5 areas to mitigate risk with workflow automation
Risks are present across your organisation and there are a number of ways these can be mitigated against using workflow automation. This post focuses largely on operational risks that can be readily addressed, delivering significant benefits to your organisation and your customers.
1. Field Data capture
Many organisations are still using paper based processes for field data capture, with full work packs still being produced on paper. This results in significant manual labour to enter this data and little opportunity to automate workflows. Digitising your workflows and introducing automation provides benefits across the entire field data life cycle, from issue through to closeout. Benefits include but are not limited to:
- Reduction in lost information
- Elimination of incorrectly reading and entering data
- Timely information
- Large reduction in time costs and materials
- Efficiency and productivity gains
Real example #1 – One customer’s work packs got so big they couldn’t be sent by courier any longer. This meant they were forced to review not only the information being sent out but also how it was being sent out. The straw that broke the camel’s back….
This led to the dawn of a new era in field data capture and transformation of their processes. Multiple workflow automation processes were introduced delivering financial and operational benefits rapidly. The courier business saw a reduction in work.
2. Stakeholder Information
Ensure your internal and external stakeholders have up to date aligned and relevant information. If an audit has just been completed, ensuring that information is shared with the relevant parties and in a timely manner, can be critical in some industries.
Your traditional methods of information sharing such as a phone call or papers being passed between people meant stakeholders had different information at a given time. Safety is a key area of risk mitigation.
Using workflow automation so your teams know when work needs to be completed on a piece of equipment. This ensures your teams don’t accidently use it or reducing downtime on the equipment in the event of it failing.
3. Customer Service
Real time information is distinguished from up to date information as we think of this as “live” information. A good example would be an automated alert to your customer when your technician is less than 5kms away.
Your organisation expects your customers to join forces on the digital journey to realise mutual benefits and delivering value back to them through technology reciprocates. Establishing workflows that act on other customer based information mitigates risks from a number of downstream areas. Examples include:
- Meeting SLA’s for acceptance and resolution – contractual obligations are adhered to ensuring penalties are not incurred for breaches
- Taking action on an enquiry – customer charter responsiveness and avoiding requests going unattended
We expand on these in this blog post 5 ways to provide more accurate information to your customers
4. Finance
Apart from cost reduction and subsequently cost control, areas such as automating approvals and the introduction of business rules for processing reduces risks introduced by human error. A basic workflow for approvals above a specified $$ value needs to be approved by your General Manager and below to be approved by your mid-level manager. The same can be said for Accounts Payable processes, including workflows for automated payments below a specified value that meet a number of key business rules.
5. Compliance & Audit
In highly regulated industries, the need to ensure compliance is second to none. If you’re a risk averse organisation such as a utility dealing with critical infrastructure introducing automated workflows delivers tangible benefits. You may have time driven constraints for supplying data to third parties or the need to report in real time driven by your industry body. Audits may need to be conducted on regular cycles with no room for error. Implementing workflow automation to ensure reminders are sent out ensures this is adhered to.
Overall benefits
Risks can be mitigated across many areas of your organisation and benefits realised by introducing workflow automation. Using a “no code” approach means a Business Analyst with an understanding of the business processes can help you get started today.
Automating workflows creates a more consistent outcome across the entire process lifecycle. Improving predictability, efficiencies and productivity while reducing inherent risks across your operational processes.
Takeaway Tip
So how do you get started? Speak to the team at Dusk about our experience in delivering automated workflows to our customers. Using drag and drop functionality, you can design and build your workflows quickly. We even put a short demo video together showing you how to get started building your own process automation workflows today, within our Intelligent Operations Platform (IOP):
This leads to nothing slipping through the cracks and your customers receiving an improved experience. Connect to your existing systems to create an all of customer view that can be shared between all authorised parties.
The Dusk Mobile Intelligent Operations Platform connects your staff on any device, any time and in any location. Integrate your favourite products quickly and easily for real time collaboration amongst your teams. Automating work functions and delivering a connected experience has never been easier and achieving productivity improvements can start tomorrow.
If you’d like to find out more on visibility, consistent messaging, workflows, automation with project management and easy integration for your teams or business, get in touch today with our friendly team.
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