Task and process automation: the key to a more efficient business
Are you tired of wasting time on repetitive, manual tasks?
Do you want to improve your company’s efficiency and cut costs?
Then task and process automation is the ideal solution for you!
What process automation is and how it helps your business
When automation comes up, many people immediately think of the industrial setting, with expensive machines and robots performing tasks that used to be carried out by a human being. That view is understandable, but make no mistake: the use of automation goes far beyond that.
Before talking about process automation, it is necessary to understand what automation itself is, so we can grasp its role in the business world. In short, automation is not only a mechanical solution but also a technological one, and its main goal is to make processes more efficient. From this concept, it is easy to see why companies of all sizes are turning to automation more and more often, as a way to stand out in the market and improve their services.
But what exactly is process automation?
Process automation is actually a Business Process Management (BPM) technique — a set of practices aimed at improving a company’s processes and increasing its results. Its goal is to identify repetitive, manual services so they can be integrated or automated through interfaces, software, or applications.
What are its advantages?
Implementing process automation brings several benefits to your company, such as service integration, greater efficiency in the tasks performed, higher productivity and — most importantly — cost reduction.
Whether your business is new or well established, you will probably need to make use of process automation at some point, so the sooner it happens, the better. It is important to keep an eye on the tasks carried out within your company or department in order to identify possible improvements.
How does process automation work?
To give you a clearer picture of how process automation works, let’s look at an example project of Linky’s own: the Monitor do Mercado (Market Monitor) website. For those unfamiliar with it, the Monitor displays news, data and important information about Brazil’s major companies, with the goal of increasing transparency in the private sector and helping investors make choices in the capital markets.
In October 2017, Linky developed an automated robot-based system for the site that is still in use today. These robots monitor pages and PDFs with official news from multiple sources related to Bovespa-listed companies, transform those texts, highlight keywords and the metadata of the related companies, and publish the news on the Monitor’s website. This first stage attracted new partners, and with the investment raised, the possibility of a new phase emerged.
In the second phase, Linky developed robots that import data from official sources, perform calculations based on analysts’ figures, and make the information available on the site for investors. A stock comparison tool was also created — an important differentiator for this second phase.
As we can see, process automation on Monitor do Mercado allows the project to work with a gigantic amount of data, identifying new information within moments — something impossible for ordinary communications teams. The technology made it possible to create new services, such as the company comparison tool and the paid services offered by the project.
