Steadily automation is becoming a priority for the majority of organizations. When we talk about automation- the two most common types we often hear about are Personal automation and Business Workflow Automation. By definition, Personal Automation focuses on automation at the individual level. Contrary to this, Workflow Automation- spans an organization’s processes across different departments. 

Business Workflow Automation

A workflow is defined as a sequence of activities comprising data entry, processing, manual work, and other processes– all aimed towards attaining a predefined business objective. As such, business workflow automation is a process of integrating software systems for arranging, tracking, controlling, monitoring, and coordinating between different business processes. Here business processes in a workflow indicate human resources, lead management, accounting and finances, sales and marketing, etc. These are typically recurring processes that are executed continuously in an organization.  

By its nature, workflow automation aims to streamline business processes on a fundamental level. In traditional setups, these processes are disconnected, and achieving their integration through the traditional approach may be cost-intensive. This is where workflow automation steps in to fill the gap. When you apply workflow automation, the total steps involved in the process reduce considerably. Alongside, the capacity to perform the same task with the same number of people grows incredibly. This frees up employees from repetitive, complex work so that they can concentrate on people-centric work with more detailed attention. As human involvement is reduced, chances of error become minimal or zero. Also, it enhances a business’s resiliency to face changing times, thereby, minimizing risk to a greater extent. 

Features of Business Workflow Automation

• The scope extends to workflows that span across teams and systems
• Scales up to hundreds and thousands of individuals
• Automation implementation location- Enterprise Application Stack 
• Benefits: Increased compliance, efficiency, and capacity. Resource optimization, enhanced customer and employee satisfaction

Personal Task Automation

Personal Automation implies allocating a robot for each individual in an enterprise. It aims to boost employee’s potential for a task by augmenting their work through a robot to take up their repetitive routine work. Organizations can adopt personal automation by assigning an automated system to each employee or providing them with the freedom to create their automation solution to support their work. 

Personal Automation typically helps employees in the following segments: research, planning, data management, driving actions, and promoting personal productivity. For an instance, in an insurance company, a relationship manager can use personal automation to conciliate data in a CRM system. Likewise, an underwriter can use personal automation for information extraction from third-party systems for risk assessment. 

Thus, with robots by side, employees can work faster with efficiency. By delegating complex tasks to robots, they can support their daily operations for error reduction and productivity boost. 

However, adopting personal automation requires top-level training, governance, and management. As it is exposed to greater risk, it needs to be incepted along with proper governance mechanisms and tools. 

Features of Personal Task Automation

• The scope extends to individual workflow
• Has unlimited scale – can go up to millions
• Automation implementation location – User desktop or browser
• Contributes to increasing personal productivity 
• Creates better learning opportunities for the employees 
• Enhanced employee and customer satisfaction