Streamline with Grid | 5 Automatable Business Processes

At their core, businesses are clusters of processes and people working towards a common goal. As most businesses struggle to get this alignment right, it is easier said than done. The amount and complexity of processes and people involved are simply too great to organize manually. Since the turn of the last decade, major players have switched to automating all their business processes to eliminate operational delays and backlogs. Business process automation basically uses technology to undertake processes and repetitive tasks that are currently done manually in an organization.

Despite its benefits, a report by Forrester titled The Sorry State of Digital Transformation finds that 22% of businesses lack workflow automation, while 56% are still operating at a primitive level. The big businesses are stated to be led by old-school decision-makers, while smaller businesses cannot afford to automate every process. Grid fills that void, allowing decision-makers in large organizations who are not tech-savvy to have full control over their no-code Process Automation tools, from their conception to their implementation. Small businesses, on the other hand, can benefit greatly from Grid's solutions in automating their organizations from the ground up.

5 business processes Grid will make sure you'll never have to worry about again :

Invoice Process

Talk to a business owner and they'll let you know what an absolute hassle invoice processing can be. Traditionally, invoices have to be emailed, reviewed, scanned and entered into an Enterprise Resource Planning software before being used in accounting and costing systems. In addition to the manual effort required, these tasks also spread across multiple platforms/channels, thus turning what could be a very streamlined process into a chaotic affair.

The invoices are then forwarded to different departments and processed manually for payments, naturally resulting in human errors. To make matters worse, extra personnel is also needed to track and monitor these processes, step by step, leading to massive mismanagement of human resources.

Grid helps you create an integrated application that takes care of the following workflow, automatically:

1. Document collection and review as per set conditions
2. Invoice matched against PO and automatically pushed for approval
3. Invoice submission followed by verification, approval, and authorization for payment
4. Payment credited for approved invoices
5. Records collection of all activity and stages sent to integrated ERP for audit and analysis.

A step-by-step approach can be followed in the given order:

• Design a well-thought-out standardized form with an all-inclusive set of conditions for all vendors. This is a one-time task that will save a lot of time for recurring tasks in the future.
• Avoid any kind of manual data entry and use a modern software system to import data from legacy systems.
• Upgrade to electronic payments as it negates human interaction, thus nullifying errors and accelerating the process.

Employee Management Process

Employee management is an area that is routinely overlooked despite the amount of time and resources consumed continuously daily. Onboarding new employees, training them, monitoring their progress, or managing their attendance and leaves can all be handled by a customized business tool builder like Grid. And the best part? You don't even need to code or outsource the work.

This helps businesses save up a lot of capital and time which can be invested in upgrading the quality of your product/service. As a result, employees who get caught up in this time-consuming work will no longer be disgruntled and can focus on their primary duties. Automation tools also collect all the data, aggregate it, and optimize it so that you can reuse it for employee-centric decisions like appraisals, wage calculations, and team reorganization.

Employee onboarding is not a 100% automated system as it needs HR to improve some employee adaptation processes. Tasks that can be automated when an employee joins are:

• Collecting data of an employee like soft skills, certificates, qualifications, job-specific skills. This is stored in a central repository for analysis and work allocation in the future. This information helps train employees based on their skill level.
• Mailing Employee forms automatically for Account Creation, Tax Investment, Training feedback forms, Skill Matrix, etc., as per schedule.
• Setting up accounts and login credentials for software simplifies major IT tasks if the process is automated.
• Tracking Employee progress with KPIs, rating forms or progress of their knowledge of work culture, etc.
• Information forms for employee benefits, e.g. health plans, tax benefits, concessions, leaves, transport, etc., must be mailed when onboarding.

Automated employee attendance systems can be integrated with biometric devices and have the following benefits:

• Accurate time recording
• Real-time clock-in and clock-out time data
• Error-free payroll calculation
• Data manipulation elimination
• Absence and leave management
• Overtime calculation
• Time-saving attendance process

The data generated can be used for operations listed below:

• Flexible attendance solutions that include efficient shift mapping, and leave policies that meet the requirements of multiple departments, locations, and hierarchies.
• Tailored reports and analytics using the system's data. The reports generated insights into hours worked, shift patterns, etc., to constantly improve productivity.

Project Management

To adapt development teams to the rigorous tech ecosystem, there have been several innovations in project management strategy and process. Increasing demands for scaling projects and tight competition forcing companies to deliver lightning-fast services have sparked the need for tools that can smoothly automate project management processes to boost productivity while keeping your team cohesive and refreshed.

Grid helps out project managers by ensuring :

• Teams and applications stay well-connected. With the steady rise of remote work and global teams, communication and workflows need to be automated and integrated onto a single platform, ensuring a hassle-free user experience for the team. This way, team members don't waste time on processes that can be standardized and automatically coordinated. Moreover, today project teams incorporate a vast set of SaaS applications in their daily workflow that require end-to-end integration. Grid brings them all together and easily adapts to your requirements.
• All by-work is eliminated. Menial, customary tasks that aren't integral to the actual development lifecycle, can be automated completely by templatizing procedures and actions. Up to 20% of the teams' time and effort could be saved since these menial tasks accumulate over the life-cycle, hampering productivity and morale.

Inventory Management Process

Procuring, storing, using raw materials, monitoring components, and tracking finished products are all part of the Inventory Management process. To facilitate the flow of goods from manufacturers to warehouses and facilities to points of sale, materials and products need to be well-stocked and supervised. Grid's no-code suite of tools is being used in over 20 textile factories to improve inventory management efficiency.

Their quality monitoring process has improved significantly, with defective pieces being tracked quickly. The analytics integration allows them to then isolate the root cause of the defects, in real-time. With finished products being tracked continuously in real-time, decision-makers can proactively plan, predict and overcome all logistics challenges.

Challenges faced in a manual process are:

• Finding an efficient way to deal with deadstock, and identifying the reason
• Irregularities in the storage cost calculation
• Zero visibility of the supply chain as the tracking is inefficient.
• Product misplacement which negatively impacts customer loyalty.

Inventory control is the process that is the core of the supply chain. An automated process will benefit the manufacturers and suppliers to:

• Monitor inventory stocks level without human supervision and ensure stock quantity meet market demands
• Automated alarms/notifications for low stock levels, supply chain anomalies, etc.
• Real-time tracking of goods through the supply and delivery chains.
• Intelligent decision-making facility for businesses and real-time reports.

Data Standardization and Geolocation

The standardization of data consumes an insurmountable amount of time that could be used to accomplish many productive tasks instead. Manual standardization forces professionals to overwork, thus stretching a project that could be completed within 70% of the actual time. Mining and exploration, as well as the Food and Beverage industry, suffer from this problem, and Grid is actively working to standardize their processes.

• Approximately 60% of geologists' time is spent analyzing reports and data when they should be out sampling soil. Grid eliminates the plethora of paperwork and streamlines the post-sampling process into a single step.
• Likewise, business heads in the F&B industry can standardize the quality control process across all their branches by creating templatized checklists and forms via Grid. Grid aggregates them from all across India and presents them on a customizable analytics dashboard with relevant graphs and KPIs. This way, business heads only need to look at data that is important for their decisions.
• Additionally, by aggregating these processes, streamlining them, and connecting them to a mobile application interface, businesses can greatly improve accessibility and reach. This is very effective in the Mineral industry as mobile phones are very convenient in remote terrains. On the mobile app, Grid's geolocation integration keeps updating precise real-time information throughout the survey/soil-sampling process.
• Grid's mobile app also assists business chains greatly to ensure that the branch managers/in-charge do not mislead and fill in the data from their respective workplaces.

Conclusion

Contrary to the misconception that Business Process Automation (BPA) removes human elements from the business, BPA personalizes every process as per the unique characteristics of every department, team, and employee. Grid's BPA optimizes the company's overall structure, transforming the human element into a positive and seamless experience for all its employees. Employees can wholeheartedly focus on their work without any process blockers or peripheral tasks. This significantly boosts their productivity resulting in a high RoR for the business.

Grid also grants decision-makers full autonomy over how their BPA tools would look and function. With our no-code platform, you can automate the listed processes in minutes. With highly intuitive Drag/Drop functionality and display-oriented workflow customization, you can deploy these solutions rapidly and receive instant reports for optimized decision-making. Unite data, processes, and people to leap forward to be a proactive part of Industry 4.0.