How Much Does Business Process Automation Cost?

Ever wonder about business process automation (BPA) and its associated costs? You’re certainly not alone. Think of BPA as your housekeeper, only instead of cleaning, it facilitates your business tasks that eat up everyone’s collective time. With demands in rapid implementation and immediate return on investment, there isn’t a better time to look for BPA than now. Your bottom line is of the essence–and will continue to drive business moving forward.

An obvious obstacle to BPA, of course, is cost. The final bill can vary greatly depending on what your organization needs. Automation consists of a huge bucket of tools and software, so being aware of what’s available is a viable first step to getting your business process automation ducks in a row.The benefit, when all is said and done, is simplicity beyond compare.

So What Is Business Process Automation?

Take a moment to think about all the daily to-dos your employees accomplish – now how much of that is value and revenue-driven work? Chances are, there’s room for improvement in every department. BPA eliminates manual processes that are prone to human error, especially for tasks in Accounts Payable, where one wrong tick can result in a costly mistake.

Business Process Automation, by definition, is a system of managing information, data, and processes to reduce costs, resources, and investment using computing technology.

Automation comes in many shapes and sizes, including:

• Workflows: Regulate and standardize every business process, so documents undergo the proper review every time
• Task routing: Make sure necessary documents and invoices are routed to the right person for approval without fail 
• Auto-indexing: No more manual indexing or filing – with data capture and OCR technology, your vendors and pertinent information are automatically attached as index items, and can be retrieved quickly with a document management system

Although automation has proven to be useful to organizations of all kinds, 63% of companies are still spending a quarter of the time on manual tasks.

The Cost of Automation

While it’s not always easy to tack an exact dollar value to BPA costs, every minute your employees are manually doing something, you’re losing money! Why? Because you can streamline operations with consistent automated processes. These systems never call out sick, or put in their 2 weeks’ notice. They’re tools, fueled by software, that eliminate low-value work – all without jeopardizing your employees’ current jobs.

Many can start at $30 a month for 0-10 employees, and rise from there.

Here are some other elements that can impact cost:

• The amount of storage needed now and in the future
• What suite of tools you plan on purchasing
• Whether your solution is on-premise or in the cloud
• How many employees need licenses to the software
• Managed services after deployment for support and updates/ongoing learning

It may sound bizarre, but re-frame the way you think about software and automation for a moment. The end goal is to implement automation – quickly and easily, we might add – to add value to an organization’s operations and bottom line. This doesn’t threaten the stability of employee work; in fact, it opens the doors to improve customer satisfaction and allow your team to work on other, higher-level tasks that can’t be accomplished by machines.

By having extra time to focus on your customers, you can deliver an unparalleled experience and keep them loyal and satisfied with your business. In today’s competitive environment, that’s a huge differentiator.

You Get What You Put in

Much like most things in life, you get what you put into business process automation. By syncing your efforts with the proper ERP and document management system, you have the possibility to get BPA up and running within a few weeks.

If you’re still hesitant, feel free to check out some of our case studies here.

The right automation solution takes time to discover, but it doesn’t have to. Rest assured that business process automation has progressed greatly over the last few years, and it’s almost guaranteed to generate ROI. Shave minutes and hours off of menial work for your employees, and bring your A game with BPA. We’re rooting for you!

To gain greater insights, we invite you to see it for yourself with a free workflow automation demo!