Lena drives international editorial and strategic marketing topics including social media, customer references, whitepapers, eBooks and the blog, where she writes about technological trends and digital transformation.
The business world has no shortage of breakthrough ideas for efficient work processes: Many years ago, digitization was just such a revolutionary idea – but it quickly became the standard for competitive companies. Today, it is the automation of business processes that heralds the next wave of innovation. In this blog post, you'll learn why automation is just as important a development as digitalization and what you should take into account when automating your own business processes.
In a benchmark study on customer service in the digital age (PIDAS), more than 60 percent of respondents who were asked what makes them favor certain companies mentioned customer service. That figure puts customer service ahead of quality and even far above price. Good customer service has grown to become a success factor across all industries – because especially in customer service the benefits of automation can be translated into a rapid ROI.
How does it work? Automation has been brought to the center of attention in more and more business contexts in recent years, especially with regard to customer inquiries, complaints, contract conclusions, onboardings or applications. These use cases are typical for insurance companies and banks and require a lot of time, effort and personnel.
Current studies (e.g. Trendbüro – Trends to watch) show what the automation industry has been predicting for years: to achieve overall customer satisfaction, consulting and support must fit into the customers' busy daily lives.
These results show that companies must be able to serve users promptly and quickly, deliver optimal results, and provide easy access to self-service offerings such as customer portals. In the portals, users especially appreciate a good customer experience and the possibility to interact with a service team at any time.
Here you can learn how to meet these needs:
Automation is shifting to the center of companies' business models not only because of rising user expectations, however. Increasing competition in an increasingly disruptive market is also causing companies to look more and more to technology solutions to increase their efficiency.
Digitalization is the first important step in this process. It allows you to optimize your business processes, which both increases your performance and provides more transparency and better traceability. This is particularly crucial for regulated industries such as banks and insurance companies – digital compliance and auditing processes are a great relief and innovation driver for the future. They not only reduce costs and create time, but also increase the reliability, traceability and security of these business processes.
Digitalization also finally lets customer needs be placed at the center. Digital products can not only give you fast information and short processing times, but also be the basis for online self-service portals on which comprehensive information can be queried and personal details changed or questions answered quickly. The result: A better customer experience for your users, and better performance at lower costs for your business.
Automation is the second step. Automated processes take these advantages to a new level. Intelligent Business Automation makes it possible to manage and automate a wide variety of processes in a structured manner. This can be applied to any process – from repetitive, routine tasks to complex, dynamic business transactions.
For banks and insurance companies, a whole range of use cases emerges:
User support and new user onboarding
Risk assessment
Client lifecycle management
Policy management
Insurance claims management
Complaints handling
Loan and payments processes
Securities processes
Approval and review procedures
Compliance and revision processes
Internal operations such as coordination between front and back offices and much more
How companies can best move ahead into digitalization and automation in practice often falls by the wayside in discussions about progress and change. Without sufficient empirical data, however, it can be difficult to prioritize the next steps meaningfully to benefit in the end from digitalization and automation. Promising projects can quickly become risky or fail to work out in the end. This must be avoided at all costs. But how?
Reliable experts can show you the right way: Before making a hasty decision or possibly initiating entire change processes, companies should consult experts to develop a strategy based on expertise and experience. From developing a digitization strategy to implementing automation processes, companies can rely on planning and investment security with an expert like Mimacom at their side. Based on many years of practical experience with well-known local and international customers and a thorough requirements analysis, Mimacom advises companies such as banks and insurance companies on how to develop a custom strategy and how to choose the right technologies. These include solutions such as Flowable for Intelligent Business Automation.
At the beginning of this article, I asked what potential lies behind the automation of business processes and what this means for companies. The answer is simple: A lot, and everything – that is, it brings their company a lot of potential and thus means everything for a successful corporate future. First and foremost, digitalization and automation save time and money. Secondly, more efficiency, productivity and increased quality. And in the end, this leads to a better performance for your users at all levels, enabling better support and more comprehensive services. The result for your company is the chance to be more competitive and profitable through innovation.
So what are you waiting for? Mimacom will be pleased to advise you on what you need and on your specific terms and conditions. With Flowable as our technology partner, we can provide you with comprehensive support in your transition to digital and automated business processes with Business Process and Case Management.
