Process automation software streamlines, optimizes, and automates various tasks, workflows, and processes within an organization. By implementing process automation, teams can improve productivity, reduce human error, and maintain consistent quality throughout their operations. This, in turn, helps to improve productivity and profitability, and enables organizations to stay competitive and agile.
Process automation can also help organizations to deliver improved customer experiences by ensuring customers receive personalized, timely communications, and that requests are addressed swiftly and accurately. To achieve this, process automation software manages data flow, assigns tasks, and triggers notifications or actions in connected applications, leveraging technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to deliver more efficient and intelligent workflows.
The process automation market has grown significantly in recent years, with software providers offering various levels of functionality and customization to cater to different business needs. In this article, we’ll explore the best process automation solutions designed to help you streamline your business operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences. We’ll highlight the key use cases and features of each solution, including workflow management, process monitoring and reporting, customizable templates, compliance support, and integrations.
Appian is a software company that specializes in business process automation, with its AI Process Platform designed to manage complex processes from start to finish. Appian aims to improve workflow efficiency, consolidate data, and optimize operations, ultimately promoting business growth and enriched customer experiences.
Appian’s platform combines process orchestration, robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and API integration in a single, all-in-one solution. By orchestrating workflows, users can seamlessly unite people, business rules, bots, and AI into a single end-to-end process.
The platform’s RPA capabilities allow for low-code bot building, automating tasks across any system and reducing manual work. Using the Appian AI Skill Designer, users can easily create custom AI models for content processing. Additionally, Appian offers low-code design tools and numerous prebuilt connectors for simple API integration with various systems.
BP Logix Process Director is a business process automation platform that enables the creation of business applications to automate and improve critical processes without requiring coding knowledge. IT teams can utilize the platform to speed up development, eliminate backlogs, and leverage legacy investments, while business users can design applications customized for their specific departmental needs.
Process Director simplifies intricate workflows and complex task sequencing, allowing for more transparent and efficient processes. It also offers a wide array of governance, risk, and compliance features such as robust audit tracking and electronic signatures. These help businesses across various industries, including pharma and finance, adhere to industry regulations and reduce the risk of compliance violations.
The platform’s low-code construction makes it cost-effective, efficient, and easy to use. Users can employ industry-specific templates, training sessions, and community resources to get started and continuously learn. Finally, Process Director offers seamless integration with existing business applications and data sources, including pre-built connectors for database applications, Sharepoint, document imaging software, web services, email servers, and REST APIs.
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation is a comprehensive solution designed to streamline and automate business processes. Built for hybrid cloud environments, it allows teams to improve efficiency, decrease operational costs, and remain competitive by transforming fragmented workflows into cohesive and agile systems.
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation covers multiple aspects of business automation, including services to efficiently manage and deploy enterprise content across various cloud-based applications, and document processing to convert unstructured content from both paper and digital sources into valuable data. The workflow component automates case and process workflows, reducing time-consuming tasks, while the combination of robotic process automation (RPA) and digital labor enables the automation of business and IT processes with AI-driven insights. Additionally, process mining technology provides data-driven insights to streamline decision-making, identify inefficiencies, and improve processes, and decision management empowers businesses to create and manage rules independently from applications and processes.
Overall, IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation is a modular and flexible solution that can be deployed across any cloud, greatly improving an organization’s ability to manage and automate various work processes efficiently to drive accelerated business growth.
Kissflow is a leading process automation platform designed to streamline business processes. The platform offers user-friendly custom public forms with 20 field types, advanced formulas, and drag-and-drop layouts for an enhanced user experience. Kissflow allows users to hide fields, adjust appearance, preview workflows, run test data, and add admins, making it an adaptable and efficient tool.
Kissflow is designed for users with minimal coding experience, allowing all users to manage processes effortlessly within the highly accessible platform. Kissflow provides flexible configuration options, enabling users to add steps, assign tasks, set deadlines, establish conditions, and even create parallel workflow branches. It also offers real-time analytics, with custom metrics that keep users informed about the state of each process. Kissflow is built with scalability in mind, easily handling increased users, data volume, and complexity as your business grows.
The platform supports integration with various APIs and tools like Zapier to streamline workflows and enhance efficiency. Overall, Kissflow is a comprehensive and versatile process automation platform.
Laserfiche Process Automation modernizes business processes by enabling users to create automated workflows without the need for programming knowledge. This user-friendly solution aims to accelerate digital transformation within organizations by enhancing efficiency and reducing repetitive tasks.
Laserfiche’s no-code interface and robotic process automation tools allow for the simplification of high-volume tasks while maintaining data integrity and connecting legacy systems. The software also helps improve approval processes by automatically routing documents to relevant stakeholders and facilitating quick decision-making.
Laserfiche Process Automation offers lots of out-of-the-box functionality, starting with pre-built templates that users can leverage to speed up the return on investment and streamline workflow creation. It also provides pre-built and customizable analytics reports, granting users valuable insights to identify areas for improvement and make informed strategic decisions. With Laserfiche Process Automation, organizations can benefit from smarter workflows and significantly enhanced efficiency.
Microsoft Power Automate streamlines repetitive tasks and business processes, ultimately aiming to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This solution enables users to build automated processes through low-code drag-and-drop tools, offering access to hundreds of pre-built connectors, thousands of templates, and AI assistance, making it easy to automate tasks.
Using Power Automate Process Mining, users can record and visualize end-to-end processes, with guided recommendations for creating flows and taking the guesswork out of what to automate. The solution incorporates AI Builder and GPT to supercharge workflows, allowing for the generation, summarization, and answering of text within flows, resulting in advanced low-code AI scenarios.
Microsoft Power Automate is a versatile solution accessible across desktop, web, and mobile devices, through Microsoft’s Power Automate apps. This broad availability allows users to take advantage of automation capabilities anywhere and anytime, allowing for improved efficiency and productivity.
Nintex Process Platform is a comprehensive workflow management solution that focuses on removing data silos, providing automation at scale, and streamlining both simple and complex processes. It allows users to visually create workflows that can accommodate structured and unstructured processes, regardless of their complexity.
Nintex K2 Cloud offers advanced features including serial or parallel flows, rework, looping, and integration with line-of-business systems. The platform enables users to build intuitive digital form experiences using K2 Software’s designer to connect SmartForms to workflows and necessary data. Forms can be reused across applications, incorporate business rules, and integrated with voice, chatbots, and social channels. Nintex ensures easy data connection to apps through its patented SmartObject framework, allowing connections to virtually any system with the help of pre-built and customizable connectors.
The Nintex Process Platform offers built-in reporting for improved visibility, helping users monitor and enhance their applications with real-time process insights and performance metrics. It provides both default and customizable reports and dashboards, while also allowing integration with third-party analytics tools such as PowerBI and Tableau.
Pipefy is a trusted business process automation (BPA) solution that increases efficiency and streamlines workflows. Through its secure, user-friendly, visual interface, teams can build, automate, and optimize any process or workflow. Pipefy’s BPA software provides process visualization, orchestration, and integration capabilities, allowing teams to create any workflow they can envision.
Users can quickly create custom workflows quickly using the platform’s AI-powered technology. Real-time data insights facilitate informed decisions, while standardizing processes to improve compliance and security. Pipefy also enables seamless collaboration through process orchestration and supports integration with existing tools and systems. The no-code platform creates actionable insights from information, allowing leaders to make data-driven decisions and monitor KPIs effectively.
Pipefy reduces process friction by automating manual work and ensuring seamless data flow and integrations. The platform offers in-built security controls, including single sign-on (SSO), access controls, and two-factor authentication. Overall, Pipefy supports digital transformation for businesses by providing an intuitive, easy-to-use interface for building and modifying processes in real-time.
Everything You Need To Know About Process Automation Software (FAQs)
What Is Process Automation Software?
Process automation software automates manual, repetitive tasks and functions to free up employee time to work on more critical tasks. It helps organizations reach their goals more efficiently by streamlining both simple and complex processes, centralizing information so it’s more easily accessible across departments, and minimizing labor costs. It can also help minimize errors and data loss by reducing—if not eliminating entirely—the factor of human error.
For these reas, businesses are increasingly leveraging process automation software as a means of boosting their productivity—and therefore their competitiveness and profitability.
How Does Process Automation Software Work?
Process automation tools break down business processes into smaller tasks, then automate those tasks. Once the tasks are automated, the software integrates them into a workflow that orchestrates the completion of the whole business process.
For example, an accounting department may want to automate their purchase order process, which would involve breaking that process down into its various components, then automating them. In this instance, the request being submitted, the request being examined and approved, the creation of the purchase order, and the sending of the purchase order to the inventory team and supplier.
The best process automation tools also offer analytics and recommendations around how business processes are, so that organizations can identify which areas are working and which areas are ineffective, and improve them further.
When Do You Need Process Automation Software?
Process automation can’t be applied to all process in a business—it’s best suited to repetitive tasks that:
- Have to be completed in a specific order and in a specific way due to their impact on other tasks or systems
- Require lots of people working at different stages to execute
- Are of a high volume
- Are time-sensitive and/or prone to delays
- Need to be audited for compliance
Process automation tools ensure that the process is carried out correctly every single time, minimizing error and maximizing efficiency. While automation can be applied to most any process that fits the above criteria, there are some areas in an organization where it tends to be used the most. These include:
- Employee recruitment: Process automation tools can streamline recruitment tasks such as uploading résumés and references, and processing assessments, rejections, and follow-ups.
- Employee Onboarding: It can also be used to simplify onboarding tasks, such as assigning mentors, delivering training, and setting up induction sessions. By streamlining these processes, organizations can improve their employees’ initial impressions of the company and boost engagement.
- Payroll and invoicing. Automation can streamline regular payroll processes and the payment of contractors and other third-party vendors, including processes such as purchase order requests.
- Workforce scheduling. Process automation tools can synchronize time off requests and planned employee trips across different teams and departments, ensuring that absences are covered.
- Compliance and auditing. By creating a log of everything involved in each process—including people and data—process automation tools create a full audit trail that makes it easier to prove compliance with regulatory requirements. It also enables managers to monitor how each process is coming along in real time, so they can effectively address any bottlenecks.
- Customer experience. Process automation tools can help ensure that your customers receive regular and personalized communication and updates from you, as well as move them quickly and accurately through process workflows by reducing human error. Some tools also enable you to incorporate NLP technologies such as chatbots to help you help your customers even more quickly.
What Features Should You Look For In Process Automation Software?
There are a few important features that you should look out for when comparing process automation tools:
- Workflow management: Streamline tasks to make them more efficient.
- Process scheduling: Automated scheduling of processes and the tasks that make up processes, based on admin-configured rules.
- Customizable workflow templates: Templates that can be adapted to meet your specific business needs.
- Process monitoring and reporting: Tracks the progress of each process and provides you with real-time insights into what stage they’re at, and how effectively they’re being carries out.
- Error handling: Capabilities that identify and resolve any issues or bottlenecks within your processes to ensure they keep running smoothly.
- Version controls: Track any changes made to your processes, for improved consistency and to help ensure compliance.
- Alerting: Notifications to key stakeholders to keep them informed of any issues or important progress updates.
- Integration: Enables easier data syncing and increased visibility.
- Role-based access and permissions: Controls to ensure that only authorized users can create, view, or edit workflows—including task delegation—based on their role within the organization.
