A New Way to Maximize Efficiency—Business Process Automation
James Walker
Chief Technology Officer
For nonprofits, it’s been a challenging few years, but we don’t have to tell you that. Whether caused by reductions in corporate and government funding, increasing competition for resources and contributions, evolving donor expectations, or just the COVID-19 disruptions to fundraising efforts (service delivery, staffing, and volunteer engagement to name a few), nonprofits have been through the wringer.
At times like these, maximizing efficiency is critical for organizations to reduce expenses, keep staff morale high, and fulfill their missions effectively. For years, at JCA and across the industry, we’ve looked towards system integrations to maximize efficiency. This integration of data and information can help organizations become more data-driven and focused on key performance metrics (KPIs).
However, integrations have traditionally been fraught with challenges that keep us from reaping their benefits. Difficult and expensive to build (and maintain), they are taxing to change when participating applications or organizational business practices evolve. This has led to a significant shortage of available “off the shelf” system integrations. In nonprofits, where the number of business applications used daily is higher than ever, manual and repetitive processes are increasingly required to perform the everyday business workflows. This can be detrimental when basic administrative tasks consume valuable time and resources. Often monotonous, these tasks disrupt critical advancements needed to move your organization forward (not to mention the toll it can take on staff).
What if there was a better way? A way to off-load these processes so you can alleviate the hassle for yourself, your employees, and your peers to focus on the inspiring work you were hired to do. To optimize operations, reduce costs, and focus on their impactful work, many nonprofits are turning to Business Process Automation (BPA).
A new way to maximize efficiency—Business Process Automation (BPA)
BPA involves the use of technology to automate repetitive tasks and workflows within a business. By utilizing the advances in Application Programming Interface (API) development and the increased availability of Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS) tools, organizations can save time, reduce costs, and improve overall productivity, freeing up teams to focus on items that have a greater impact and drive mission forward.
Now it is possible, for example, to connect your financial system to your CRM and build a workflow so you receive a DM when a batch has posted or when a large donation has cleared.
With our BPA service, JCA can create workflows that interact with multiple business applications. By leveraging prebuilt components, JCA can easily build integrations between two systems and help reduce the complexity. BPA works very similarly to Lego bricks, letting you build powerful, cross-system, automated workflows quickly and efficiently without great development or maintenance cost.
For example, a connector built for a CRM can be used to integrate to an online survey system, as well as to a completely different business system (such as a financial system). Both integrations utilize the same connector, reducing the amount of development work needed for each automation.
What processes can you automate with BPA?
By automating workflows, organizations let the applications do repetitive, often error-prone work, taking care of all sorts of time-consuming tasks. For example, using workflows, BPA can automatically:
- Generate and send gift certificate PDFs
- Send real-time notifications of gifts that meet specific criteria
- Remind team members to release performance holds at certain thresholds
- Transfer ancillary purchases, such as parking or concessions, to external systems
- Add comp ticket requests as an unseated ticket order
- Update customer service issues logged from a separate call center system
As you can see, BPA can help you improve your efficiency, save you money, and improve customer service. Most importantly, BPA can improve your team’s overall well-being.
Contact Us to Discuss What’s Possible
Are your internal workflows holding you back? There may be a better way. Free up valuable time and resources with automations that eliminate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as paperwork, data entry, and administrative processes. Talk to JCA today about how we can help you automate your business processes and allow you to focus on your mission.
If you’re planning to attend TLCC this year, contact us to schedule a time to meet or for a demo.