Work that comes back every week and nobody misses
Process automation is working out which recurring work between your systems a computer could do, and then having it done. This page explains when that returns something, and when it does not.
What is process automation?
Process automation is having software carry out business processes that are done by hand today. In a smaller company that almost always means the work between the packages – not the work inside one package, because that is what the package is for.
In almost every company of this size there are four to eight packages. A mailbox, a CRM, a planning tool, an accounting package, perhaps an ERP or a time registration. Each of them does its own job well. What they do not do is talk to each other.
People close that gap. Someone reads an order in the mail and retypes it into the ERP. Someone takes a job sheet and turns it into an invoice. Someone moves hours out of a spreadsheet into payroll every Monday. That work is in nobody's job description and on nobody's budget, but it costs the same number of hours every week.
Process automation closes that gap with a link instead of a person. The packages stay where they are; something goes in between that takes over the retyping.
- Not a new package replacing the old ones
- Not a migration of your data to us
- Not a six-month project before anything works
- Not a robot driving your screens that breaks at the first interface change
- Not a reason to let people go – the work that disappears is the work nobody wanted
Office or factory floor
The same words cover two trades, and that leads to the wrong conversations.
In industry, process automation is about controlling machines and production lines: PLCs, control engineering, sensors, SCADA. A line that adjusts itself, a mixer that holds its temperature. That is the trade of system integrators and machine builders, and it is not ours. If that is what you are after, you are in the wrong place – better you read that now than after a first call.
In the office, it is about business processes: the administrative chain from order to invoice, from job sheet to bookkeeping, from mailbox to ERP. That is what this page is about and what we build.
If you run a manufacturing company you have both. The machines are already there; the paperwork around them – orders, batch data, specifications, certificates, invoices – is the part we work on.
- PLC and control system engineering
- Control engineering, SCADA and instrumentation
- Robot arms, assembly and packaging lines
- Machine maintenance and breakdown cover
We do the work around them: orders, batch data, certificates and invoices that move from one screen to another by hand today.
Four signs that time is disappearing
You do not need a process analysis to see where it sits. These four turn up in almost every company, and all four are visible from the outside.
- 1The same figure lives in two places
An address, a price, an hour or a quantity that someone carries from one screen to another. Double entry is not only time; it is also where the two systems start drifting apart.
- 2There is a fixed moment in the week or month that people dread
The month-end close, Friday afternoon invoicing, the timesheet on Monday. Work that piles up into a peak is nearly always work that could have been handled automatically, one at a time.
- 3Someone is indispensable for something nobody can explain
If one person knows how the export button works and what has to happen to that file afterwards, that is not knowledge but a risk. Holidays and illness then become a problem.
- 4Money is left on the table
An invoice that goes out late, an expense nobody submits, extra work that never reaches the bill. That is usually more expensive than all the hours put together, and it is the least visible.
Regular, in numbers, with a rule behind it
Work qualifies when it is three things at once: it comes back, it happens often enough to add up, and there is a rule behind it that can be written down. An order that always arrives in the mail the same way qualifies. A customer who calls with a story does not.
The boundary is judgement. The moment someone has to weigh something up – is this complaint serious, is this address right, is this discount allowed – the automation stops and it goes to a person. That is not a shortcoming but the design: a system that guesses when in doubt is more expensive than one that asks.
What that looks like in practice is written out on the process pages, one by one and with prices attached.
Process automation, workflow automation, RPA and AI
Four words for work that overlaps. They are used interchangeably, including by suppliers, and that makes quotes hard to compare. What they mean, and what we do with them.
Process automation is the umbrella term: a process carried out by people today, carried out by software instead. Everything below is a form of it.
Workflow automation is about the order of things: who gets what when, which approval belongs to it, what happens when somebody does not respond. That is half of almost every assignment. A link without an agreed route delivers a faster mess, not a better one.
RPA – robotic process automation – has software drive the screens the way a person does. Attractive, because it works with any package, including ones without an entrance. Fragile, because it falls over the moment a screen changes. Where we can, we connect to the entrance the package has for it – an API, a connector, a scheduled export at worst.
AI is a component, not a category. Useful where something has to be read or judged: an invoice whose layout differs per supplier, an email whose intent has to come out. Not useful where an ordinary rule will do, because it costs money per run and the answer is not the same every time.
And one more distinction. Digitising replaces paper with a screen: the same work in a different medium. Automating removes the work itself.
One assignment, in figures
At Taxi Zoetermeer Direct, ride requests came in through three channels and everything was worked up by hand into ride sheets, invoices and claims every month. The planning and the bookkeeping stayed where they were; links were built between them.
What it costs, and when it is paid back
The sum is short. A link that saves five hours a week saves around €10,000 a year at an internal rate of €40. If that link costs €6,000 to build, you are at zero after roughly seven months and it earns after that. If it costs €25,000, it takes two and a half years, and the question is whether that money is better spent elsewhere.
That hourly rate is an assumption, not a fact – it is what an hour of that employee actually costs you, employer contributions included, not the gross wage. Use your own figure rather than ours. What the build itself costs depends mostly on the number of systems and whether they have a decent entrance. The amounts per type of assignment are on the pricing page.
When you are better off not starting
Not every manual process should be automated, and it is cheaper to establish that beforehand than afterwards.
When the process itself is wrong. A roundabout way of working becomes faster through automation, not better. Sometimes the answer is that three steps can go – that costs nothing and returns more than any link.
When it happens too rarely. Something that takes ten minutes twice a month is four hours a year. No link earns itself back on that, however irritating the work is.
When you are switching packages next year. Do not build a link now on something that will be gone. Wait, or build the link so that only the far end has to be replaced.
When there are too many exceptions. If nine out of ten cases are different, there is no rule to write down. Then it is bespoke per case, and that is work for a person.
How a project runs
We start small and measure first. We look at what happens now and count how much time it takes; then we build one thing and measure again. That way the return is in writing rather than in a quote. How that works in detail is on our approach; what sits underneath it technically, and how ownership and GDPR are arranged, is on technology and ownership.
What people ask about process automation
The questions that come up first in an opening call. Where the answer is „it depends”, it says so.
What is process automation?
Which business processes lend themselves to it?
What is the difference between process automation and digitisation?
What is the difference with RPA?
Do you also automate production lines and machinery?
Do we have to replace our software?
What does process automation cost?
When does it pay for itself?
When are you better off not starting?
Start with one process
Tell us which work gets retyped most often at your company. If automating it turns out to be a bad idea, you will hear that in the first conversation – before there is an invoice.
The first conversation is free and without obligation. Want it substantiated? The Automation Check is €295 – deducted if you have us build within 30 days.