By 2015, they said we’d have hoverboards, but in the reality of 2021, we are stuck with those annoying e-scooters blocking our way in inner cities. What a bummer! Also flying cars are nowhere to be found, and we’re still arguing about how to fuel our vehicles. But that is no surprise. Change just doesn’t happen by itself and new technologies don’t just appear out of nowhere like a DeLorean. It takes human brain power and effort to solve one problem after another.
When it comes to business process automation, it takes time for software companies to come up with new solutions and platforms and then even more time to adapt them to your business. With the years business process automation had become more and more complicated to set up and a whole branch of IT professionals and consultants emerged to handle the details. Being not that IT-proficient themselves, companies were happy to outsource and have these expensive consultants go in and out to set up these processes. ‘Can’t someone else do it?’ was the motto of the hour. But with the latest business automation tools based on low code, it seems like time is being turned back, to a point where it is more efficient to come up with fully functional process automation applications yourself.
Wait a minute. Are you telling me to build an entire application … completely with low code?
Let’s get into it:
Why do we need business process automation in the first place?
In businesses many employees, sometimes even whole departments still do things manually. They handle information on paper forms, walk around to collect signatures, email, manually copy-paste data in and out of Excel and doing so they appear quite busy all the time. As you can imagine, having to deal with so much paper is not only wasting valuable natural resources, it is also very error prone and can come at a high price: Manual processes can lead to faulty data, which can cause a long string of errors down the line.
In many different parts of the company, this can result in delays in processing and lots of hours of corrections with higher labor cost. And not to forget, employees are not stoked about this either, as they also have to correct all these mistakes manually. In today’s fast-paced business world, business process automation provides remedy by creating an all-digital workspace to leave all those manual processes in the past.
Getting rid of error sources
Business process automation software is designed to help avoid such errors in the first place. A business process can comprise sequences of activities that support a company in achieving a specific goal. In the context of automation, this usually involves a repeatable transaction consisting of multiple steps performed in multiple IT systems. Some of the most common business processes include fulfilling customer orders, approving credit applications, processing expense reports, or onboarding new employees.
When such a process is performed in an ad hoc manner, it typically involves multiple email threads, documents and handoff functions. Even a small error, however, can severely compromise an efficient process, leading to communication problems and missed deadlines. And these problems can multiply really fast.
Business process automation solutions were built to get rid of these error sources. They are flexible tools that can be used in any industry or business to rapidly develop applications and automate tasks, while involving process orchestration features to enable end-to-end process management.
Turn it up a notch with DIY low code platforms
Until now, it always seemed more efficient to have access to someone else’s ready-made solutions, but as you are the person who knows your business best, with the latest tools you can even automate your own business processes yourself. This saves you the hassle of having a time-consuming custom development done by costly consultants. You can also avoid the compromises associated with the implementation of off-the-shelf solutions, which most likely do not fit well with your processes. And another big advantage is that with developing in-house solutions, the people who know the ins and outs of the business processes stay on your payroll and the know-how doesn’t leave your company. Low code platforms help you to do away with these issues by providing an easy way to automate your unique business processes, quickly and affordably.
Visual development with low code platforms like VisionX makes creating new applications more accessible. It is designed to be easy to operate and navigate, to lower the entry barrier for team members without any prior coding experience. Just about anyone is able to set up some basic functionalities with simple components like buttons and tables and have a running application in no time. Along with these basic components, the VisionX platform provides ready-made modules called Smart Bricks, where most of the configuration has already been taken care of for a watertight digital workflow. When it comes to your most delicate business processes you can now use low code development platforms like VisionX to create applications that perfectly suit your company.
Back to the DIY approach with VisionX
With VisionX, you can build software that works the way you need it. Stop struggling with a complicated ERP system that can’t possibly meet your needs and start creating interfaces yourself to visualize or enter the data you really need. No more duplicate data entry or endless searches in complex systems or Excel sheets.
In the business world it sometimes seems that we are stuck in the past with software infrastructure from the 1980s combined with the business mentality of 1955. While the technology to fully automate repetitive processes is already available, many companies still want to do it the old way and miss out on setting up their company for the future. Small steps in innovation lead to the new status quo of tomorrow, so let us be a voice from the future to tell you to shift to low code tools for business automation. VisionX* is becoming more and more user friendly, so the ideal developer for these applications will be – you!
*DeLorean not included.
Want to move your company into the future with business process automation? Contact us for a personal demo and see how you can make it happen in low code.
