Are you ready to start thinking about digital transformation?
We know, everyone’s talking about digital transformation. What is it, exactly? Digital transformation is simply the process of adopting and implementing digital technology. We aren’t talking, though, about having a website or investing in e-commerce. We’re talking about using emerging technology – things like process automation, AI, and machine learning – to truly transform your business by making it more efficient.
Coach Bot is a great place to start.
What is Coach Bot? It’s a way to organize your processes or SOPs or workflows, whatever you happen to call them – in Coach Bot, they’re called plays! After the organization, Coach Bot makes sure the work actually gets done as expected, and finally optimizes & automates them using AI and process-automation software. Yes, Coach Bot does all that.
Take a simple invoice processing SOP. Our imaginary process for Company X involves the following steps:
- Company X receives a supplier invoice by email.
- The controller verifies the following about the invoice:
- It is indeed for the correct client
- The PO number is included
- It includes the name and details of the supplier
- It includes tax ID numbers of both the client and the supplier
- There’s a description of the goods/services provided
- It includes info about how to remit payment
- The controller enters the information into QuickBooks
- Approval for payment is obtained from the procurement manager
- Finally, the controller pays the invoice.
Coach Bot would use 3 steps to optimize this SOP:
First, you enter the SOP into our workflow software,
To ease people into the idea of a bot managing a process for your team, we start by mapping out the current process in Coach Bot. We define the handoffs between people, the data needed for each step, and a detailed description of what needs to be done during each step. Any time you “run the play,” here’s what will happen behind the scenes: Coach Bot will notify the next person in the process that they need to execute a step in the SOP and will give them the instructions on how to do that specifically!
- The controller kicks off the the Invoice Processing play.
- The controller gets an email asking them to verify the invoice.
- The controller then gets an email asking them to enter the info into QuickBooks.
- Then the procurement manager gets an email asking for approval.
- Then the controller gets notified that they can pay the invoice.
That’s Coach Bot at it’s most basic level. But the digital transformation happens from there.
Second, you automate where possible.
Coach Bot integrates with 100s of software applications, including QuickBooks. So you ask Coach to start automatically entering the invoice info into QuickBooks. Step 3 becomes an automated step.
RoboSource can write a custom automation using ChatGPT that would verify the information from the invoice. Step 2 now becomes an automated step.
Maybe we don’t want the controller to have to manually kick off this play each time in the software. So we ask Coach Bot to automatically kick off the process when invoices are sent to a specific email inbox. And now we’ve automated step 1.
We may have a solid reason for having the procurement manager manually approve the invoice, so we keep that step as an emailed reminder from Coach Bot. And we may not want the invoice to be paid automatically, since we want to control the timing of the payment, so for now, we keep step 5 manual as well. But we know that if we choose to give up that control at some point, we could easily automate step 5.
Finally, you use Coach Bot’s data to optimize.
Once Coach has had time to gather data on a play (say, if it’s been run at least 25 times), then he’ll give you further suggestions for optimization. For example, maybe he notices that every time he asks the procurement manager for approval of an invoice, it takes three email reminders and an average of two weeks before that step gets completed. Coach might recommend that we optimize this play by rotating between 3 different roles in the company to approve invoices, because the procurement officer is often busy.
Company X achieves digital transformation
Company X took the first easy step into digital transformation by getting the SOP into a Coach Bot play for automated enforcement. But then, as the company had time and desire, they automated different pieces of the SOP to increase efficiency and give key team members back their time.
Company X does the same thing with the next SOP, and the next. Soon the company is well on its way toward digital transformation. Any new SOP that springs up from strategic changes first gets built in Coach Bot. Digital transformation is built right into the company.
Are you interested in learning more about RoboSource’s Coach Bot software? Fill out the form on the Coach Bot page to get more info!
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