The downside is that collaboration is harder to foster and maintain. But at the heart of many organisations, a quiet but effective collaboration tool is in already place: business process management.

While good processes reduce cost and waste, process management’s additional ability to deliver greater compliance means teams can use it to improve how they work as they collaborate towards shared goals. Remote teams can be sure they are accessing the same documents, while updated information is available to everyone as soon as it is uploaded.

Businesses utilising their process management platform to collaborate will see three key benefits:

Better communication: No-one is better suited to examining business processes than the subject matter experts in your teams. Operating at the coal face and working on the processes every day, they can rapidly identify where breakdowns occur. An easily-accessible process management platform gives teams the power to share process observations through comments, suggestions and feedback. Linking this back to particular processes captures the conversation for all stakeholders.

Teams will join the conversation: Process management software can alert responsible stakeholders when a process is changed and new information is available. It will also capture suggestions from teams. Likewise, process reviews can be shared and if changes are needed, the platform manages approvals robustly, while ensuring everybody is aware and has had the chance to comment.

A single truth: Hybrid working not only potentially isolates workers, it can isolate information. As systems rapidly evolve and one person’s documentation becomes outdated, all sorts of issues can occur. Process management platforms provide a centralised repository for important forms, templates, protocols and compliance requirements.

Collaborating on automating daily tasks

Businesses also face new collaboration opportunities with the rise of low-code and no-code solutions. Now, non-developers and non-IT specialists can drive digital transformation. This democratisation of technology means wider teams can collaborate on process improvements, without having to depend on the IT department. This makes a huge impact on automating processes because teams know first-hand which processes work well and which need improvement.

Successful teams now collaborate to map processes and then work out where to automate manual tasks using robotic process automation (RPA). Process management platforms structure the ways in which RPA bots can function, creating tangible use cases where RPA can make the biggest impact. It can also document what the bots are designed to do.

Although many businesses implement the necessary RPA steps, they still end up struggling with managing the bots and processes. This is why teams appreciate the governance that business process management enables with RPA, along with clearly outlined responsibilities.

With 90% of large organisations expected to adopt RPA according to Gartner, it’s important for businesses to understand why it is worth investing in today, even when deploying across dispersed teams.

Automating with RPA improves speed, quality and productivity. Its bots can be trained to do repetitive tasks faster and more accurately than people. There are also big data benefits to be gained given many businesses are generating more data than they can process. As a result they are potentially missing insight – and opportunities – on their operations and their customers. RPA can parse through large datasets, both structured and unstructured, meaning businesses can get a better sense of the data they are collecting.

People benefits

RPA delivers important people benefits as well. It soaks up tedious and repetitive work, freeing up teams to focus on more valuable tasks such as collaborating more on work that needs subject matter expertise. It also means they can upskill to build experience on managing automation and AI implementations across business processes.

Guided or attended RPA can also help contact centre agents get trained on systems quickly. This may include utilising RPA bots on users’ desktops, guiding them on the next course of action in real time. Ultimately, customers benefit through a better experience.

Despite the disruption of the last few years, businesses that use process management to foster collaboration – while speeding up and reducing cost by implementing RPA intelligently – will be more agile and nimble than competitors. Given the overall business impact, automating processes is no longer the sole remit of the IT department. Analysts believe almost half of people investing in RPA will come from outside IT, including from the C-suite directly, making process optimisation a team sport.