Innovation in Back Office Processes

Back office functions are often underestimated. These functions are in the background and invisible to customers, which creates the false impression that these tasks are not of primary importance. In reality, the picture is somewhat different: the back office is the central apparatus of the company, which controls and processes the background tasks of several departments, as well as ensures the smooth operation of front office employees. The operations performed by back office employees can be categorized by company departments, such as inventory management, human resources, finance and account management, database management, and coordination of remote teams.

With the changing time, back office work has evolved and new methods have been found for efficient back office work such as back office automation which is an urgent need. As we know that social and innovative trends are changing the business scenario and new entrants are making the task even more challenging, so it is imperative for companies to learn methods to reduce the turnaround time and increase the level of administration to keep up with the pace of the race in the rapidly evolving market. If this seems like a tough task, you can outsource your company's Back-Office work, as there are many companies that provide Back-Office outsourcing services. However, even if you outsource it, you should be familiar with the various operations and innovations in the Back End sector.

We have previously written about the benefits and pitfalls of back office outsourcing - you can read that article here.

Innovations and revolutions in back office operations

Traditionally, employees used to do all the back-office work manually, which resulted in increased operational costs and time, causing serious concerns. However, later artificial intelligence based tools like RPA (Robotics Process Automation) solved this problem in the form of Back-Office Automation which has not only revolutionized the back-office practices but has also shown significant progress in this area. 

Back-office process automation is not about replacing humans with bots, rather it is simply the interaction of appropriate software with back-office personnel to improve operational efficiency, company productivity, customer experience, and recurring revenue. The Future Workforce Survey - Banking: Realizing the Full Value of AI report states that:

"Collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence will significantly increase the productivity of business processes." There are several tools that promote back office automation and let's discuss the aspects of the back office where they can be implemented:

Inventory Management:

Back-office employees are required to track purchases and based on inventory movement data, make the appropriate decision on whether to shelve or remove an item. Robots now do this for you, generating an alert if the number of units in stock falls below a minimum limit, according to which you can restock or take other necessary action. Using AI tools and bots reducing time spent on these tasks and allows you always know up-to-date information, such as stock balances. Such tools and programs have become so firmly embedded in our daily lives that it is now hard to imagine any business that does not use them. For example, here are a few tools that will help with this task:

• Oracle E-business Suite

• Inflow Inventory

• AdvancePro

• Inventory Katana 

Strategic management:

AI tools such as Chat GPT can help you with strategic planning. You can use it to automate the collection of data, for example about competitors. You can evaluate competitors' product data, positioning, reviews, and more. The data collected by a chatbot can serve as a good starting point for deeper research.

Finance and Accounting:

The company's finance and accounting department handles invoicing, financial reports, payroll accounting and cash flow in the company. Automating finance and accounting prevents errors, the potential for fraud, and saves time. Using AI tools in finance, you can easily streamline and automate your declarations, and for optimizing your company's expenses and tax burden, you can turn to experts for advice. There are tools that can help you which this tasks:

• SAP Business One

• Suplari 

Sales management:

A customer is one of a company's most valuable assets.  To preserve this treasure, companies choose the best methods and tools to meet customer expectations and increase profits. Therefore, you can use the CRM software available in the market to grease the wheels or outsource this task to companies that handle it. This eliminates the risk of human error from the process and frees up much more time for more important tasks. For example, better communication with customers. Here are some of the most popular CRMs that are constantly updating and incorporating the latest technologies into their solutions:

• Pipedrive

• Salesforce

• Bitrix24

Customer support:

There are many tools that allow you to automate customer support at the moment. For example, chat bots on the website, in messengers, automated email funnels - all touchpoints that allow you to solve user issues at every stage of their journey in your product. Chatbots and AI tools will help you gather all the feedback from your users in one place, making it much easier to analyze. Then you can pass this information on to your specialists or an outsourcing agency that deals with customer support. Some of the best automation tools are:

• AgileCRM

• Zendesk

• Hubspot

Database management and record keeping:

Database management is a very important task for a company and it becomes even more important when the data comes from multiple sources. Therefore, to prevent data loss and redundancy, maintain confidentiality as well as ensure its availability, automation tools come to the rescue, which not only help the company but also improve its efficiency. Listing here some of the top-rated tools :

• Database Performance Analyser

• Manage Engine Application Manager

• SQL Server

Remote teamwork:

Remote team working has become not only a necessity but also a doorway to new opportunities. Therefore, proper management of a remote team is very important to ensure communication and coordination with the team to improve efficiency and effectiveness. If you are thinking about remote team and work management or are already in the process and looking for a management solution, you can find the right company on ReStaffy. And there is some popular solutions for management remote teamwork:

• GitHub

• Slack

• Trello.

With the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, RPA tools are evolving and attracting a lot of attention. There are multitasking RPA tools, that is, those that perform more than one of the above operations and even more. The cherry on the cake is that this software is based on artificial intelligence and hence does not restrict specific strata of users, whether technical or non-technical, making it even more convenient and easy to use. 

Conclusion

Technology allows you to automate complex and routine processes, but is not yet able to take into account specific details that only a human can see. Therefore, even if you close almost all processes with bots, you still need a specialist who understands this area.

Hiring an in-house specialist or looking for a company to outsource to is an important decision that requires careful and thorough preparation. If you are thinking about it, you may want to read our article on "Back office outsourcing vs inhouse: which is more cost effective?".

Whatever you choose, it's important to understand what will really improve the performance of your business and what is a short-term trend that will bring more costs than benefits to the business.

Well, if you decide to try back office outsourcing, you can always find the right company on ReStaffy.