Human resource management systems’ (HRIS) functionality and capabilities, including access, retrievability, and editing
- Filing new employee paperwork and onboarding materials, from local, state and federal tax forms to direct deposits, emergency contact information and network access forms
- Completing and documenting training programs or modules
3. Product Orders And Distribution
Keep better track of your products and services by making information available everywhere.
- Work order processing, whether paper, digital or both
- Shipping and receiving confirmation and documentation
- Delivery updates
- Inventory management
- Vendor contract and file management
- Fleet and field asset management
4. Customer Communication Management
Content management and business process automation go hand-in-hand. Delivering consistent, timely, and correct custom communications makes a huge impact on customer satisfaction and brand reputation.
Basics To Begin Automating Parts Of Your Business
Business automation can reshape the way core business processes such as accounting or human resources get done. Organizations can begin their foray into business automation with the following baseline systems.
➡️ Intelligent Character Recognition (Icr) and Optical Character Recognition (Ocr) Applications
Data capture via ICR and OCR is the key to automatic data entry. These are types of software that can scan and “read” text, both digital fonts and manual handwriting. ICR and OCR software funnel that information into relevant data logs or programs. Your employees can then access and edit that data without spending hours inputting it. ICR and OCR are particularly helpful for any form that needs to be translated from hard copies into a computer system, from direct deposit slips to customer contracts.
➡️ Automated Documentation Software
Document automation platforms are complete enterprise content management systems that import, export and log all business-relevant files and data. Think of them as a modern, user-friendly and hyper-accessible library of files merely a few clicks away for all your employees. Most automated documentation software is platform-agnostic as well, so it’ll integrate with your current filing system and won’t cause disruptive system downtimes.
➡️ AI Assisted Functionality
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly redefining business automation. AI-assisted tools make it easier to create precise, timely content tailored to the specific needs of your business and your customers. From assistance with writing to automatic translations to ensuring consistent branding, AI assistance is creating a smoother, more efficient content and document generation process across every channel.
➡️ Smart Forms
Smart forms are an easy and contemporary solution to business paperwork creation and management. You create customizable documents in several different formats, digital or print, and save those documents right into your content management system (CMS). You can link to form-generated data too, so it automatically gets entered into system logs or programs using ICR and OCR technology described above.
➡️ Automated Cloud Storage and Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Some businesses resist automatically sending and storing customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud due to worries that it’s too complicated, too expensive, or will pigeonhole too many business resources. In fact, this is an IT best practice. An automated process which securely transmits private information and ensures its security with off-site data-management best practices means you now have more compliant audit trails and access controls.
Automation in Different Industries – How to Tailor Automation to Your Business Type
Automation needs vary widely by industry. Keeping up with your industry’s current needs requires awareness of your operational inefficiencies, your labor needs and any industry-relevant technology or equipment. That’s the kind of awareness you only glean from years of working within your industry.
It’s these variables that shape your selected automation suite. Otherwise, you risk implementing new processes that only create more problems on top of the ones they were meant to solve.
Read on to see what technological automation and its best practices can solve in some of today’s leading industries:
1. Automation for Retail
Retail is a fast-moving, high-product turnover industry with hyper-segmented target audiences spread out across geographically and culturally diverse markets. From a niche clothing boutique with a single storefront to an international retail department chain, these enterprises have a list of operational process challenges that can prevent them from seeing maximum profits.
Retail’s common process headaches revolve around the systematic organization of merchandise workflows. That begins with orders, continues through delivery, and is finalized through in-store or online points of sale management. Alongside these concerns, retail business processes also include a highly variable workforce and the need to keep pace with changing consumer demands and expectations — most pressingly the security of their credit card or payment information.
❌ Frequent Retail Process Pain Points
Some of the main process problems plaguing retailers include:
- Inventory management, both in-stores and online, with balanced sales forecasting versus quarterly expenses.
- Customer-service channels that respond quickly and effectively to merchandise returns, questions and more.
- Paper documents crammed into small, ill-equipped back-office locations.
- Multi-location store management.
- High rates of employee turnover.
✅ How Automation Can Help
Automation can help with these problems in a few ways:
- A single platform to manage orders, with all customer and point-of-sales information stored in a private, secure database.
- Improved distribution and inventory management, plus retail content and sales cycle tracking.
- Secure employee and customer information storage, such as credit cards and mailing addresses.
- Field-delivery and transportation cycle management.
2. Automation for Healthcare
A high-functioning, finely-tuned hospital, clinic, assisted living or other health service institution requires modern, efficient business processes. As one of the most regulated industries, it can seem impossible to balance stringent HIPAA rules and other compliance bodies with in-the-moment, interpersonal patient interests while still supporting efficient, streamlined back-office operations.
❌ Frequent Healthcare Process Pain Points
The healthcare industry generates a tremendous amount of data and has many challenges in handling that data:
- Legacy computer systems ill-adapted to the industry’s ever-changing software and data security statutes.
- Proper compliance documentation, especially if relying on paper-based files and storage.
- Secure networks and PII.
- Inefficient manual-data inputting into electronic health records (EHR) systems, alongside inundated paper-document storage.
- Lack of communication regarding medical transportation operations, such as safely transferring blood samples.
✅ How Automation Can Help
Automation can help corral healthcare data and keep it secure.
- Central repository for patient billing and other medical accounting tasks, plus compliant documentation.
- Central repository for patient records management and communications.
- PII encoding, encryption and in-house or cloud-based hosting.
- Improved compliance reporting, with a single integrated software program that simplifies audit trails and documentation.
- Greater consistency across inventory controls and medical transportation.
- Simplified, consistent creation of documents such as patient care communications, patient correspondence, patient records, and bills and collection correspondence.
Healthcare Customer Story
Check out this customer story to learn MHC software solutions helped one healthcare organization handle high volumes of documents and improve document processing overall. See how MHC:
3. Automation for Manufacturing
Business process automation strategies for manufacturing ensure product quality and add value to customer communications. At the same time, automation helps mitigate expenses and better define daily labor roles, procedures and responsibilities. Overseeing all this tends to fall on the shoulders of plant managers, who often don’t have the technological resources available themselves to make these domain fundamentals easier.
❌ Frequent Manufacturing Process Pain Points
- Manufacturing can be a complicated web of interconnected processes:
- Complex order workflows relying on multiple suppliers, contracts, and vendor operations.
- Supply-chain management of those workflows.
- Product distribution, transportation, and delivery management.
- Warehouse inventory management.
- Quality control and product consistency across mechanized operations.
- Comprehensive employee training yet limited HR and accounting resources.
✅ How Automation Can Help
Automation can simplify these various processes into a streamlined workflow:
- A complete, centralized document management system for invoices, purchase orders, and receipts, as well as all contracts and vendor information.
- Barcode printing and signature captures for enhanced field and transportation operations.
- More informed work order processes to keep all costs under control.
- Better forecasted inventory controls.
- Consistent billing and financial communications such as statements, and invoices.
- Fast and accurate creation of product documents such as manuals, handbooks, labels, component manifests, quality control documents, and certificates.
- Quick and correct production of order process documents such as picking lists, and purchase orders.
Manufacturing Customer Story
Check out this customer story to learn how MHC software solutions helped one manufacturer simplify complex processes and create better communications. See how MHC:
4. Automation for Energy and Utilities
The energy and utilities sector has unique problems to mitigate when it comes to its business processes. At the macro level, the industry must remain as proactive as possible to variables well outside its immediate control. Businesses are increasingly looking to big data and tech-augmented systems to do so.
This industry relies upon teams of field-service technicians and personnel leveraged as mobile workers. Most of these employees do not have access to data-driven, strategic technology. This push-and-pull presents distinct questions on organizational, managerial and compliance best processes for energy and utility companies.
❌ Frequent Energy and Utilities Process Pain Points
Utilities and energy industries have distinct processes to manage:
- Enterprises and assets that are widely dispersed.
- Legacy geographic information systems (GIS).
- Tight industry oversight and regulations, including models on pricing and expansion.
- Complex financing and billing procedures.
- Constant workflow streams and internal approval procedures that are out-of-sync with field operations.
- Changing consumer tastes and beliefs.
- Globally tied markets and competition.
✅ How Automation Can Help
Here are a few ways this industry can benefit from automating these processes:
- One repository for all utility and energy workflow documents, customer-facing and internal, from initial contract signings, invoices and service updates to meter verification and service paperwork.
- GIS data storage and retrieval.
- Regulatory compliance documentation for streamlined OSHA-audit trails.
- Improved operational financing and accounting documentation.
5. Automation for Finance
The financial sector has little time for process errors and many chances for process-related noncompliance. Paper documents are still common in this industry, but automation is quickly changing that. Financial services cannot afford to keep relying on legacy document-management systems, old filing methods, and mismanaged client data.
Financial institutions have an obligation to keep their processes transparent and their client PII safe across all channels. With more and more oversight of these obligations, those in the financial industry must seriously review their document management, employee compliance training, and IT network business processes to protect their own reputation alongside the privacy of their clients.
❌ Frequent Finance Process Pain Points
The finance industry relies on many complicated processes:
- Strict industry regulations.
- Client communications and paperwork coming in a near-constant stream.
- Network and transactional security, as well as the secure storage of PII.
- Employee onboarding and compliance training across all organizational levels.
- Data collection and inputting into network data banks.
✅ How Automation Can Help
✔️ Community Banking
Automating template management and approval workflows streamlines operations and keeps you compliant with regulations. MHC’s CCM platform can handle:
- Account opening and closing documents
- Account renewal documents
- Annual statements
- Bank statements
- Tax statements
- Customer correspondence letters
✔️ Wealth Management
Tailor interactions to meet each client’s needs with quick, precise, and consistent delivery of documents including:
- Client onboarding documents
- Portfolio performance reports
- Account statements
- Trade confirmations
- Term sheets
- Trade documents
- Tax documents
✔️ Credit Unions
Automation helps improve credit union member satisfaction and enhance member experience by handling:
- Member onboarding
- Account opening and closing documents
- Account renewal documents
- Statements
- Loan documents
- Tax statements
- Member correspondence letters
Finance Customer Story
Check out this customer story to learn how choosing to automate business operations with MHC software solutions helped one financial services business improve efficiency and compliance. See how MHC:
6. Automation for Transportation
The business needs of the transportation industry call for processes that work for personnel on the road, not in an office. This translates to a complete suite of remote document management, accounting, finance and field resources that makes field workflows of managing deliveries simpler and more real-time responsive.
Without automated solutions, a transportation business cannot meet the most basic expectations of the industry, with every touch point in your operations at risk. All of these processes and their attendant technology must be manageable and user-friendly for drivers — enhancing their jobs rather than restricting their on-the-road autonomy.
❌ Frequent Transportation Process Pain Points
Here are some of the processes that concern the transportation industry:
- Asset tracking across dispatches, locations and assignments.
- Delivery speed and reliability, the bedrocks of quality assurance for the transportation industry.
- Mobile fleet personnel management, with geographically dispersed and on-the-go employees.
- Constant paperwork, invoices and receipts to manage while on the road.
- Heavy industry regulations and audits.
✅ How Automation Can Help
Process automation can simplify these operations in several ways:
- Photo, field and signature capture technology to fill document orders and shipments on the road.
- Delivery tracking and confirmations, plus other resources for real-time field updates.
- Automated content distribution and barcode printing.
- Automated invoice processing to reduce the need for manual data entry and shorten the entirety of your mobile.
How to Get Your Team to Embrace Automation
Process Changes Need Everyone On Board
There are many stakeholders to consider when implementing a business-process improvement for the first time. After all, process updates at one level will ripple out to affect the whole, making a team-by-team embrace of process automation an essential step for overall progress. Loop in the team as early as possible. The sooner business automation carries holistic buy-in, the sooner you can strengthen those departments, streamline them and make them more strategic.
How To Pitch A Process Change To Your Boss
Process-automation approval from your direct supervisor achieves two goals. It not only displays your initiative and dedication to making the business the best it can be. It also begins securing the leadership necessary to make the enhancement smooth and systematic. There are a few framing strategies to help get you there.
- Frame It to Serve Them
The more you can speak about alleviating specific pain points, the more you make change appealing. People rarely champion business initiatives solely for the sake of others. They’re much more likely to jump on board when an idea solves their problems and makes their lives easier too. Your manager is likely no exception. Use this knowledge to better pitch the process change to them. - Prepare Ahead of Time
The more composed, poised and put together your pitch, the more likely it is to stick. Prepare a brief but informative slide deck that includes the “why” behind your automated improvement. Place this up-front in your slide deck introduction, then circle back to it in your conclusion. Most importantly, highlight what pain points process automation will solve for your team and your manager alike, bolstered by stats and quantitative data that you’ll be tracking to prove its solution. - Opt for One-on-One Conversations
Set up a one-on-one meeting with your manager to exclusively discuss workflow and processing improvements and the technology connected to them. This highlights the importance of your ideas, gives them space to breathe, grounds them in a focused spotlight, and signals how seriously you’re taking this initiative. It also allows for easier discussion on the nature of the change and how it can get underway. - Be Specific
Avoid discussing the broad need for automation, which can come off as a complaint. Instead, pitch two or three specific products or tools you would be interested in implementing, be they new software, a new shipping and delivery notification system, a new PII protection program or something else entirely. - Don’t Take Hesitation Personally
Expect hesitation. Your manager has numerous things on their plate already. You may need to schedule a follow-up meeting. It takes time to assess the cost structures of automated solutions and ideate implementation timelines.
How To Get Your Team On Board
Make a concerted effort to loop in your team or those who report to you even before you sit down with the supervisors. Not only does this help you strengthen process ideas and cover more concrete pain points, but it emphasizes the collaboration you need to make business process solutions stick.
- Get Their Insights
The number one way to include employees on fresh ideas is to, well, include them. Employees who feel valued beyond the routine jobs they perform are much more likely to stay engaged, produce higher-quality work and report stronger levels of happiness and commitment to their place of employment. Ensure your team’s insights and opinions have been accounted for before any significant change takes place.
- Highlight Personal Relevance
Just as you framed your pitch to solve your manager’s pain points, identify and communicate the specific ways you believe new technology or equipment can solve your team’s pain points. The more candid you can be with them, the better.
- Be Direct
If implementing an automated program or process improvement will take new training, say so. If it involves redefined responsibilities in the workflow, highlight them. If individuals will need to start using different technology, mention it. Up-front transparency translates into long-term adoption no matter what industry you’re in.
How To Sell C-Level On Business Process
When both your direct team and your direct manager are sold on the importance of automated business processes, it’s time for you to move onto the final process pitch: bringing in C-level executives.
Knowing how to sell C-level leadership will vary depending on the size, organizational structure and culture of your business. Some may have a more relaxed system in place that makes meeting and reviewing items with executives easier, while others may need to curate specific, formal hours to get this step going.
Either way, there are a few strategies to bear in mind when approaching corporate-level leadership and executives about automating business processes.
- Build A Coalition
Ideas are more compelling when they already have positive momentum behind them. Armed with the information and buy-in from your own team and supervisors, you can reinforce the narrative that this initiative is primed and ready for execution. It is not just another abstract idea without plans, people or data-backed decisions.
- Be Concise
Don’t be intimidated if you’re only given a small segment of time to pitch the overall business improvement. You can use brevity as a tool to show how much you’ve chiseled away at these business solutions, and you already have what you need to make a compelling pitch.
Create a summary slide or a handful of slides with key, data-driven points to review with C-level individuals. Begin your presentation with this data-driven overview, then use the rest of your time as an appendix on benefits for the business’ bottom line. Frame presentation expectations right away, and always leave room for questions and discussion at the end.
- Create Value Alignment
Clearly illustrate how business process automation aligns with the overall strategic direction of the organization, as well as its mission and values. This is where most leaders at the executive level function, dedicating their time and expertise to strategic advancement. Speak directly to company momentum, and you’ll get the final buy-in necessary for complete organizational implementation.
“If I’m deciding how to automate my business, I start from the inside. People support what they help build. Involve your team early, show them how automation makes their work easier – not replaces it – and you’ll turn resistance into momentum.” — Olga Zakharenkava, MHC Head of Marketing
Your 7-Step Roadmap to Business Automation
“How can I automate my business with minimal disruption?” is one of the most common questions we hear. While business process automation methodology varies widely across industries and regions, these seven steps should offer a good guideline for organizations of all kinds.
1. Assess which processes can be automated: Make a list of regular tasks that are especially time-consuming, repetitive, or prone to human error.
2. Choose an ideal automation solution: Set clear goals for what you want your automation system to help you achieve and find a software solution that hits all of those targets.
3. Integrate your solution with existing systems: Be sure to choose an automated system that integrates seamlessly with your ERP and other legacy tools and workflows.
4. Train and update your staff: Work with your software provider to arrange demonstrations and training programs that help your business team operate your new system without IT intervention.
5. Decide on key metrics and KPI: Refer back to your list of goals and decide what key performance indicators (KPI) you want to assess and the key metrics you want to measure them by.
6. Measure your results: Your business automation solution should provide visibility into every stage of your process and generate real-time data analytics.
➡️ Let’s get in touch!
Contact us today to learn more about automating your business processes >
How to Measure and Report on the Success of Automation
Automated business systems begin as abstract questions. How can we speed this up? How can we trim that down? How can we make things less complicated?
These questions turn into solutions through new technology and updated SOPs, and those solutions become results through metric tracking. Data-driven, automated solutions succeed when you have the right people equipped with the right tools to do the right work. They thrive when they’re measured, tweaked and measured again, developing along the way.
You cannot know the full impact of your business equipment, technology and trained personnel unless you have real numbers and percentages to review across every function of the organization. Data-driven metrics and automation tracking programs allow you to know precisely what’s improved, where and by how much, helping you prove the point to the entire operation.
What Are Important Automation Metrics To Track?
It’s just as important to outline an automation assessment plan as it is to implement that automation in the first place. Otherwise, you’re just working harder, not smarter. Your process assessment plan should account for the tangible goals you want to get out of your new technology or system, framed as clearly and linearly as possible.
While there are many important data points to track regarding a new business process, three domains stand out in particular: activity metrics, efficiency metrics and value metrics.
1. Activity Metrics
These are the data points that review the adoption and usage of new automation tools. They represent the earliest phase of business process automation you can glean insights on, lending hard evidence to typically qualitative problems like employee understanding and buy-in of new technology.
Specific examples of activity-based data metrics to track include the following:
Automation Ramp-Up Time
The entire timeline it takes to research, select, integrate, train, pilot and then fully utilize a new automated program, software or piece of equipment. Ramp-up times are a critical baseline to compare other activity metrics to.
Usage Rates
What percentage of employees are using the new software, applications or equipment? How long are they using it, and for how many tasks? What are the completion times of these tasks, especially compared to before? Usage rates like these help you quantify employee activity and their engagement with the overall tweaked system.
Case Studies
Turn your ramp-up, engagement and usage data into a before-and-after case study, which in turn becomes prime material to share with C-level executives and other stakeholders on the success of your new automated system.
2. Efficiency Metrics
Showcase the improvements to your daily tasks and operations themselves. Efficiency metrics measure actual process alignment within the everyday workings of your organization. They should show an alleviation of the pain points and an enhancement of the specific process goals you outlined from the get-go. If they don’t, you may need to make more system, software, or role tweaks.
Efficiency metrics are industry and business-specific. The operations you’re looking to simplify, the processes you’re aiming to enhance, and the systems you’re able to control are directly related to the kind of work you do. Key efficiency metrics include:
Inventory Turnover
Consider tracking all inventory, warehouse or stock-related improvements, such as quicker shelf turnover rates, better inventory itemization and organization, “just-in-time” inventory sourcing functionality, keener stock forecasting and shortened days of inventory outstanding.
Total Asset Turnover
Total asset turnover is one of the most important KPIs to analyze across a new business system. Total asset turnover calculates the ratio of sales profits relative to value assets. This means you’re able to definitively assess if implementing a new automated process leads to higher total asset turnover, which means your business is generating more money based off its resources.
Accounting Operations
There are many metrics to analyze within an accounting or finance department. This is one of the leading areas to implement business system automation, which can augment everything from accounts payable to vendor-contract management. If you’ve implemented or are looking to implement accounting automation tools, consider tracking:
- Inputting rates of manual entry versus automated data entry
- Error rates of manual entry versus automated data entry
- Finance-related document filing and database search query times
- Decrease in incidents like double, late or erroneous payments
- Rates of vendor early payment discounts
3. Value Metrics
Round out the list of meaningful metrics to track and encompass any finance or budget-related changes that occurred as a direct result of the automation. These include variables like expenses saved from better inventory management, costs cut due to the elimination of an unnecessary workflow bottleneck or business capital expanded due to analyzed resource allocation.
Through these three key performance indicators (KPIs), you can gain value-based, evergreen assessments on the actual nature of your process improvements. Keep reading for further details and applications of activity, efficiency and value-based automation testing tools.
Order Lead Times
Find the average order lead time before the automated system was introduced as well as after its full roll-out, from order receipt to shipment to service or delivery confirmation. Chances are with a new business process solution, those lead times have successfully decreased.
Revenue Generated
Track specific areas of revenue growth before and after automated process updates. These include revenue variables such as an increase in the overall sales during a cycle, an increased amount of closed deals, increased amounts of product orders. or increases in the value of the orders themselves. Complement revenue-generating numbers with revenue-saving numbers, such as decreases in cost per leads, cost per customer and cost per order to get the full range of process-inspired generated revenue.
Cost of Investment Versus Revenue Generated
Once you’ve tracked your net revenue, you can compare upticks to the initial amount invested in the automation infrastructure. You then have the foundation to system ROIs.
Remember, this list of automation metrics to measure is hardly static. If you’ve done the necessary research, roped in diverse team members, gained fresh pain-point perspectives and systematically equipped all stakeholders with a step-by-step process-improvement plan, then relevant data tracking will develop, naturally rounding out the work. You and your employees stand ready to reap the full rewards of improved daily activities and improved professional lives.
“If you’re not tracking automation metrics, you’re flying blind. The data tells you what’s working, where the friction is, and how to keep improving. It turns automation from a one-time project into a long-term advantage.” — Olga Zakharenkava, MHC Head of Marketing
Make the Most of Your Daily Operations
Business as usual doesn’t need to mean business that’s burdensome. Too often, that’s still the case.
- If you’re tired of simple, everyday office tasks encountering constant confusion, it’s time to get your business automated.
- If you’re tired of the smallest jobs requiring the largest efforts or the most tedious filler steps, it’s time to consider how to automate business processes.
- If you’re a manager or executive leader looking to remain positioned as proactive, purposeful and strategically process-oriented, it’s time to consider business process automation. There’s too much to gain to remain complacent.
Begin automating your business today with MHC’s complete suite of automated enterprise content management systems. We’ve worked with dozens of industries, companies and individuals to deliver business automation systems that make it easier for them to run their business, not be run by it.
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At MHC, our goal is to empower our customers to empower their customers. By showing you how to automate your business in a way that’s best for your specific organization, we help put you on the path to more efficient and engaging workflows. Usher your organization into the future with AI-powered featured, OCR, interactive forms, smart documents and cloud storage.
The benefits of automation in business are indisputable. Whether you’re in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, information and technology, financial services, or any other industry, MHC provides next-gen solutions that keep you up to date with the latest tools and software.
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Team MHC consists of a multitude of roles, functions, and expertise within MHC. With extensive combined experience in accounts payable and customer communication management, Team MHC has a unique insight into how to empower people using solutions that streamline processes while enhancing customer communication. Working alongside field experts in various industries and company sizes, Team MHC has garnered impressive thought leadership knowledge that we are excited to share with our readers. Including Aragon’s 2022 Women in Tech winner Gina Armada, CTO Dan Ward, VPs of Finance and Customer Service, and other talent that runs the spectrum of technology ability, Team MHC offers a mastery of skills to benefit our customers and prospects alike.
