How Workflow Automation Leads to Employee Happiness

The world has increasingly moved to online interactions. From social clubs to business deals, the internet facilitates an astounding amount of our lives, both personal and professional. And this trend has only picked up steam as more and more team members have transitioned to remote positions.

Despite the convenience and ease of instant connectivity and the vast potential it provides, there are certain challenges that accompany this shift from an in-person workforce to one that works remotely with apps. Because these obstacles are relatively new, addressing and overcoming them has been a task in and of itself.

Process automation shows tremendous promise in reducing the impact of these pitfalls, especially in regard to accounts payable teams. To fully understand how automation improves employee engagement and happiness, we first have to take a look at the specific issues and manual tasks these remote workers are facing.

Common Problems Remote Workers Face

Instantly sharing and editing documents is a game-changer. It elevates teamwork to heights previously only dreamed of and creates opportunities for businesses to involve talented individuals in a single project, regardless of their geographic location.

However, issues are common when AP teams transition from paper-based processes and physical document hand-offs to computers, spreadsheets, and the cloud. And as the team of remote workers grows larger, the potential for problems only increases.

Individuals can make critical mistakes as they key data manually. Visibility into real-time invoice processing and approvals is capped, as documents are emailed back and forth or shared in small groups. The chance of redundancy is exponentially high, as well, due to multiple workers viewing and editing the same document.

There is also the constant possibility of a security breach. Heightened security concerns come with the territory, especially as workers share the same document via insecure channels over and over again. When sensitive financial information such as credit card numbers or pins are involved, the potential risks are even more concerning.

All of these hurdles lead to frustration and unhappiness that can quickly demoralize a team of remote workers. As such, addressing them is key to unlocking the full potential of digital work and keeping your employees happy.

How Automation Addresses Common Concerns

The struggles associated with remote work and document sharing may incline you to believe that returning to the office is the superior option. However, the innovation of automation addresses all of the issues above and more, making remote teams the preferable option.

Faster Business Processes

Let’s face it, traditional methods of invoice processing can take an eternity. From manual data entry to individual review and approval, the steps are tedious and time-consuming. Slow workflow process can create a backlog of accounts payable, lead to unnecessary fees, and even impact your company’s reputation.

Automation handles many of the tedious, time-consuming aspects of invoice processing, helping your business stay on top of things and deliver more timely payments.

Accuracy Automation

The importance of accuracy on payment documents is essential. While the process of verifying the information on said documents is simple, it is labor-intensive and creates the potential for human error. Should the latter occur, the consequences can snowball and eat into your business’ valuable resources and time.

Automation solutions such as PairSoft’s intuitive OCR remove the burden of information verification from workers by automatically comparing data from multiple documents. This frees workers to allocate their skills and time elsewhere while also ensuring that payments are accurate and complete.

Encryption

Sending documents to various remote workers opens the door to potential security problems, especially when sensitive information is involved. Cybercrime is a very real issue that can compromise client data and destroy your company’s reputation.

Protecting this data is vital, and automation is one of the best ways to ensure only the right eyes ever see private information. Services like PairSoft feature automatic document encryption, data annotation, and redaction during each phase of a document’s life, including storage and transmission, effectively preventing any security breaches.

Data Capture

Manually entering payment details into various documents is time-consuming and ripe with the possibility of error. Unfortunately, this is the method most often employed by businesses, and it does not translate well to a modern world that is embracing remote work.

Automation can capture data via a variety of hardware and software, automatically filling the appropriate forms with the correct information. This not only mitigates the possibility of human error, but also saves substantial time.

Time Management

Traditional methods of sharing information — mailing, faxing, emailing, and so on — add significant time bottlenecks and expense to a project. Even simple tasks, such as collecting necessary signatures, can become time-consuming endeavors.

Document sharing solves these issues but creates new concerns. For example, sharing documents among several remote workers often leads to redundancy. Through automation, however, these problems can be addressed and all but eliminated.

By tracking changes and automatically filtering through information, automation identifies redundancy and makes it easy to both avoid and correct.

The accounts payable automation benefits are numerous and diverse. It is no secret that modern problems, especially those related to remote work, require modern solutions. Automation addresses the obstacles associated with remote teams and provides solutions for overcoming them.

With workflow automation software that delivers cutting-edge accounts payable tools to those transitioning to remote positions, life outside of the office is more productive, engaging, and enjoyable than life at the office. When the happiness of your remote team is in question and hurdles are popping up left and right, automation is transforming the way we work, especially when it comes to document sharing — get a demo for your team today.