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5 Best Practices for Automating Your Office Workflows

10/4/2021

 
The importance of workflow automation cannot be denied. These 5 best practices for automating your office workflows will guide you to the success you desire. First, it ensures specific tasks complete on time. Additionally, processes allow your employees to focus on more productive activities instead of wasting their time on mundane assignments.

However, even though you have automated specific processes, anticipate that they might be hampered by inadvertent delays, obstacles, and bottlenecks. Some difficulties that occur are almost always inevitable. Employees who need to review applications, for instance, become ill and miss work. Documents and files are misplaced. Machine failures occur in manufacturing operations.

Nevertheless, for everything that is avoidable, there is a lot you can do to maintain your automated workflows running well. After all, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “by neglecting to prepare, you are prepared to fail!”
In this article, we discuss five excellent practices to prevent needless bottlenecks in your workflows. However, before we delve into these practices, let’s first understand what workflow automation is.

What is Workflow Automation?

Workflow automation eliminates the issues created by manual processes by connecting systems with software. As a result, automating procedures in your organization may significantly decrease the money and time required to operate. In addition, automation allows workers to focus on mission-critical tasks while avoiding costly mistakes. For example, you can make the process more efficient and potentially save costs by automating your accounting activities.

Due to its efficiency, workflow automation has grown tremendously in the past few years. In fact, according to a global survey conducted by McKinsey & Co. in 2020, 66% of business leaders from a broad cross-selection industry were initiating solutions to automate at least one of their business processes. You can learn the fundamentals of workflow in our K2 course Workflow and Automation Essentials.

5 Best Practices for Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is becoming more sophisticated inside accounting products, document management products, and from the significant productivity suite providers such as Microsoft 365 with modules like Microsoft Power Automate or Zoho Flow. But we must get the workflows optimized first! Consider these 5 best practices for automating your office workflows.

1. Create An Office Workflow Plan

The most straightforward procedures are sometimes more complicated than you realize, specifically with numerous phases and approvals. That is why almost every workflow requires a map.

Workflow process mapping is a method of keeping track of your work steps so that you understand what each step does, why it is functioning, and what to do when something “breaks.”

Workflow maps don’t have to be complex or challenging to create and understand. They can be just a few post-it notes on a board or a doodle in a notebook. Remember, a post-it note turned 45 degrees makes a diamond shape. So, one pad of post-it notes gives you all the flow-charting shapes you need.

However, having a finished a written or sketched workflow map may keep you and your employees aware of every stage in the process, so they understand what to expect. In addition, process mapping your existing process (“as-is”) lets you transition the process to a new, hopefully, better, process (“to-be”).

Hence, before you do anything at all, begin with workflow mapping. Then, even if your workflow is already in place, map it out. Consider each process and step and reviewed it meticulously.

2. Apply Strategies to Your Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is more than just making a list of operations that need improvement and then crossing them off one by one.

Creating business automation and managing in this manner is akin to attempting to untangle tangled wires by grabbing one and pulling. Of course, you’ll make some headway. Those victories, though, will be few. However, you’ll soon find that you’ve made the knots much, much worse. And repairing it will require additional time and resources. The current term “hairball” describes what many have created with flawed workflow processes and best-of-breed SaaS solution selection.

Instead, it would be best to emphasize process automation by weighing efficiency, simplicity of use, ROI, and business effect. Then, if done correctly, you would be able to automate the right activities, which will allow you to reap the benefits of automation. Sometimes you need a separate workflow product like XCM, Doc.It, or with the workflow built into most accounting software products today.

3. Train and Equip All Stakeholders

When things are going wrong, it’s simple to point the finger at those allocated to certain workflow phases. If an approval step, for example, is delayed, the person in charge of authorizing it may get emails about this until the stage is approved. However, management or leadership should first ask questions before making assumptions about why a specific process phase hasn’t been performed.

Is the person in charge of this process step equipped with all they need to execute it? Do they even have access to the necessary tools? Further, are they receiving alerts? Above all, are they informed of the problem?

When you inquire about your process constraints, you are more likely to obtain a helpful response. However, when something goes wrong, consult with your staff before making the decision. We recommend a debriefing when there are process failures to get to the root cause.

Moreover, these issues can be avoided by ensuring that all the stakeholders are trained and given all the tools needed to carry out their part efficiently.

4. The Best Practice is to Select the Best Processes to Automate

Regardless of how efficient your company is, you almost certainly have sluggish, clunky, and needlessly burdensome procedures. Thinking that automation would solve inefficient workflows can lead to disillusionment. Your processes will become ineffective automated procedures because of automation.

Effective workflow automation necessitates a reassessment of your organization’s business practices. Before you attempt to automate outdated workflows, you may need to restore or entirely rebuild them. Don’t be scared to divide the colossal process down into smaller sections. Breaking processes into smaller steps might increase agility while decreasing siloed data in your business. For example, industry businesses commonly have 250-400 processes, where CPA Firms commonly have 45-70 workflows.

An excellent place to start is picking a process that doesn’t require drastic changes to your existing functions, such as invoice approval. If done well, the automation of this process can lead to multiple benefits without disrupting many of your current processes.

5. Analyze Your Company’s Business Process Management (BPM)

Sometimes problems occur that have nothing to do with a particular procedure. Instead, the issues are a product of more profound disarray inside the organization. As a result, incorporating workflow planning and mapping into your everyday routines and implementing business process management (BPM) solutions into the company becomes critical. You want to turn your organization into process thinkers constantly looking for a better way to do things.

BPM can assist in keeping the company on track. It can help the company define priorities. Moreover, the right BPM can help plan for errors at a higher level.

Disruptions in one or two workflows become considerably less of an issue when effectively managed by the entire company. So, if you aren’t currently using BPM methodologies in your business, start now.

The earlier your business eliminates ineffective procedures and replaces them with successful ones, the smoother your workflows would become. If you have targeted the proper market, buyers should quickly discover everything about the product and business through their social media accounts.

Bonus Tip: Don’t Delay Automating Your Office or Business

Don’t overlook the signals that your firm needs to be automated. As a result, your company can consolidate its back-office operations, streamline marketing activities, and cut expenses.

However, establishing automated business processes is not always straightforward. Hopefully, these 5 best practices for automating your office workflows have helped you understand the actions you must take. Unfortunately, several stumbling blocks and blunders might derail your efforts all along the way.

Hiring a professional expert is the key to avoiding these stumbling blocks. Most importantly, the contracted expertise can place your company on a path to quick success with process automation. In addition, you may benefit from the experience of an automation specialist by collaborating with them. They will not only design the apps your organization needs to automate workflows, but they will also design a business-defining strategy to get you there in perhaps the most effective manner possible. In conclusion, you can’t outsource the understanding of your processes. You must know and maintain these with your personnel. You can’t let the expertise leave with the consultant.

Learn more from K2 You can learn more about workflow in our K2 course Workflow and Automation Essentials.

Randy Johnston

Automation of the Accounting Process

8/4/2021

 
Companies spend hundreds of hours every year trying to find out how to manage and keep track of their money. It’s stressful for business owners to think of the time, money, and effort they put into daily status reports, monthly financials, and yearly tax preparations. Artificial intelligence in accounting software, pre-accounting tools, and robotic process automation (RPA) optimize how transactions flow through systems. Do you want to take advantage of this improved automation? You’ll learn how with our 5 Easy Steps to Automation of the Accounting Process.

One can get to know about automation testing with the help guides found online. Automation testing paved the way for implementing automation in business processes. Repeatable business process workflow adds value to each step of the process.

However, we can’t automate every single business process. But some operations are perfect for automation. Luckily for business owners, bookkeeping, tax computations, and accounting are just some of these processes.

The Benefits of Automating Accounting

Businesses often make use of accounting software programs to automate accounting tasks.  These computer programs can do in a minute what an average person can do in a day. With the correct data inputs, you can make complex reports within minutes or seconds. You may not even need to touch a calculator to get your work done.

There’s a long list of benefits to automating business processes like bookkeeping and tax calculations. But, before we dive into how you can automate accounting, let’s take a quick look at why you should turn to automation.

Automation Saves Time

In most businesses, saving time equates to saving money. For example, suppose an accountant uses a software program that helps them crunch the numbers and prepare a report. What used to take the whole day will now take them less than an hour.

There may be minimal reconciliation needed. The accountant only needs to double-check what the system prepared. Confirming the classifications are right, and that the system has posted transactions in the right account initially while remaining in balance are the critical steps. Pre-accounting tools like Vic.ai or Dext are currently doing this type of work. The accountant can then spend the rest of their day doing more productive tasks.

Automation Reduces Human Error

Even the best accountants make mistakes. If you catch the error early, the worst that can happen is you spend a few more hours rectifying the mistake. But accounting blunders can be costly. Automation reduces human errors, making way for more accurate reports and calculations.

Learning how to utilize automation properly for accounting tasks can help streamline business processes. Making sure your automated processes are correctly working is key to ensuring the accuracy of your reports.

But, whether you’re planning to optimize your existing accounting program or you’re looking at the top accounting software systems in the market, it’s best that you also learn automation testing. Learning automation testing allows you to check whether your automation efforts are working and how well they’re performing to achieve your goals. Automation testing also helps ensure the accuracy of your reports and the reliability of your data.

Automation Boosts Productivity

You’re more productive when you can perform more tasks in a shorter amount of time. It’s the exact meaning of productivity. So external, contracted, or freelance accounting professionals who get billed by the hour may start to think that automated accounting will take their jobs away. News flash: It could be the complete opposite.

When you learn to make computer programs work for you, you can get more things done for more clients with less effort. You even free up your schedule for something you’re more useful for — like guiding clients and helping them manage and grow their financial wealth. If you have built a Client Accounting Services (CAS) practice, you can add Advisory Services for greater client satisfaction.

5 Steps to Automating the Accounting Process

The transition from manual processes and Excel files to automated accounting systems may be difficult. It’s no small change you’re planning to undertake here. But it doesn’t have to be so complicated. So, are you ready to take your first step into accounting automation? Here are the five easy steps to get you from manual to automated accounting:

Step 1: Know Where You Stand

How much of a change you can expect depends on where you currently stand in terms of accounting processes. For example, how much of your accounting is done manually, and how much of it can be automated?

This task may take you a while, but you need to understand how the people involved in accounting processes do their jobs. These aren’t just your junior and senior accountants. First, you need to list all the tools that you currently use, who uses them, and what you use them for.

For example, you might be using Excel for budgeting, forecasting, and expense management. The finance department, accounting department, and finance manager use Excel for one or more of these functions.

On the other hand, payroll managers and junior accountants may be using another software for payroll management. Therefore, if secondary tools are required for any core accounting tool to function, you should include them in the list.

Step 2: Choose an Accounting System

Now that you know your business needs, you’ll be able to choose an accounting system that works for your business. Full automation of accounting processes can take you a considerable amount of time and money to implement. Still, implementing a new accounting system may prove to be the best course for your business.

Consider your accounting goals, your budget, and your workforce when you’re choosing a core accounting system. Aside from the basic features, it would help to consider security features, customer support, automation integration, and user experience.

Step 3: Migrate Your Data

After you’ve chosen a core accounting software system, the next step is to start data migration. Data migration plans should help you identify what and how much data needs to be transferred. You might also need to put older data into archives.

This step should also allow everyone involved in the accounting process to adjust to the new system. Training should be provided to employees. Primary users should learn the best way to navigate the system because they will work with it more often than any other employee.

Adjustment can take weeks or months, depending on how much of a change you’re implementing. However, by the end of the adjustment period, primary users of this core system should already be confident in the automation performing basic and complex accounting tasks.

Step 4: Automate, Test, Integrate

As time passes, you get fewer questions from your core users. The reduction in questions occurs because they have become familiar with the features and already know how to use the accounting system. However, your secondary users may be having problems. They may have even found other manual tasks to automate. It is at this point that you can add pre-accounting tools and robotic process automation (RPA).

An accounting system that isn’t customized for your business is doubtful to serve as an all-in-one solution. However, it’s typical for business owners who already use an off-the-shelf accounting system to integrate additional automation functions.

Businesses rarely use just one system for all their financial management needs. While you already have a core accounting system, you may want to utilize additional tools to help your employees. In addition, some accounting systems allow automation integrations. As always, automation testing should be performed before any of these functions deal with any actual data.

Step 5: Monitor

Monitoring your systems and making sure that they’re working as they should is key to maintaining accurate and reliable accounting. In addition, you should observe the following results of automating your accounting process:

  • Data reports are more accurate, and there are fewer accounting errors.
  • Accounting teams are more efficient and productive. They should be spending less time generating results and more time performing analysis.
  • Redundancies are found, and accounting processes are optimized.

You should be seeing an increase in the quality of work produced, an increase in employee productivity, and a decrease in human errors. In other words, the business should now benefit from automating the accounting process.

Conclusion

Automating accounting isn’t an easy feat, but doing so can help businesses save time, money, and effort. In addition, it boosts productivity and greatly reduces human error, and these benefits apply to freelance and remote accountants. With the 5 Easy Steps to Automation of the Accounting Process, you have a formula to make your processes easier and automated.

Accounting automation isn’t just about choosing the most expensive or the most popular accounting system in the market. Instead, it’s about knowing where you stand and choosing an automated accounting system that helps you achieve your goals.

Learn more about emerging technologies, RPA and accounting software with K2E Canada Inc. CPD courses.

Randy Johnston

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    Authors


    Ward Blatch
    Ward provides consulting and training services as the Managing Director of K2E Canada Inc. He joined K2E Canada in 2005 and is responsible for the Canadian operations of this international consulting group, which provides professional development technology education for accountants across Canada and the US. Ward lives in rural Nova Scotia and can be reached at ward@k2e.ca.

    Tommy Stephens
    Tommy is one of the shareholders in K2 Enterprises, affiliating with the Firm in 2003 and joining as a shareholder in 2017. At K2, Tommy focuses on creating and delivering content and is responsible for many of the Firm's management and marketing functions. Tommy resides in the metro Atlanta area. You may reach him at tommy@k2e.com.

    Randy Johnson
    Randy is a nationally recognized educator, consultant, and writer with over 40 years experience in Strategic Technology Planning, Accounting Software Selection, Paperless, Systems and Network Integration, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning, Business Development and Management, Process Engineering and outsourced managed services. Randy can be reached at randy@k2e.com


    Bernie Smith
    Bernie coaches businesses to develop meaningful KPIs and present their management information in the clearest possible way to support good decision making. As the owner of Made to Measure KPIs, he has worked with major organisations including HSBC, Airbus, UBS, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Lloyds and many more.

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