I have an extensive background in automating internal, business processes in single as well as cross-functional workflows. Any repetitive business process is a candidate for system automation. The more monotonous, repetitive and time-consuming a process becomes the greater the need to change.
Well-designed processes rarely suffer these problems, it’s been my experience that a new requirement to an existing process, and those requirements do not fit well in the existing workflow. It’s not unusual to see these changes spread across multiple departments, which exacerbate the potential for error and lost productivity; not just to the new requirements but to existing processes as well.
Microsoft Access was the application used to develop the most complex tools, with significant tie-ins to Excel, Outlook and Word. There were also links to SQL Server (7, 2000 and 2005), primarily for the storage capacity, Visio for process mapping. The VBA used throughout the Office products allows for a bit of flexibility in managing the business processes as well as managing the automation itself.
Automated updating of department reporting tools is generally a need to gain immediate benefits. The automation has included local smart systems used by processors, drill downs used by technicians, performance trends used by management and included software robots running daily updates to account status, producing exception reports and performance trends.
Exception reports for staff to work from each day, legal time-sensitive and state-required documents, customer updates, letter generation, trend analysis, employee metrics, department KPI’s, financial reporting were typical daily production.