Author: Felipe Bahiense

  • How to begin 2023 automating your business processes?

    How to begin 2023 automating your business processes?

    Have you considered including process automation in your 2023’s planning to improve workflow performance?

    The beginning of the year is synonymous with planning, right? After all, everything that is stipulated will serve as a basis for creating strategies that will guide the way your company operates in the current year.

    In this sense, the strategies’ focus is to find ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of the organization as a whole.

    In fact, businesses tend to seek alternatives capable of improving internal processes, positively impacting profitability and profitability.

    Many of these means of improving management and activities are found in technology. More specifically, in process automation.

    What is process automation?

    Process automation, in short, is using technology to enhance the performance of business processes.

    That means finding tools and solutions to improve the way everyday activities are carried out.

    Thus, process automation is capable of optimizing time management, leaving repetitive activities, with bottlenecks or high error rates, to software.

    This way, the focus of professionals is on strategic activities, with their efforts directed at your core business.

    What are the benefits brought by process automation?

    While one of the most recognizable benefits of process automation is cost reduction, the biggest impact is on how the workforce actually produces.

    Undoubtedly, adopting a technological solution will produce several changes in the way activities are carried out.

    In this sense, process automation provides benefits such as:

    • Productivity: tasks that were previously performed in a laborious and costly manner, are performed with agility and objectivity with the use of technology. It is possible to perform a much larger number of activities in less time.
    • Standardization: in process automation, activities are mapped, described, and delimited. In this way, the customer is sure to always receive the same quality of product or service.
    • Reduction or elimination of errors: due to standardization in the use of technology for the execution of processes, the error rate is small, or even zero.
    • Focus on strategies: by gaining agility in the execution of procedures, professionals can dedicate themselves primarily to business strategies. By doing so, new business opportunities, differentials, innovations, and alternatives to improve customer experience are found.
    • Ensuring accessibility to data and information: process automation provides better document management. If, before, it was necessary to search several files in the file, with the BPMS, everything is stored and accessible via the platform. In this way, a simple search is enough, typing the desired in the specific field to find a certain document.

    In addition to these points, professionals undergo a process of positive transformation of their activities.

    After all, the time spent searching for information is significantly reduced with the automation of processes, making it possible to reallocate this resource to strategic issues that define the company’s DNA.

    In this way, professionals feel more valued and motivated.

    Beginning 2023 with process automation

    Process automation provides so many perks that it’s hard not to imagine what this application would be like within your business.

    Therefore, to start 2023 with process automation, it will be necessary to carry out a plan.

    Before starting the automation of industrial processes, automation of administrative, financial, inventory processes, and many others, it will be necessary to outline what are the objectives that you want to achieve.

    This step is essential to get to know what the technology will need to provide to satisfy the demands of your business.

    After all, only with well-defined goals and objectives will it be possible, after implementation, to assess whether the expected benefits are consistent with what was achieved.

    In this sense, keep in mind that planning will take into account complete phases that will range from analyzing which activities to automate, to measuring results and improvement.

    Thus, there is a kind of step by step to succeed in automating processes:

    Step 1: Analyze and identify the processes

    While undeniably advantageous, not all processes can or should be automated. Therefore, before starting to automate processes, it will be necessary to analyze the tasks and sectors of the company.

    In this way, start by listing the processes that are more time-consuming, bureaucratic, costly, or that have more bottlenecks. Generally, these critical points are solved by automating processes.

    In addition to the complexity and flow of activities, it will be necessary to describe the interconnections that can happen with other departments.

    For example, imagine travel request process. With automation, an employee simply accesses the platform, fills in the requested information, and sends it to the next responsible person.

    In this flow, this request will pass – depending on each company’s configuration, by a manager, a purchasing department, and finances, among others.

    Instead of exchanging emails, the entire flow is carried out by a platform. And, all those involved have access to the information and progress of the request.

    Step 2: Choose the right tool

    Knowing what your goals and needs are for your company, you can choose the best tool.

    When we talk about process automation, choosing the right software is essential for the success of this implementation.

    After all, this platform needs to be a partner of your business, providing easy access to data and information and simplifying processes.

    Therefore, the more user-friendly and customizable this tool is, the better. In this sense, low-code platforms are the best alternative to gain benefits without overloading the technology department.

    As all changes cause a certain level of resistance, when considering your vendor, look for ones where you can try out features for free.

    And, to speed up this choice, make a comparison between platforms using an evaluation checklist.

    Set aside a good amount of time to make your choice carefully. Not always, opting for the first offer, or the lowest price will bring the expected results.

    That is, the automation of processes needs to be seen as a way to improve the performance of the entire organization. Therefore, choose carefully and accurately.

    It will be with the help of the platform’s consultants that activities can be remodeled to improve execution.

    And now, am I ready for process automation?

    Having chosen the ideal tool, it’s time to monitor its implementation. Very important when talking about the adoption of a tool for process automation is remodeling and deployment.

    In this sense, it’s important that this step be carried out in partnership with the professionals directly linked to the execution of this process. How they will use the tool, they are the ones who need to approve and see the advantages of adoption.

    Another issue is to create an environment that multiplies knowledge so that a professional passes on what he knows to others. This transparency also favors the implementation of necessary adjustments.

    In fact, the continuous analysis of the results obtained with the automation of processes is essential. After all, this is an application that never ends.

    There are constantly new processes or activities to improve performance.

    As processes change over time, laws, and the accession of new resources, among others, adopt continuous improvement making it possible to maximize the benefits provided by automating processes.

    Therefore, use the reports provided by the platforms to check whether the indicators match the stipulated goals and objectives.

    In addition, these reports are essential for a more assertive decision-making process.

    And now, are you ready to implement process automation and take advantage of all the advantages within your business?

  • Marketing Intelligence: Trends to take advantage of in 2023

    Marketing Intelligence: Trends to take advantage of in 2023

    Knowledge is a vital resource within companies. And because of this, Marketing Intelligence became a source of several competitive advantages. It is even considered by many specialists to be the single most valuable commodity organizations can have.

    The more technology develops, the greater and more varied data-collecting alternatives become. In fact, countless terabytes are produced daily which are not always taken into account.

    However, data by itself could be a more useful resource. It is necessary to analyze and understand to be able to create practical applications.

    In this sense, Marketing Intelligence is a strategy that collects data and information to be analyzed later, allowing managers to make decisions with higher success rates.

    Marketing Intelligence is the link between theory and practice, to put it shortly. Thus, there is analysis and preparation of an action plan with the definition of strategies to achieve the most varied objectives.

    In this way, the digital transformation provided extracting knowledge with the collection and analysis of data. And, it is an essential resource for organizations to expand in the market.

    With that in mind, find out the Marketing Intelligence trends to keep an eye on in 2023

    Hyperautomation in Marketing Intelligence

    Let’s start with a trend that started to be highlighted in previous years, and continues strong for 2023.

    Hyperautomation favors Marketing Intelligence by automatically collecting data. In this way, automation should be considered broadly and employed in different types of business processes.

    In fact, hyperautomation should be understood as a fundamental tool for data management. After all, it combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and process automation.

    Thus, industrial activities become even more agile, allowing managers to identify bottlenecks and adjust them to increase process performance, making them more assertive, and reducing costs and expenses.

    In addition, these technological resources enable the creation of customized and automated panels to capture relevant data about your business objectives.

    Decision Intelligence

    Decision Intelligence is another trend to watch out for in 2023. In fact, it is capable of changing the way people make their decisions, regardless of the function they perform.

    Basically, this method applies artificial intelligence in the decision-making process of all areas of a company.

    By doing so, it brings together a set of tools that aims to design, model, align, execute, monitor, and adjust decision processes. In addition, the focus is always on results and meeting commercial objectives.

    In this sense, Decision Intelligence expands the information processing capacity required by strategic decision-making. And, as in hyperautomation, it also features a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

    In addition to improving business performance, this tool allows you to optimize departments.

    Gartner warns that 33% of large organizations will be using Decision Intelligence for decision making by 2023. However, it is worth mentioning that Decision Intelligence is transformative for strategies in companies of the most diverse sizes.

    Big Data Analytics

    It is not new that Big Data tools are important for organizations. And it continues to be a trend for 2023 as it provides better strategic decisions, better operational process control, breadth of knowledge about customers, and cost reduction.

    Just like Marketing Intelligence, Big Data Analytics enables an analytical culture where decisions are made based on real and pertinent data and information.

    In fact, this is a tool where the more data generated, the greater the opportunities to understand and take advantage of the consumer public dynamics.

    Big Data Analytics allows companies to anticipate changes that will occur in the market in which they operate.

    This is especially true when considering a Data-Driven culture, where management is data-oriented. This means management is guided based on analyzed and concrete information obtained by monitoring the market in real-time.

    Decentralized data management

    In fact, the world will become increasingly globalized. Companies are present in several locations, even more so with the increase in home office activities.

    This is why decentralized data management is another great Marketing Intelligence trend for 2023. If, previously, all data was stored and maintained by the IT department – a very costly information gathering process -, today, we have data decentralization.

    Access to data and information becomes much easier and widely available, favoring all sectors and departments.

    In this way, demands are answered more quickly, providing each process with essential information and data for its particularities.

    In addition, digital transformation allows companies to adopt low code tools, which can be customized according to each business’ requirements.

    This ensures autonomy and flexibility for professionals to analyze data according to the specific objectives of each department, considering the business’ strategic objectives.

    Data governance

    This Marketing Intelligence topic relates to the people, processes, and technologies used in data acquisition, archiving, and usage.

    With the legal requirements arising from Data Protection regulations such as the LGPD, data governance is not just a trend, but a requirement. The use of data must follow a series of enforced rules so that your business is not penalized.

    Because of that, data governance refers to the implementation of rules and structures to manage, monitor, and protect information, providing greater control and organization over business strategies.

    Among the main advantages of data governance are reliability, risk management, organization of information, and better decision-making.

    Real-Time Analytics

    As everything changes very quickly, Real-Time Analytics is undoubtedly a strong trend in Marketing Intelligence, and not only in 2023 but for years to come.

    In fact, the growing and rapid changes brought about by technology, and especially by social networks, have made analytics not only a way to take advantage of opportunities, but also a resource for developing preventive measures.

    In this sense, the use of customized dashboards provides much more agile and assertive response actions.

    Undoubtedly, digital transformation has brought with it this high speed of access to the necessary data and information.

    Currently, it is basically unthinkable – and frustrating -, to have to wait more than an hour to get an answer to a question, for instance.

    Other technology trends

    Undoubtedly, technology as a resource is present everywhere in our daily lives. Therefore, we will be making increasingly more use of the internet of things, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain and 5G, among other resources.

    Likewise, there will be more focus on immersive customer experiences with the use of the metaverse, tokens, NFTs, and dCommerce.

    Another issue pointed out by Gartner is sustainable technology. This trend uses traceability, analytics, management software, and artificial intelligence to monitor a company’s sustainability.

    Here at Neomind, we are always attentive to trends and Marketing intelligence to better serve our customers. What about your business, is it ready for the future?

    Here at Neomind, we walk along your business as true partners. So, if you have any questions or would like to contribute with previous experiences, let us know in the comments!

  • IT governance: what is it, and what are its best practices

    IT governance: what is it, and what are its best practices

    IT governance: what is it and what are its best practices

    IT governance is a necessary tool to ensure that investments in technology are well aligned to the company’s goals. It seeks and uses technological resources to achieve goals in the most appropriate and efficient way.

    With this set of IT resources management practices, the business is able to control and measure the results of deployed applications.

    By the way, when well implemented, IT governance brings countless benefits such as improved processes, enhanced cybersecurity, cost and risk reduction, among others.

    Given its importance, it is essential that companies and their managers understand what it is and what are its best practices.

    What is IT governance?

    IT governance comprises standards and practices used specifically by the technology department. Iit aligns all IT resources, such as hardware, software, and professionals, to the overall business strategies.

    Besides producing measurable indicators to achieve goals and objectives, IT governance aims to improve competitiveness by enhancing processes and stored information quality.

    Currently, the technology department is one of the pillars for the success of organizations. After all, there is a plethora of technological tools that improvement operations and results measurement.

    Therefore, IT governance is indispensable for the management, control, and quality of processes, products, and services.

    As the focus of IT governance is to deliver value while mitigating risks, its performance is guided by the following areas:

    • Strategic Alignment: aims to create harmony between IT and business strategies;
    • Value Delivery: proper use of technology investments – deliver maximum value with an acceptable amount of risk. Where the money will be invested, and what the expected return is need to be clear;
    • Risk management: identifies, assesses, and communicates risks to the entire company.  It is essential to ensure business continuity, especially compliance with legal requirements;
    • Definition and management of the IT department resources: including people and infrastructure;
    • Performance measurement and continuous improvement: frequent evaluation allows strategies to be carried out, ensuring that their execution is happening as planned.

    Why is IT governance important?

    Its importance comes from the fact that one of its main objectives is to improve IT management. We know that technology is currently paramount for a company to achieve its goals and be efficient in the short, medium, and long term.

    Thus, corporate governance in IT increases a company’s value and reputation, allowing:

    • increased information security;
    • compliance with legal obligations, mainly related to the Data Protection laws;
    • resource optimization;
    • improved internal communication;
    • reduction of risks and processes errors and failures;
    • facilitating and increasing the return on investments in technology;
    • greater confidence to customers and stakeholders;
    • delivery of value to investors;
    • monitoring IT capacity decisions;
    • company’s performance indicators management.

    Framework for implementing corporate IT governance

    Frameworks serve as guidelines for companies to build upon when creating an IT governance system.

    In this sense, there is a plethora of frameworks that provide great guidance. More than one framework can be implemented, depending on its objectives. The most common frameworks include:

    ITIL

    The IT infrastructure library framework is regarded as the standard of all frameworks.  It helps you to visualize the entire expected lifecycle as well as the effectiveness of IT governance.

    It aims to ensure that IT services provide the necessary support to business processes. It also comprises the set of best management practices for service strategy, design, change management, operation, and continuous improvement.

    ISO 20000 Structure

    It provides guidance on IT best practices and methods, and measures the level of ITIL implementation.

    COBIT

    The control objectives framework for related information technology enables the creation of  IT governance controls.

    Thus, it helps to develop strategic directions based on the company’s technology control strengths.

    COSO

    It allows the analysis of the company’s internal controls, evaluating business-related aspects. That is, risk management and fraud investigation, for example.

    FAIR 

    It is the information risk factor analysis that identifies and quantifies the risks that the IT department may face. It aims at cybersecurity and operational risk.

    Balanced Scorecard 

    A framework that evaluated various elements, including internal processes, finances, innovation, learning aspects, and customers.

    Thus, it enables you to develop metrics for each element and helps to track relevant information about them.

    CMII

    It refers to a model that measures capability maturity, i.e. performance improvement.

    It uses a scale to measure the performance, quality, and profitability maturity level of a organization, measuring risks of a qualitative nature.

    Positive impacts of IT governance

    In a very practical way, when IT governance is focused on optimization and efficiency, the gains are many. We can highlight the following ones:

    Process Automation

    Corporate governance in IT aims to use resources and assets more intelligently and correctly. In other words, it implement best practices to task execution.

    Therefore, the detailed process analysis makes it possible to redesign the flow of activities so that those repetitive or with a high failure rate can be automated.

    Considering especially the tasks that are not directly linked to the organization’s core business and strategies.

    In this sense, this view of the processes allows the identification of opportunities where automation will provide efficiency and productivity gains.

    Process automation and standardization add value to internal processes and consumers, who receive the best possible products or services.

    Cost reduction

    As IT governance manages resources and investments, there is an incessant search for alternatives that bring better returns to the company’s demands.

    Therefore, investing in tools to improve productivity, such as BPMS, is an investment with very high return and gains.

    Including, updated platforms provide better results and assist in continuous improvement with reports and indicator templates for real-time monitoring.

    Information Security

    This is one of the IT governance’s pillars, which needs to be managed in all types of businesses. Data is an invaluable resource for companies.

    However, it is necessary to have total control and security to obtain, store and manage it according to the laws in force.

    In this sense, IT governance aims to diminish the risks of attacks or failures. It also provides a holistic view of how data is structured, stored, used, and accessed.

    Increase in competitiveness

    Investing in technology to support the business strategies and goals, it ensures that results are achieved in a faster and more efficient way.

    Thus, technology is great to reduce costs without compromising quality. Another issue is the high adaptability and use of opportunities and new demands that may arise.

    By mapping challenges, risks, and opportunities, IT governance also provides more strategic solutions that evolve the business as a whole.

    The only question is how to choose the ideal tools capable of providing a more accurate and precise IT governance to your business.

    Without a doubt, customizable tools are easier to be tailored to your needs and goals. To improve IT governance in your company, try Fusion Platform for 15 days and evaluate how the process, document and indicator management can bring benefits not only to the technology area, but to your entire organization.

  • Operational efficiency: what is it and what is its importance

    Operational efficiency: what is it and what is its importance

    Operational efficiency: what it is and how important it is

    If someone asks you what the major goals of a company are, there is no doubt that at some point you will be talking about operational efficiency.

    It may not necessarily be considering these two words. But it will for sure be something related to having more and better results with fewer costs.

    Indiscriminate cost-cutting, however, such as reducing investments and manpower, can have the opposite effect. In other words, although it may seem so, this is not always the most appropriate way to improve results.

    In fact, analyzing, reviewing, or remodeling internal processes, following their evolution over time, that’s what results in better outcomes. This is what focusing on operational efficiency means.

    Defining operational efficiency

    Operational efficiency, in a very practical way, is about finding the best output in operational processes. In this sense, it means being more competent and productive by considerably reducing errors and failures.

    In a business environment, operational efficiency is directly linked to better use of resources, avoiding all kinds of waste.

    Still, in this environment, efficiency is about how workers are employing their time and efforts. Likewise, it analyzes where the money is being invested.

    In fact, operational efficiency means producing or offering services at the lowest possible cost, without reducing or compromising the quality of what will be delivered to the customer.

    Would you be surprised if we said that great results can be achieved with little investment?

    Operational efficiency can be achieved by analyzing and improving your teams and process management. In fact, great outcomes are achieved with a detailed analysis and reorganization of your workflow.

    But how do you know if it is time to invest in operational efficiency?

    How to measure operational efficiency

    In fact, there is no right time to measure operational efficiency. This concern and analysis must be constant.

    In this sense, to measure results, it is necessary to have a meaningful metric able to calculate the degree of operational efficiency. So, the most practical way is to identify the value of inputs and outputs.

    So, list all the costs of your production (resources, labor, among others), and the revenue (production volume, revenue, product quality) generated by your products or services.

    This way, operational efficiency will be the value obtained by dividing the total expenses by the total revenue. If you want the value in percentage, multiply the result by 100.

    In short, the lower the final result, the better. It may seem counterintuitive, but the lower the rate, the greater the operational efficiency and sustainability of the enterprise.

    Thus, the better the operational efficiency is, the lower the costs to generate the same or more revenue.

    Of course, this ratio must be measured periodically, generating a better perception of how your business is evolving.

    Therefore, whenever there are modifications in the processes, after a certain period, recalculate the efficiency rate to ensure the effectiveness of these changes.

    Why I should care about operational efficiency

    Companies that seek a successful story as healthy and continuous enterprises need to worry about improving operational efficiency, so they can save resources and increase performance.

    In addition, companies that investigate and improve their processes achieve numerous benefits, including:

    • Cost reduction;
    • Savings in the short, medium, and long terms;
    • Waste reduction;
    • Increased productivity;
    • Prevention of errors;
    • Standardization;
    • Improved communication.

    Actions to increase operational efficiency

    In summary, improving operational efficiency implicates identifying the expenses that can be avoided, and how to replace them to improve processes.

    In this regard, an in-depth analysis will be required to determine the problems’ root causes.  It may sound complex, but some practical actions can help with that:

    Set objectives and goals

    Before thinking about operational efficiency itself, consider analyzing in detail how you are performing currently and what results you want to achieve in the future.

    By doing so, everything will be planned with well-stated goals and objectives in mind. Efficiency will be a factor in drawing up the action plan focused on achieving specific, measurable, and attainable goals.

    Map the processes

    Process mapping allows you to understand and provides transparency as to how tasks are executed.

    In fact, it makes it possible to observe the strengths, failures, and bottlenecks that cause inefficiency. Moreover, monitoring how activities are performed makes it easier for you to identify where the costs or unnecessary expenses are.

    With this analysis and understanding, a new and better way of executing them is enabled.

    Remodeling

    Mapping provides documentation so that, once flaws were identified, new methods to optimize results can be planned.

    In this sense, redesign consists in recreating the activity flow in a way that is more consistent and efficient for your business.

    Obviously, restructuring with standardization does not have to be executed in its entirety; you can start tackling one problem at a time.

    Standardization

    When considering redesigning processes, think about their standardization. Standardization makes sure that processes are always executed in the same way.

    In this sense, conducting frequent audits ensures that processes are actually being performed as mapped and described.

    Following-up results and continuous improvement

    It is completely normal for operational efficiency to change over time. New costs may arise, as well as new process improvement strategies. So always analyze the results you got to see if they match your business expectations.

    BPMS tools, which enable automation, usually generate efficiency reports to track your performance.

    Likewise, continuous process improvement is something that should be encouraged and always present within your company.

    Investing in technology

    As we mentioned, reducing investments is not always what will bring more operational efficiency.

    Investing in technology, especially when it comes to process automation, allows you to create more efficient and transparent process flows.

    In fact, despite the initial investment cost, new technologies are capable of bringing great returns over time. You can even calculate the cost of acquiring a process automation tool with our free calculator.

    Adopting a BPMS tool allows you to automate processes by favoring process and document management. In addition, advanced platforms, such as Fusion, provide several reports for analysis and process evolution and performance monitoring.

    Fusion Platform can literally transform your company, bringing the results you’ve always wanted, favoring an increase in operational efficiency.

    Try Fusion Platform free for 15 days, or talk to one of our consultants.

    Do you have any questions? Use the comments field and write to us!

  • BPM tool: what it is and the benefits for your business

    BPM tool: what it is and the benefits for your business

    What is a BPM tool?

    A BPM tool is a very useful resource for companies that want to analyze, manage, and improve their processes. Due to its many benefits, BPM is a methodology used worldwide in businesses of different types and sizes.

    The practical application of BPM requires tools that combine technology in its favor.  For this reason, it is constantly updated and improved to meet diverse demands.

    Thus, a BPM tool is capable of managing processes using automated workflows to unify the entire company.

    In addition, they provide greater transparency regarding communication, and easy-to-analyze reports for assertive decision-making.

    As you can see from this short introduction, BPM tools are very important. So, stay on top of it and transform your processes and your business.

    Defining BPM

    BPM (Business Process Management) is an adjustable methodology with the objective of organizing, facilitating, and managing the organizational processes that exist within companies.

    In simple terms, a process is a set of activities aimed at achieving a certain goal. And, BPM standardizes the interaction among a process’ stages.

    Thus, BPM manages processes because it enables analyzing, modeling, improving, publishing, and controlling the activity flow of all departments.

    What is a BPM tool?

    A BPM tool is an intuitive system capable of providing companies with the practical management, control, automation, and improvement of their processes.

    In this sense, a BPM tool is used to measure, map, standardize, optimize, and automate a company’s processes.

    Thus, BPM tools are used so that the process management is carried out with greater practicality, precision, accessibility, and security. It is also capable of improving your company’s performance and competitive differential.

    For this reason, many enterprises opt to use technology-enabled BPM tools. That is, with software that allows a better application of the BPM methodology.

    In fact, since there is a great diversity of BPM software available, it is necessary to understand your demands in order to choose the platform that will best meet them.

    Process Management Categories

    As you can see, BPM is very broad and may involve the use of several tools. Therefore, some theories categorize management:

    System-focused: here BPM focuses on processes involving workflow that operate without much human intervention. Usually, processes are automated in systems.

    Human-focused: here the BPM tool focuses on creating features to improve human interaction, such as a designed user interface, alerts, and notifications.

    Document-focused: This covers everything about processes such as formatting, signing, and verifying contracts.

    Obviously, the most advanced and up-to-date BPM tools are able to absorb and solve all of these demand categories in a unified way. In other words, with a single software, for example, the company has notification customization, electronic signature, and task automation.

    What is the importance of managing a process?

    Process management is important for the company’s success since its processes are designed with structured steps to produce consistent results.

    Because of this, business process management makes it possible to predict results and mitigate risks. In addition, it makes enables you to see the weak links, bottlenecks, and failures that hinder the final results.

    Consequently, when a process is poorly designed or managed, it leads to inefficiency, and impacts negatively the entire corporate ecosystem.

    A BPM tool, among other advantages, allows the company to have its operations standardized, directing the focus to its true core business.

    In addition, innovations may be added as the business advances, without compromising the current operation.

    The benefits of a BPM tool

    Undoubtedly, adopting a BPM tool brings many advantages. When processes are well-designed and detailed, their execution becomes more efficient, productive, and organized, contributing to overall better results and customer satisfaction.

    BPM helps companies to offer more efficient products or services at a lower cost. In addition, when the approach is automation-oriented, they can adapt to changes faster.

    Other benefits that BPM tools offers to organizations include:

    • Issue detection and error reduction;
    • The monitoring of processes with reports on productivity and procedures;
    • Expenses and waste reduction;
    • More data security, with extra protection for documents and information;
    • Process automation;
    • Increase in performance, productivity, and efficiency.

    Features and capabilities of a BPM software tool

    Platforms that use BPM tools serve to manage business processes. Therefore, among several features, they are capable of:

    • Building forms to collect, display, and analyze relevant data and information;
    • Automate workflow by assigning tasks, setting deadlines, rules, and permissions;
    • Customize notifications and alerts, allowing you to track task status;
    • Create and edit electronic forms to streamline processes and improve information accuracy;
    • Offering low-code platforms with a simple design that allows you to drag and drop items according to user preferences or internal needs;
    • Accessing control and mobility;
    • Integrating with other software that the organization already adopts;
    • Reporting and analysing metrics and process results;
    • Monitoring activity and featuring dashboards.

    With these and other features, a BPM tool is capable of positively influencing business productivity. Especially when considering usability, support, functionality, customization and integration capabilities.

    BPM tool focused on the future

    Business process management is moving towards an increasingly technological, dynamic, and practical approach. In this sense, BPM tools are being adapted so that more internal company users can identify, implement, and evaluate new ways to carry out their processes.

    In addition, there is a rapid growth in intelligent automation, incorporating artificial intelligence, RPA, and machine learning to improve workflows.

    Another point is the inclusion of BPM in business applications, adaptive process management, and interactive modeling. All these features make process automation more flexible and optimized.

    In short, a BPM tool is a resource capable of generating competitive differentials for your business.

    Is your company able to manage business processes well? Tell us, here in the comments, what it is like to use a BPM tool for you.

    In case you still don’t have the benefits of a BPM tool, let us know too. Or, talk to one of our consultants.

  • DPA vs RPA: how to use them in my company?

    DPA vs RPA: how to use them in my company?

    Using machines to perform human work is not a recent practice, but technological advances brought more and more new alternatives and tools capable of improving performance within companies, being adaptive and versatile to follow constant and rapid market changes.

    Companies have implemented several software systems capable of automating their tasks, contributing to digital transformation, and achieving their set goals.

    In recent years, the acronyms DPA and RPA have gained prominence for their importance and for the competitive differential they can generate. But after all, what are RPA and DPA and how can they be used in your company? Read on, and check it out!

    What is RPA?

    Do you know those routine, repetitive tasks, such as sending charges, logging into an application, searching sites like SERASA or Receita Federal, verifying forms, updating spreadsheets, and copying data, among others? With RPA you literally have a robot to perform them, without errors and working 24 hours a day.

    Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology where automation is accomplished with software-robots capable of simulating and perfectly reproducing repetitive human actions. Basically, all you have to do is to configure the robot, and it performs the set tasks based on rules, which increases productivity, reduces errors, and gives employees the opportunity to dedicate themselves to strategic efforts and make a difference within the company.

    By being able to communicate with other systems, RPAs speed up processes and reduce the overall workload. Using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, it automates repetitive tasks to ensure they’re completed with consistency, accuracy, reliability, and superior speed, without requiring breaks. It can be used in various departments within a company, as long as its processes are based on rules.

    Robotic Process Automation is a very simple tool, capable of being adapted to the infrastructure and systems that any given organization uses. It’s common to find low-code RPA platforms where the user himself can create his own robot with little or no help at all from the IT department.

    What is DPA?

    Digital Process Automation (DPA), uses different technologies to automate steps, activities, and tasks to help with a company’s processes management (BPM) from end to end, providing a broad, integrated overview directly related to the organization’s objectives.

    Based on BPMN principles, with DPA processes mapping and automation is performed from end to end, which means that the activities are carried out in a simpler and standardized, logical, and collaborative way. Since the interactions and responsible parties are well defined, the tasks are completed in a correlated manner, regardless of whether they are sequential or parallel.

    Another usefulness of DPA is its information recording capability, which allows performance analysis to be carried out assertively, spotting bottlenecks, reducing cycles, and facilitating process management and monitoring.

    To learn how to map or understand where your company is in process automation, access this ebook and improve your processes.

    What are the differences?

    Now that you understand each of these tools, let’s go deeper into their differences.

    First, we need to clarify that their main contraposition is in their applicability. While RPA is about automating tasks, DPA can be used for complete processes and workflows, including those that are long and complex, because it has the ability to map and automate steps from start to finish. Processes are represented with BPMN notation, including interactions between actors, enabling clearances, and decision rules configuration. DPA is much broader, as it works with the entire process, involving several sectors and users.

    Thus, Digital Process Automation standardizes procedures, improving or creating a new process that follows a certain execution logic, facilitating communication between departments, allowing employees to interact more assertively with the systems and perform their activities quickly, with information traceability, secure data storage, and the ability to monitor the entire process and the interactions.

    Another difference is that DPA allows human interaction with electronic forms, while RPA works with specific, repetitive, and costly tasks, has a shorter duration, and user interaction is non-existent.

    In short, DPA automates and RPA robotizes, but both exist to boost the company’s performance and take its digital transformation further.

    How to use DPA and RPA in my company?

    Okay, now you understand the differences between the two, but a question remains: can I use both tools? How do I combine their execution to optimize our work routine?

    Processes that use DPA rely on RPA for repetitive or time-consuming tasks, benefiting and speeding up the process. For example, within a given sales process that has been mapped and automated, it’s possible to configure a robot to complement the data of a registration where the address is based on the zip code of the street, so when the user types in the matching numbers, the robot queries the Post Office website, and in a matter of seconds it fills in the related address fields such as street and district names. This is just one example of the many functions that the tools are able to provide when complementing each other.

    Finally, it’s essential to continue measuring the performance of the processes that were automated with DPA, both to enhance their flow and to find other tasks where RPA could be useful.

    Both tools have rapid development, standardize activities and workflow, have easy integration with other systems, have data traceability, reduce errors and costs, and enable performance analysis.

    Want to test DPA and RPA?

    Companies are increasingly emphasizing the focus of their intellectual capital on their core business, leaving for software everything that is not considered essential, especially those activities that do not require decision and are repetitive.

    It may seem complex to know which processes should be automated within your company, so it’s important to rely on a complete tool and experts who understand your needs and implement it correctly to improve the results obtained.

    Fusion Platform is a complete, user-friendly, and low-code platform. And the best of all is that you can test Fusion for 15 days for free and understand in practice how DPA and RPA can be important tools for your success.

  • How does Change Management assist companies in their strategies?

    How does Change Management assist companies in their strategies?

    Change is more and more common and necessary in the Information Technology (IT) sector. Due to numerous new developments coming from the workforce, organizations put themselves in a position of frequent transformation to meet their customer’s needs as well as their own ones.

    It’s precisely because of the importance and criticality of change processes that methods guided by quality standards must be used; after all, this entire process must be carried out effectively and efficiently to reduce the impact of possible unforeseen events. Thus, the professionals in corporations opt for methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), which is an international standard for IT service management and meets the ISO 20000 standard.

    Regarding change management methods

    ITIL encompasses procedures for better user and customer satisfaction. According to ITIL, a change is the addition, modification, or removal of any task that will impact IT. Often, a change is an event that is previously authorized, analyzed, and will bring some kind of value to the organization and its customers.

    The demand for change can come from an employee or a user who finds it necessary. It can be classified as

    • Emergency change: which would be an impediment to production and tends to be more uncoordinated and with a high chance of failure; or
    • Standard change: which has low risk, a pre-established process, and it’s documented step-by-step.

    The goal of change management is to establish a pattern of procedures to manage the need for necessary transformations in an agile and efficient manner, so as to minimize risk and the impact that changes bring to an organization.

    While no practice or methodology can 100% guarantee success, they can help manage risk and secure IT services against potential unnecessary errors.

    How does the process of change take place?

    It all starts with the analysis of the requests for change. After that, the commitment to meet certain demands must be defined, while still meeting other business needs. Then we come to the approval and scheduling phases, ensuring that those involved are aware of all the necessary actions that will put changes into practice.

    It’s important to emphasize that change is something that must be planned, which includes not only implementation cycles, but also testing and correction cycles, reducing the chances of failure when a change is applied to the production environment. Documentation also plays an important role, ensuring agility for future similar demands.

    Importance of the change management process

    Planned and structured change helps minimize potential risks that come with it. At the same time, it brings significant benefits, such as aligning IT with organizational interests and increasing responsiveness to change, thereby improving staff performance for future innovations.

    Commonly, one of the biggest challenges during change management process is the resistance of those involved. Many choose to continue to perform tasks in an inefficient way, but that they are already used to.

    We emphasize that change management also plays the role of transmitting confidence to these people, since an efficient schedule involves commitment from those involved to maximize the team’s potential to adapt to the new ways of working.

    Miscommunication can create a lack of trust among those involved, and uncertainty will cause difficulties in embracing change. Employees need to be aware of what is going on, and avoid feeling disconnected and not aligned with the change objectives. And this is only possible thanks to the change management process, which understands that communication must be constant, as the whole group can help with valuable ideas.

    In conclusion

    Without a doubt, change management is an important business strategy. Maturing this process is a long way to go, but by achieving excellence in it, the organization becomes able to promptly meet its needs, adding value to itself and remaining competitive in the market.

    At Neomind, we make available to our clients the Change Management Accelerator, making organizational processes agile and productive. This accelerator is concerned with the management of a change cycle within the context of IT asset management or beyond. To do this, it generates the necessary controls for impact analysis, change planning, configuration management, and predictability. To learn more, please visit our website or contact us.

  • 6 tips for organizing your tasks and your team

    6 tips for organizing your tasks and your team

    How many times have you been frustrated because you felt you had too much to do and spent the whole day starting all those activities without finishing any of them? Or, because you didn’t know what to prioritize, you started several tasks and finished those that seemed easier, but that actually weren’t so urgent and important?

    Despite our to-do lists being different from each other, we all have the same goals: to get as much done as possible. To do this, you need a better way to manage your time and activities. In this article, we will focus on activity management and talk about task organization.

    We’ve put together 6 tips to help you stay organized and, of course, complete your activities. Check it out!

    1. Know how to prioritize

    Prioritization is the first item when it comes to task organization. It’s no good trying to multitask believing that you can do several things at the same time. You can, but in the end, you won’t get anything done right!

    When you need to prioritize tasks, a great tip is to separate what is urgent from what is important. Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix is widely used for this purpose. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States and the owner of a famous quote: “What is important is rarely urgent and what is urgent is rarely important.

    Before we go to the decision matrix, it’s important to understand that urgent means that a task requires immediate attention. That which is considered important, on the other hand, deals with things that contribute to long-term goals, mission, values, and objectives.

    Thus, in Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix, there are:

    • Urgent and important tasks: in task organization, these are the tasks that require our immediate attention and contribute to the achievement of goals.
    • Non-urgent and important tasks: activities that do not have an urgent deadline, but that, nevertheless, help you achieve your goals.
    • Urgent and non-important tasks: require our attention now (urgent), but don’t help us achieve our goals or fulfill our mission (unimportant). Most tasks here are interruptions from other people.
    • Non-urgent, non-important tasks: these are the so-called distractions.

    Investing your time in organizing non-urgent but important tasks can prevent them from becoming urgent AND important in the future. By doing so, you act proactively to avoid great problems.

    2. Create a plan

    You and your team have worked to prioritize activities. Now you need to develop a plan. In this step, you must identify the responsible parties and deadlines for completing each of the tasks in order to organize them in a way that truly makes sense.

    Here, note that it’s important that the whole team has a detailed and clear view of what needs to be done. Each member should be aware of what is expected in each task. This will help each individual to organize their time and prioritize tasks on a daily basis.

    To create the plan itself, we recommend the next tip:

    3. Use the right tools

    There is no right or wrong here. For simplified task management, there are tools like Trello, Evernote, Todoist, and Kanban itself that can help.

    However, when it comes to corporate projects, task organization has to go to a higher professional level. This is because just leaving tasks organized is not enough. It’s necessary to monitor them, to know whether they are overdue or not, who is responsible for them, and what their deadlines are.

    In other words, tasks need to be on a flowchart. For example, imagine the activity of hiring a new employee. Hiring goes through the process of job advertising, interviews, approval from the direct superior, and the entire procedure of hiring the chosen employee. A failure in the organization of these tasks can cause a step to be forgotten, or to be managed without much attention.

    Human Resources processes are just one of the countless examples that could be given of the importance of using the right tools in managing and organizing tasks. We can talk about hiring and service management, campaign approval, problem management, and conducting public consultation, among many others.

    4. Track delegated tasks

    When working with task organization, you will find that there are tasks that can be delegated. Once you have assigned a task to a team member, it’s definitely worth it to use software that helps you keep track of their progress.

    This kind of control will also allow you to analyze where productivity is falling off or where it can be put to better use. For tracking to be done properly, we not only need to use the right tools, but also keep the team’s tasks centralized, which brings us to the next tip:

    5. Keep your tasks organized in one place

    Having a work environment where the organization of tasks isn’t taken seriously is a sure way to lower team’s productivity.

    One method to avoid this and keep tasks organized is to centralize them. There is no point in having a task described on a piece of paper on your desk when its completion depends on the effort of another employee, who in turn needs to know at what stage it’s supposed to be done.

    Once again, tools are essential here. By having the tasks accessible in a single place, it will be possible not only to monitor them but also to perform them on time, within the required deadline.

    6. Review the tasks

    Some people like to do this at the end of each day. But you can set one day a week to analyze what went well, what needs improvement, and which tasks will need adjusting.

    The focus of organizing tasks is not to make you run back and forth to do them. The idea is not to keep yourself busy all the time, but to do the tasks that really need to be done in order for you and your team to achieve the expected goals (have you read our post on goal management and strategies?).

    Task organization: take the next step

    When tasks enter a flow, it is quite common to have bottlenecks. To solve this issue, and to take your company to the next step of task management and organization, a process management platform is fundamental.

    With a BPM software, your company has a unique environment that provides teams with total control over activities, such as appointment times, deadline control, and flags, among others.

    So, get to know Fusion Platform! Our solution has a BPM module that allows process creation and management in a simple way, with the added benefit of a high level of integration with other management systems. In addition, we have accelerators for task management and organization to meet the varied needs of a company (such as for example, Client Registration Management, Electronic Timetable, PPE Request, and others).

  • GED and ECM: what are they and what are their differences?

    GED and ECM: what are they and what are their differences?

    Sometimes, understanding Information Management’s terminology ends up being difficult. Sometimes this is the case for ECM and EDM, whether by misinformation or simply the absence of content that clarifies their differences.

    Here in our blog we have already explained the distinction between BPM x Workflow.

    In this article, we will answer what may be one of the most common questions involving Information Management: what is the difference between Electronic Document Management (EDM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?

    First, the background

    The technology related to both terms emerged in the late 80s and early 90s, when Document Management System (DMS), or Electronic Document Management (EDM), began to be used to capture and store documents in organizations.

    However, the growing complexity and increasing demand from companies for specific functionalities gave birth to the term Enterprise Content Management (ECM), in the early 2000s. At that time, ECM could be considered an evolved version of the Document Management System (DMS).

    It’s important to note that the terminologies discussed here can be defined by research institutes such as Gartner and AIIM, but generally this ends up occurring through choices made by the market itself.

    Each of these terms is explained below:

    Electronic Document Management (EDM)

    According to the AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) definition, Electronic Document Management (EDM) is the use of a computer system and software to store, manage, and track electronic documents and images, of paper-based information, captured using a document scanner.

    It’s one of the precursor technologies to content management (ECM). So, broadly speaking, ECM provides some of the most basic functionalities for content management, bringing management controls and features to what otherwise we would consider “dumb” documents.

    In short, it makes it so that when you have documents and need to use them, you can do so.

    Among Document Management’s key features, these are the ones that stand out:

    • Check-in / check-out and lock features, to coordinate simultaneous editing of a document and prevent changes made by one person override another one’s;
    • Version control, so that tabs can be kept on how the current document came to be, as well as how it differs from previous iterations;
    • Roll-back, to “activate” an earlier version in case of an error or premature release;
    • Audit trail, to allow reconstruction of who did what to a document during the course of its life in the system;
    • Annotation and bookmarking;

    Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

    The AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) definition states that Enterprise Content Management or ECM is not a simple technology, methodology, or process, but rather, a “dynamic combination of strategies, methods, and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver information that supports key organizational processes throughout their lifecycle.

    Broadly speaking, the phases of ECM consist of:

    • Capture: in this phase, information is obtained from the various media and channels on which they are available (ERP, CRM, dead files, social media, etc);
    • Management: the next phase, responsible for keeping information organized and connected to the processes;
    • Storage: focus now is in ensuring that information is stored in an appropriate medium, either through a system or other technologies;
    • Preservation: is the long-term maintenance, such as archiving, consisting of the practice of protecting content so that it is available and can be used by the organization at any time in the future;
    • Delivery: ensuring that information is delivered to the right audience, through the right device and at the right time.

    From the phases mentioned above, an organization that adopts an ECM solution will get the following benefits:

    • Possibility of capturing any type of content, storing it securely, and making it available throughout the process, regardless of time and place;
    • Effectively organizing any amount of information;
    • Enabling you to search and find information quickly, without having to waste time organizing it in advance;
    • Tracking changes in the documentation;
    • Improving process release and delivery;
    • Enable you to visualize and understand the entire process, as well as your role in it.

    Naming evolution

    More than a decade after the term ECM was first mentioned, in 2016, AIIM felt that consumerization (use of personal devices in the workplace), the cloud, mobile handsets, and the Internet of Things (IoT) were rapidly signaling “the end of the ECM era”.

    At that time, the reason was that Enterprise Content Management was no longer serving the purpose for which it was intended.

    [IMAGEM/*Outros termos já funcionam em inglês, favor confirmar]

    Goals & Strategy

    Fusion Platform, for example, is no longer Fusion ECM Suite, since the solution as a whole goes far beyond document management. Therefore, today what was the EDM module is now called ECM.

    Thus, Gartner suggested the term Content Services, while AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) published a study entitled “The New Wave”, in which it presents the IIM – Intelligent Information Management.

    After all, what are the similarities and differences between EDM and ECM?

    Among the main similarities that encompass the two technologies, the ones we can highlight are:

    • both are SAAS (Software As A Service) technologies;
    • they store information in digital format;
    • they save time and expenses;
    • they provide templates;
    • they can be integrated with other systems and software.

    Today it’s possible to state that EDM and ECM are terminologies used for the same type of solution. Since, as mentioned, the market is often responsible for the nomenclature of software solutions types.

    Finally, you must also consider that regardless of the name of the solution, the ideal is always to thoroughly research the specific functionalities of any given product, the quality of its service, and whether it meets the demands of your business or not.

    Try Fusion Platform’s ECM/GED module right now!

    References:

    AIIM, AIIM, AIIM, E File Carbinet

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