Automated workflows: the key to boosting business efficiency
Samuel Dorven |
11 janvier, 2023 |
Automated workflows: the key to boosting business efficiency
An automated workflow is a process that streamlines the flow of information within a company by automating certain tasks through a series of automated actions. It can be used to save time and improve efficiency by freeing employees from repetitive tasks, as well as reducing the risk of human error.
In general, an automated workflow consists of the following elements:
- Input: The data, information and resources required to complete the workflow.
- Rules: The conditions and criteria that determine the progress of one or more workflow tasks.
- Tasks: The specific steps or actions that must be carried out to complete the workflow.
- Output: The final results or products of the workflow.
An automated workflow is characterized by a sequence of steps designed to automate a process. A simple example below:
This automated workflow was created by IFTTT (IF THIS THEN THAT). It provides a daily morning reminder of the first meeting. Every morning at 7am, a Slack message is sent with the first meeting of the day from Google Calendar.
IF THIS THEN THAT is what we call a trigger: Triggers are specific events or conditions that trigger the execution of a workflow step. For example, when certain data or updates are received, such as the receipt of a question to a form, the arrival of an e-mail or the completion of a task.
What does this mean in practice? Here are some examples of automated workflows by sector, to give you a better understanding of the types of tasks that can be automated.
Accounting
SmartMyData helped a group of car dealers automate the reimbursement of their training courses. The main objective of this mission was to enable significantly faster processing, as well as simplified and more reliable exchanges between the partners.
All the steps described above are now carried out fully automatically, whereas before each step was carried out by an operator, who had to expend considerable energy on the complex business process.
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Billing department
The BatiSanté group wanted to retrieve around a hundred items of information from internal documents. Thanks to SmartMyData's Pdf Collect module, the process was automated to feed an Excel spreadsheet automatically (initially, each document required 30 minutes processing time per operator). Once the data has been extracted, it is checked and normalized using the Function module. The resulting Excel file is output via a Datavisualization application.
Product Manager
SmartMyData came to the aid of a retailer who wanted to create an e-commerce site. The only information available was the EAN codes of his products and a very brief title. Using the Scraping module, SmartMyData was able to retrieve the content from the web. The function module cleaned up the various abbreviations and standardized the attributes to make it easier to search the site. Finally, the image worker was used to resize images.
Communication
SmartMyData came to the aid of the Wiker company, which wanted to collect relevant territorial information from numerous Internet sources and aggregate it into a single service. SmartMyData automated the entire process thanks to the scraping worker, which retrieved the information from the relevant websites. The function worker was used to clean and format the data. The Prediction worker labeled the records. The INSEE module added INSEE codes to the communes, and finally the Database worker saved the data in the database.
Marketing
A company specializing in handling equipment was looking to create an argus based on second-hand advertisements from specialized sites across the globe. SmartMyData automated this process with our scraping module, which enabled us to retrieve the content of ads from all the specialist sites. We also used our function module to standardize equipment names according to the company's own reference system. All this data was then fed into a database, enabling us to build up the argus and maintain the quotes on a day-to-day basis.
Customer service
We helped a company's customer service department to automate the process of reading and extracting information (address, nature of intervention) from incoming e-mails. Once the mail had been processed, it had to be forwarded to the relevant department. SmartMyData automated the creation of intervention pre-tickets from these e-mails, classifying them by theme. By extracting and standardizing the address, it is possible to compare it with the directory of site addresses in the customer's ERP. This saves operators a great deal of time.
Prevention
A major player in the building and civil engineering sector has its accident declarations drawn up from templates in Word, and would like to retrieve them in the form of a table. The SmartMyData platform was used to automatically retrieve all the information contained in the documents and render it in the form of a table. The challenge was to integrate all the numerous templates used by the teams in the field to produce their reports.
In today's society, staying one step ahead of the competition is crucial. Automated workflows show us that by automating repetitive tasks and processes, it is possible to free up time and resources that can be devoted to higher-value tasks, thus giving a major competitive edge. Have you implemented automated workflows in your company?
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