When Is The Ideal Time To Invest In Automation?

Of course, technology costs money, and implementation takes work, so not everything needs to be automated—at least not all at once.

Here the key is to do the math. Among the questions, you should ask yourself are the following:

• What are the manual tasks that exist in your organization?
• Of the activities that are carried out in your company, which ones could be better performed automatically?
• What are the areas subject to human errors?
• Which sectors would gain efficiency with better integration?
• Which areas need more accurate information to achieve efficiency?
• What activities could be scaled if there were no human capital limitations?
• Which processes can be easily automated?
• What would bring immediate gains if you opted for automation?

An example of automation that does not require significant investments and can bring immediate gains is the recruitment and selection of candidates for the company.

Instead of HR finding the ideal candidates for a specific job in the market alone, the software can do this with much more precision, taking into account a much larger number of variables and analyzing an unbelievably more significant number of candidates.

After this first selection, the analytical work returns to managers and HR, who can assess the most suitable professionals for the vacancy. However, they would have needed help to carry out such a complex and complete screening.

How To Implement Process Automation In The Company?

From what we’ve shown so far, you can already see that process automation offers a series of benefits, but it’s important to remember that it doesn’t happen by magic. Like any project, it requires planning and a lot of care. Let’s see what the steps are for its implementation.

Make A Plan

Like every change, this one also starts with planning. List and analyze all the processes that are part of the company and decide where to start. Consider the above questions to help you decide: on impact, complexity, costs, interdependence with other areas, etc.

Make a detailed implementation schedule, considering all the impacted areas at each stage completed. Think very carefully about how this will be communicated to employees. Process automation only sometimes leads to downsizing and layoffs, but understand that people are apprehensive about their jobs.

Map The Operations

Map out in detail all processes that have the potential to be automated. Listening to those who deal directly with them is essential, as these professionals know how they work and the impact of changing something.

Ask for everyone’s collaboration to identify sensitive and improvement points. This will also help reduce the team’s resistance to the changes.

Start With The Most Straightforward Steps

As with agile project management methods, the idea here is to start incrementally with the simplest, automating in parts.

Start with the most bureaucratic and repetitive tasks, in which human work adds little or no value.

Constantly Monitor

As the saying goes, what cannot be measured cannot be improved. You’ve put time and effort into this automation; now it’s time to start reaping the results.

For this to happen as expected, define the performance indicators that you will monitor and that will show how the initiative is progressing. Appoint a person responsible for monitoring and using the data as much as possible to promote continuous improvement management.

Also Read: What Is Digital Business Process Automation All About?

What Are The Advantages Of Investing In Process Automation?

Process automation can bring a lot of gains to your company. Check out the main ones.

Productivity Increase

Let’s think about an example of automation in logistics. The possibility of anticipating problems and errors avoids attrition with customers, delays in product delivery or even stops in your production line.

With all areas of the company connected and automated controls, the responsible sector is notified at the right time about the level of goods in stock, when it is necessary to buy new inputs, and when the goods must leave to be delivered, which is the most efficient route, for delivery and so on.

All this generates an increase in efficiency and productivity for the company. Employees no longer need to worry about making these controls or correcting errors, being able to focus on more strategic activities for the company, which add value.

Standardization Of Services

Once again, maintaining the standard symbolizes professionalism, and if you think the customer does not notice a deviation, you are very wrong. The standard of service is the symbol of your company and your brand in customers’ minds. Think for yourself: if you order the same sandwich every time at the cafeteria and they change the type of bread, you’re the first to notice.

When process automation makes it possible to improve standardization, minimizing the chances of the customer experiencing any step in the provision of service, this represents a gain for the company’s image before consumers and, therefore, the market.

Best Follow Up

Digital marketing is one of the great examples of how process automation makes it possible to have more data and better monitor the results of actions.

Before, when there were only offline media, all the results of marketing actions were estimated. The company would run a commercial on TV, run an ad in the newspapers, or hand out flyers on the street. Then there was a movement in sales. Therefore, it was inferred that one thing was directly related to the other.

There were audience estimates for TV shows and newspaper circulation numbers, but no one knew exactly who had seen that ad and the path between exposure to the campaign and the product purchase.

Digital marketing has wholly subverted this scenario. Now, it is possible to create internet campaigns for a highly segmented audience, with different campaigns for each segment and know precisely what the person did, who clicked, where they went after they clicked, where they gave up the purchase and so on.

Anyone who looks into these numbers and analyzes them diligently can produce much more efficient campaigns and know their audience in depth. Now, the company can know the influencers of its audience, which social network is preferred and its geographic location. It is important to emphasize once again: this is the knowledge that no company was able to have before.

Sustainability

We also discuss sustainability when we talk about increasing efficiency and reducing waste. Let’s go back to the cafeteria example: if process automation helps to reduce the amount of food that spoils and goes to waste, imagine this on a large scale.

We have already reached a point where it is clear to everyone that the planet’s resources are finite and that we are close to running out of them. Therefore, sustainability is not an option but a necessity.

Also Read: Why Is Automation The Key To Securing Applications In The Cloud-Native Era?