What Are The Best Workflow Automation Tools?

What is workflow automation?

Workflow automation streamlines your business processes by taking on manual tasks and executing every part of the process. It increases efficiency, reduces human intervention and errors, and drives productivity and employee satisfaction.

Rather than changing your processes to fit your tools, workflow automation helps you build your processes to fit your business needs. 

This article is going to walk you through the what, why, and how of workflow automation. Ready?

What are the benefits of workflow automation?

In a nutshell… workflow automation improves your business operations. Workflows filled with cumbersome manual tasks that are error-prone, time-consuming, and costly can be automated and frictionless. 

From accounts payable to human resources, IT to marketing, workflow automation can seamlessly integrate software, platforms, and tasks. Including invoice processing, client onboarding, automating email campaigns, and more. Benefits include…

• Reduced paperwork
• Compliancy
• Improved workflow visibility
• Fast approval process
• Auto-payments for recurring invoices
• Onboarding new team members
• Managing payment processes
• Automating calculations, transformations, and follow-ups
• Intaking documents across all formats and channels
• Automatically following up to avoid back-and-forth emails
• Filtering out spam, unnecessary documents, and duplicates
• Sorting and organizing documents for easy access
• Extracting and understanding complex objects

Rossum is an AI document processing solution that will help you automate your workflows. Minimizing the time your teams spend manually processing documents.  

Our cloud-native platform is highly customizable with a microservices architecture, low-code extensions, editable code, and tried and tested turnkey integrations. Our SAP certified integration with SAP S/4HANA accelerates document processing by syncing the information flow between Rossum and SAP. 

Meaning you can extract and send validated invoice data with associated documents from Rossum to SAP S/4HANA, as well as the retrieval of master data from SAP S4 HANA to Rossum. Giving you an all-in-one document gateway to take all of your organization’s data extraction and document communication.

How to automate workflow processes?

To automate a workflow, you need to understand everything that impacts the journey. Automating your workflows starts with workflow process mapping. While workflow maps vary, there are best practices to follow…

Workflow map plan

• Identify a repetitive process
• Establish the process start to finish
• Determine the objectives of the process
• Define the goals you’re looking to achieve from automation

Create your workflow map

• Start at the end work backwards to the start
• Include details of every step
• Identify every team and team member in the workflow
• Use process mapping symbols for universal understanding

Review your workflow map

• Collect feedback from everyone in the process
• Map your current workflow honestly, not through rose-tinted spectacles
• Measure your KPIs and ROI

If you’re not clued up on How to do Workflow Process Mapping, our comprehensive guide will walk you through every step.

What are workflow automation tools?

Businesses that have to deal with daily mountains of paperwork face an overwhelming challenge. Invoices, purchase orders, packing lists, claims, and other transactional documents take up vast amounts of time and energy. Reducing efficiency and productivity. 

Workflow automation tools streamline manual, repetitive tasks. Automating these tedious tasks allows teams to focus on projects with higher impact. Processes can be optimized in many ways, including…

• Identifying areas for improvement
• Managing workflows
• Monitoring performance
• Keeping teams on the same page
• Setting up alerts and reminders
• Identifying actionable insights

Running on sources of data and rule sets to manipulate data, workflow automation tools mimic humans. They typically follow the rule – if A happens, do B. Rules-based logic means that an action is chosen to follow an event. Saving time and money, and reducing human errors. 

What to look for in workflow automation tools

So many workflow automation tools, how do you choose the one to suit your business needs. Take a look at this checklist that’ll explain what features you should look for…

• Intuitive UI and easy navigation
• Low code and template free
• Customizable workflows
• Seamless integrations with third-party apps
• Cloud-based
• Scalable
• AI and machine learning
• Real-time reporting
• Robust security and data protection

Workflow automation software

Rossum’s workflow automation software stands out due to the number and quality of integrations our platform offers businesses. 

For example, Our integration partners help our customers meet their business needs during implementation in their accounts payable process. Our partners are highly skilled in workflow management, enterprise integration, RPA, and BPM.

Process management software helps companies increase the value of the work their teams produce. Our intelligent document processing (IDP) solution automates and manages a company’s workflow through AI technologies that accurately capture data, including…

• Technology stacks
• Implementation time
• Upfront and implementation cost
• Total per-document cost
• Team morale

Sales orders, packing slips, bills of lading, financial reports, and balance sheets are some of the documents that can be processed automatically. 

It’s highly unlikely that your team read business documents from start to finish, meaning there is a greater risk of repeated mistakes. AI-powered workflow automation tools use machine learning to learn on the job. 

Open source workflow automation tools

Your business will benefit from using open-source process automation software that’s freely available. Plug-and-play open source software is essential in business process management (BPM), as an open-source approval workflow will bring your company’s entire document processing operation together. 

We provide solutions for automating the end-to-end process of accounts payable, logistics, shared services and more so you can confidently report and manage your workflows. By eliminating human effort from processing workflows, you can shift the focus to what matters. You’ll find that your workflows will be more accurate and less time-consuming. You’ll eliminate time working with documents so you can simplify the intake process without manual data entry. 

Open source workflow automation tools are easily accessible. Businesses looking to automate their documenting process should consider implementing an open-source workflow engine. 

Java, which produces important software for different functions, can be used in conjunction with platforms like Rossum to simplify workflows. Java can be used with Rossum to export data from the Rossum API or to upload documents, creating practical workflow automation tools. The open-source Java workflow engines will eliminate the risk of error so you can reduce the backlog that prevents your team from completing their work on time. 

Best workflow automation tools

There are several reasons why Rossum’s process automation software is so effective for companies backlogged with transactional documents. 

Our IDP solution recognizes the natural errors when companies outsource their data and the dangers inherent to manual processing. Unlike many platforms, we provide secure workflow automation software. Open-source examples from Rossum show that, without the right workflow automation tools, businesses are vulnerable to…

• Breaches in data security
• Hidden costs in the invoicing process
• Poorly executed Accounts Payable (AP) workflows
• Escalated liabilities from manual work
• Lack of AP efficiency and staff engagement
• Overwhelming backlogs of documents

We recognize the need for improved business communication throughout the intelligent documenting process. We also understand that employees completing manual workflow documentation are likely to make errors because of how draining this process can be. Our workflow automation tools prevent these errors, allowing your team to focus on tasks that require a human brain. 

Workflow automation companies

If you’re looking to automatically process incoming document traffic, you’ll need to find a suitable workflow automation company. A  search for these companies will may show multiple results. Your job is to determine the best workflow software for your organization. 

Workflow automation software is crucial if you want to improve your customer relationship management (CRM) process. Workflow automation in CRM eliminates the risk of friction between an organization and its customers. Essential to maintaining strong vendor-customer relationships to strengthen your business’ reputation.

Software like Rossum allows various integrations to connect essential apps and automate complex workflows. Our features typically involve integrating with cloud-based and on-premises accounting suppliers, ERP, or document management systems and apps. By implementing Rossum, you can expand your customer base and appeal to a broader audience. Organizations can benefit from many of Rossum’s capabilities, including…

• Automating complex intake and document preparation with pre-processing tools
• Adaptable data extraction for varying layouts with data capture tools
• Reducing manual review with validation and post-processing tools
• Built-in reporting and insight tools
• Secure and compliant operations with enterprise-grade security features and procedures

Workflow tools

Without workflow tools to automate, your business could be hit with high costs and missing invoices, alongside a variety of other potential issues that come from manual processing.

Because of the risks that come from manual processing of incoming document traffic, implementing workflow tools is a must. Open-source platforms like Rossum are unique and applicable to numerous automation needs that your organization may have. We can help companies meet important AP goals, including…

• Improved processing time
• Efficiency when managing large invoice volumes
• Cost reduction
• Collecting early payment discounts
• Improving supplier relationships

Our workflow tool will also help you determine the goals you should be aiming for and how you can achieve results with an effective data extraction strategy. 

Our workflow tools are simple to use, even for those who are not so techie minded. All document traffic can be automatically processed with our platform, no matter what transactional documents an organization needs guidance on. Pre-processing, data capture, validation, post-processing, reporting, security, and integrating capabilities are all accessible with our IDP platform.

Our guide to invoice processing automation will give you more pointers.

BPM workflow tools

We can also help you if you’re looking to improve your business process management or BPM solutions. BPM employs methods that help organizations discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, and optimize business strategy processes. Our solution  simplifies BPM and ensures that your organization can form trustworthy relationships with their customers.

For those new to workflow automation software, it’s helpful to look at a BPM tools list to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of business process management. Tools that target…

• Detailed inputs for the validation process
• Comprehensive overviews of different complex objects and metrics
• An improved queuing system
• Streamlined, accurate work with promising results
• Pre-built extensions with standard functionalities
• Real-time document updates
• Open communication between employees within an organization
• Automating data entry tasks for significant savings
• Simple and efficient onboarding
• New invoicing and report formats

Rossum’s ability to handle large volumes of data simultaneously takes the overwhelming workload away from your team by implementing an intelligent structure that automates workflow processes hands-free. Communicating essential workflow responsibilities does not have to be challenging for your organization with the best workflow automation tools.