The year 2020 has changed everything, not only for our personal lives but for business. Companies have forced to adapt to the changing circumstances to ensure that first, they survive, and then they remain profitable and successful. They have pushed to undergo digital transformation earlier than they expected and planned.

One key factor that the businesses have to ensure is being able to do day to day tasks without any disruptions. This requirement means that all employees have to be able to continue with their day to day work as if they are still in the office.

Challenges of Telecommuting

Businesses rely heavily on email communications and spreadsheets to operate. Emails move documents from one recipient to the other, whether they need them or authorised to access to them. Similarly, spreadsheets contain an enormous amount of data. They keep sensitive business, and sometimes personal data without proper security measures. They also don’t hold governance policies applied to ensure appropriate use.

When we talk about remote work or telecommuting, businesses want to make sure the established processes are followed, and content required to deliver outputs is available when needed. Defining and standardising business processes is critical to monitor and improve them. It has always been a challenge to monitor process performance and improve accordingly. It is, however, become even more challenging to do it when office employees’ working from home.

Effects of Telecommuting on Customers

At the forefront of a lot of company’s minds is that it is imperative their customers are not affected, and customer satisfaction remained at a high standard. Most of the companies deal with their customers both online and offline, whether that is over the phone, over instant messenger/email, through social media or going to face to face meetings. To ensure the personal approach is kept, and standards are met, companies have to implement policies which would make this process smooth as possible.

Maintaining high standards at customer satisfaction requires collaboration within and beyond company boundaries. It is critical to stick to established processes, collaborate on customer inquiries and follow defined procedures and policies for consistent customer service. Consistency at customer service processes is the only way to measure the success and identify improvement areas within processes. Telecommuting can make achieving consistency harder than before as the control on the processes are difficult to enforce.

A Unified Approach to Process Automation for Companies and Employees

To tackle and overcome these challenges, companies need to undergo digital transformation, specifically process automation. The most pressing issue for the companies that haven’t experienced such a transformation is the lack of time to do that. As pandemic forced many of the companies to telecommute, providing systems and tools to support employees that are working from home become an imminent need.

Traditionally, Business Process Management (BPM) platform implementations are cumbersome projects. They require a lot of time, effort and financial investment before going live. However, most of the companies don’t have the time or budget needed to go through such a cumbersome project. Therefore, BPM platforms that provide tools and methods to quickly and easily design and execute business processes along with the business content in a unified environment make the difference.

A unified low-code BPM platform like PaperWorkBPM, makes process automation projects, both smooth and affordable for companies. Designing, executing, managing and monitoring business processes and business content in a unified platform also makes employees feel better about their work and give them the confidence of delivering right outputs for the business.

It is vital to access the latest version of a document without having to search when it is needed crucial for business performance. As the need to access a document almost always stems from a business process, managing both documents and processes together in the same environment is a key success factor for process automation.

Depending on the job function, department or location, employees need to use different software applications or devices to do their job. For an effective engagement to the business processes, they should be able to access their tasks in the workflows using any interface of their requirements. As today’s office work is redefined, employees need to access relevant information resources using a variety of user interfaces, such as Microsoft Outlook, ERP, CRM, mobile phones or tablets, or any internet-connected device via an internet browser.

Conclusion

The current global situation has shown all companies that it is imperative they undergo digital transformation, automate business processes and encourage collaboration. Keeping up with changing times is vital to ensure businesses can survive, run smoothly and be as profitable and successful as they can be.

Here at PaperWorkBPM, with our software platform and services, we are committed to our customers’ success on their digital transformation journey. We are here to help you in any way we can to make your process automation journey is a ride to success.