Are you tired of manual processes slowing your teams down? You’re not alone. Daily tasks overwhelm 68% of employees, which emphasizes why businesses should automate their processes to stay competitive.

Automation can transform the way you work. More than 90% of workers recently surveyed said automation solutions increased their productivity, and 85% said these tools boosted collaboration across their teams.

By taking advantage of automation, you can become more efficient, productive, and consistent while scaling your business.

In this guide, we’ll explore what processes you should automate and the secret to successful, fast process automation.

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What are manual processes?

In business, manual processes are business tasks that people do without using automated tools, software, or machinery. These processes typically involve human input, paper-based work, or repetitive data handling without much technological assistance. They rely on their own skills and experience to get the job done.

Some of the manual tasks include:

  • Manually entering invoices or sales orders into an accounting system
  • Tracking employee attendance on paper timesheets
  • Hand-checking inventory stock levels
  • Processing customer service requests through email chains instead of a ticketing system.

Why manual processes hold business back

Manual processes quietly drain your business resources each day. Companies rarely see the costs until they examine them closely. Market research shows that companies, on average, lose 20% to 30% of their yearly revenue because of inefficient and manual processes.

That’s much of your earnings vanishing because of outdated workflows.

Time lost to repetitive tasks

Repetitive tasks slowly eat up your team’s productive hours. According to Zapier, 94% of US knowledge workers spend their days on time-consuming tasks like data entry, document management, and retrieving information between systems.

This issue affects everyone from new hires to leaders. Half of all workers at companies with limited digitalization spend 2-3 hours a day on inefficient processes. Even CEOs spend almost 20% of their time on tasks they can easily automate.

Increased risk of human error

Human errors are inevitable. Human error rates in manual data entry usually range from 1% to 5%, and can reach 40% in some cases. If we break this down:

These mistakes can cost your business millions or billions of dollars. Fixing them requires more time and resources, creating an endless loop of inefficiency.

Difficulty scaling operations

Your business growth makes manual processes more challenging. Labour-intensive processes such as customer service, billing, and support can slow down your company’s growth. Even after hiring more people, manual systems struggle to keep up.

Businesses move fast every day, and businesses that fail to adapt fall behind. For instance, a business making $854,000 yearly could lose $213,000 (25%) to inefficient processes, money that you could have used to grow instead.

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What are automated business processes?

Business process automation extends beyond individual tasks and focuses on automating end-to-end processes with minimum human intervention. The purpose of automation is to optimize operational efficiency, reduce cost, and enhance productivity.

Latest research on automated business processes shows that:

  • 60% of organizations achieve their ROI within 12 months of implementation.
  • Average productivity increases of 25-30% in automated processes.
  • Error reduction rates of 40-75% compared to manual processing.
  • Employee satisfaction improves by 15-35% when freed from routine tasks.

A business process typically spans different departments and often begins with an action. At APPSeCONNECT, we provide end-to-end automation across business workflows to eliminate repetitive tasks, scattered data, and a disorganized operation pipeline.

For instance, APPSeCONNECT seamlessly integrated WaterTech’s ERP system (SAP Business One) with its e-commerce platforms (Amazon, BigCommerce, Shopify, and others).

This integration automated order synchronization between the platforms and the ERP system, eliminating the need for manual data entry and dramatically reducing errors in order processing.

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Difference between automation and digitization

Although the terms digitization and automation are often interchangeably used, they’re quite distinct. Understanding the difference between them helps plan and implement strategies that truly improve business efficiency.

Digitization: Hard copy to a digital format

Digitization is the process of converting information from a physical format to a digital one. It is the best format for bringing your business into the digital age. This process doesn’t change the content of the document; it just changes the way it’s stored.

Take banks, for instance. Customers used to have to go to a physical branch, stand in line, and interact with a teller to deposit a paper check. Digitalizing this process has made banks far more efficient and customer-centric. Instead of going to a physical bank, customers prefer the convenience of serving themselves on their bank’s website or app.

Automation: Technology to carry out repetitive tasks

Automation is when you take a task that has already been digitalised and remove the need for human intervention. A targeted automation eliminates repetitive processes and has an eye for the long-term development of a business. It can also modularly expand as your business scales.

For instance, your team uses a CRM to capture leads. Without a SaaS app syncing platform like APPSeCONNECT, your marketing team has to copy that manually, leading to their mailing or ad platform. With SaaS integration, that information can flow instantly into the right system without a human.

The lead can automatically be added to a welcome email sequence, synced with the ad audience, and enrolled in SaaS campaigns. That means faster follow-ups, more personalized outreach, and less time wasted on repetitive tasks.

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Benefits of automating manual processes

Automating business processes solves the limitations of manual workflows. It benefits organizations in a variety of ways, from saving time to improving employee experiences to delivering efficiency improvements to preventing human errors.

Many industries have an ambitious vision for fully digital processes, including comprehensive
self-service, omnichannel offers, and complete utilization of all available data. Process automation is a key element in achieving this vision.

Standardized workflows

Automation establishes standardized methods throughout your organization. Your team gets a single, optimized way to solve problems and scale to new processes through standardization. This creates consistent, repeatable workflows that anyone can follow. 

Standardization brings several key benefits:

  • Streamlined workflows reduce redundancy, minimize errors, and speed up turnaround times.
  • Standardization fosters a common understanding across all departments.
  • Clear, well-documented processes shorten learning curves and maintain productivity.
  • Operations remain consistent and coherent as the organization expands.

APPSeCONNECT offers pre-built connectors and drag-and-drop process designers to ensure that every department follows the same automated steps, eliminating isolated systems and enabling end-to-end process visibility.

Improving data accuracy

Manual processes create errors that can harm business operations. Automated systems reduce these mistakes substantially. On average, companies lose $3.00 for every $10.00 in revenue due to poor data quality. Automation fixes this process directly.

APPSeCONNECT’s advanced algorithms and techniques automatically produce clean, complete, and enriched data. Real-time data processing lets you check and clean information as it enters the system.

Bots can check and confirm the data they handle to avoid missing and duplicate information. These systems flag problematic data sets for human review, which maintains quality without constant manual checks

Reducing operational overhead

Automation saves money throughout your organisation. Recent research shows that 52% of financial services organizations save at least $100,000 yearly through automation. Retailers who use intelligent automation showcase 25% lower operational costs within their first year.

Automation creates these savings by letting your team focus on valuable work. Teams handle more work without burnout because automation removes the need for manual coordination and constant supervision.

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Steps to automate manual processes

Automation benefits organizations in various ways, but the bigger question is how to implement workflow automations.

We’ll answer this by walking through these critical steps:

Identify Processes for Automation

Conduct a thorough assessment of your current business process within individual departments across different teams. Identify areas where bottlenecks or inefficiencies exist.

To get you started, these are some common tell-tale qualities of tasks that can be automated.

Select the right automation tool

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions like APPSeCONNECT address one of the biggest barriers to modern enterprise: connecting, synchronizing, and relating data.

It offers pre-built solutions (a set of ready-to-use process flow templates) for widely used areas of business integration processes and supports all major applications available in the market.

Its hybrid architecture allows organizations to integrate cloud applications as well as on-premise applications systems and create custom business process integrations.

Unlike other automation solutions that offer trigger-based automation, which lack intelligent decision-making.

  • APPSeCONNECT offers built-in AI-powered automation that allows for custom business logic
  • Supports conditional rules, branching logic, and multi-step workflows.
  • Advanced mapping & validation to ensure the right data reaches the right place at the right time.

Unlike manual or custom-heavy integrations, it provides a low-code, scalable, and secure solution that accelerates digital transformation.

Monitor and adjust
  • Implementing automation is not a one-time task.
  • Once processes are automated, it’s essential to continuously track performance metrics such as processing time, error rates, and cost savings to ensure the automation delivers the expected benefits.
  • Regular monitoring helps detect bottlenecks, integration issues, or shifts in business requirements. Based on these insights, adjustments can be made, such as refining workflows, updating software integrations, or expanding automation to new areas.
  • This ongoing cycle of measurement and optimization keeps the automation aligned with evolving business goals and maximizes ROI.
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Future of business process automation

The enhanced features and capabilities of artificial intelligence are transforming business automation across business workflows. From natural language to robotic processing automation, AI has the ability to enhance virtually any business workflow radically.

With APPSeCONNECT, applications are handled by AI-driven automation and AI-ready workflows, while intelligent data mapping (with machine learning-driven mapping suggestions) speeds delivery and reduces mapping defects.

Here’s a real case study on how Eurofer used APPSeConnect to connect Amazon, Magento, and SAP Business One and streamlines its inventory process.

With APPSeCONNECT, retailers can achieve 100% real-time bidirectional data flow. Integration workflows created with APPSeCONNECT can increase business productivity by as much as 70%.

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Frequently Asked Questions