Alongside, Artificial Intelligence, process automation will be the biggest enabler of productivity-led growth for small and mid-sized businesses in the next five years. A report, co-authored by Tony Blair and William Hague and released in February this year, calls for A New National Purpose with innovation powering Britain’s future. The message is clear, be on board or be left behind. To help company directors of SMEs get on board, we’ve launched a series of events providing practical examples of process automation at work.
Microsoft’s range of low- and no-code tools are designed to empower businesses to make radical improvement at relatively low cost. Business process automation, for example, allows you to say Goodbye to manual, time-consuming processes, replacing them instead with digital workflows and electronic documentation. Process automation can radically improve the daily experiences of your staff, suppliers and customers.
These tools, part of the Microsoft Power Platform which includes Power Automate and Power Apps, are intended to be “citizen-led”. This means the door is wide open for employees to feel empowered to improve their working environments with a little bit of learning, at very little cost.
Co-authors of our latest book, Process Automation for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses, Business Improvement Consultant Rachel Green and our CEO Jim Simpson, have been leading our schedule of events. Last month saw the launch of our first Directors Briefing session on the topic at the London School of Economics, and we are getting some great feedback.
“The Directors Briefing allows you to take time to think ahead — not our immediate needs but what we might need in the future — to move our business forward. We are really thinking much more about what we want to do with regards automating processes and figuring out which of our internal processes we could start with.”
Shelley Hoppe, Director. SBC
“The Directors Briefing made me really think about tech as an enabler for the business and the greater benefits we can achieve if we make best use of it. I came back and did an audit of how we work. IT and business improvement are now on our main agenda. Interacting with the presenters and other company directors in a relaxed environment is a great way to take it all in.”
Jane O’Gorman, Director. Ten2Two.
Due to demand, we have extended the Directors Briefing events to new venues including Heathrow, with further dates added online. You can find out more here.
In November 2022, we welcomed Rachel Bird to our team to provide advice and support to all of our clients who want to explore these technologies and need a little help to get started. Rachel is also host of our webinar on Getting Started with Process Automation which you can catch here.
If you’d like to find out more, please get in touch with [email protected]
