With budgets tighter than ever, and technology purchases limited to only the most critical systems and solutions, businesses and IT organizations are constantly searching for solutions that not only improve efficiency and productivity, but also make their current technology investments work harder and smarter.

The ever-changing U.S. business market, coupled with an ongoing recession, has forced many companies to find alternative ways of doing more with less, without detracting from the value of their services. That’s where business process automation (BPA) comes in, a sure-fire strategy used by businesses to automate processes to streamline operations and contain costs.

A recent survey by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) illustrated the proven ability of capture-driven BPA for delivering a measurable return on investment. Entitled, “Capturing Data to Multiple Business Processes: What’s Holding You Back?”, the report highlights the unparalleled productivity benefits and cost savings derived from business process automation. According to the report, 62 percent of the companies surveyed stated projects using BPA met or exceeded their expected return on investment through productivity improvements.

 “Automated capture at the front of any business process is likely to produce cleaner data, resulting in higher quality information, less exception handling, and better process management,” said Doug Miles, director, Market Intelligence, AIIM, in a statement. “The more integral the process is to your business, the greater the ROI capture driven processes will deliver to the enterprise.”

One company offering a robust BPA package, contact center software provider Zeacom (News - Alert) boasts an impressive track record for delivering cost-effective technology to help businesses maximize performance, increase customer satisfaction and differentiate themselves from the competition. And, Zeacom’s BPA offerings are no different, as they make it possible for any organization to decrease costs and eliminate common communication breakdowns by automating recurring and predictable business processes.

With hundreds of BPA projects implemented throughout the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, Zeacom aims to help customers achieve a high ROI, while simultaneously reducing operational expenses, through best practices in customer service automation, enhanced routing, interaction automation and activity automation.

By taking a “middle-of-the-road” approach to running efficient businesses, without overlooking the value of workers, BPA is a proven method for uncovering and understanding a business’ intricacies in order the cut the fat out of processes, and to optimize existing resources, both technological and human. 

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell