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Automation is a method of simplifying activities involving human capital to reduce operational costs in the long run. Company size does not determine the need or capability to automate tasks to improve performance. Even if introducing automation seems overwhelming, the benefits it can offer to current initiatives can be substantial, and it is easily scalable.
Research from McKinsey suggests that up to 45 percent of activities that individuals are paid to perform can be automated with technology. High productivity and increased output are the biggest reasons to justify automation because it offers less variability, more control, and better consistency in operations. Automation can create uniformity in infrastructure because it can span multiple platforms, applications, and systems.
Automation does not just affect low-skill or low-wage roles, but also highly paid occupations such as financial managers, physicians, and CEOs. According to Harvard Business Review, highly paid workers are more commonly affected but the effects are more severe for lower-wage workers. However, the risk of job loss due to automation is lower than the risk of a layoff, and when automation happens gradually, it allows businesses and employees to react and adjust. Moreover, automating monotonous tasks can allow workers to focus on higher priority, strategic initiatives that automation cannot solve. McKinsey reports that nearly 20% of companies predict automation will create job growth, while six percent anticipate requiring a smaller workforce.
Here are five key reasons that will benefit the automation of processes in your business.
1. Effective Cost Utilization
Automation in the eyes of an eagle-eyed entrepreneur is a strategic investment and not an expenditure. The challenge in this phase is the investment and implementation costs. Responsively addressing the automation costs can prove a suitable and reliable investment. Toil is defined as the work that is running a production service. It is manual, repetitive, automatable, tactical, doesn't have long-term value, and scales linearly as a service grows. The reduction in toil reduces the need for expensive and all-inclusive labor leading to reduced paperwork and overhauling costs.
2. Faster Delivery
Allowing machines and software to do the work for you is a way of altering day-to-day activities, and this is called process automation. One example of process automation is generating reports and testing the performance of the application. Automated testing can save considerable amounts of time and effort. Automation of voluminous tasks can drastically reduce the timelines and thus, enable faster delivery.
3. Increased Efficiency in Workflows
A workflow created to reduce the costs and time required to execute operational activities increases efficiency. Automation can take care of toil, and an employee can concentrate on business development processes that can generate revenue for the company through innovation. Automated workflows can help reduce efforts and achieve results that are favorable for increased revenue generation.
4. Error-Free and Consistent Operations With High Accuracy
Errors are the primary and most significant problem linked with manual operations. There is always a scope for human mistakes, especially when there are large operations involved. Manual procedures still have the chance of missing steps either by errors or ignorance. Automated workflows eliminate any errors and lead to greater accuracy of operations. Workflows adhere to industry standards strictly and can assure consistency of operational procedures.
5. A Decrease in Employee Churn
Executing the same tasks on a day-to-day basis can become mundane and tediously repetitious. Automation of toil can solve this problem and thus pave the way for employees to challenge themselves with rewarding activities. Rewarding employees for their activity involves increased satisfaction. Satisfied employees perform better and stay longer at their jobs, resulting in lower churn rates.
Gain Competitive Edge with Automation
Any company adopting an automation-based solution across verticals to streamline the operations of the business will prosper. Automation is a process to augment humans. Critical areas for implementing automation either as software or as a tool include customer support, marketing, media engagement, administration, sales, and many more. When McKinsey modeled the potential of automation to transform business processes across several industries, it was found that the benefits (ranging from increased output to higher quality and improved reliability, as well as the potential to perform some tasks at superhuman levels) typically were between three and 10 times the cost. Today, automation has the application of advanced technologies, including robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent applications, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The extent of the benefits of increased efficiency, faster delivery, cost optimization, and high accuracy suggests that they are essential for an organization to gain a competitive edge.
How Nisum Can Help Implement Automation Strategically
Automation makes businesses easier to navigate and offers personalization because it forms the central pillar of the company for the future. Nisum’s expertise is in using modern automation tools to build workflows that are pre-built with standard requirements. These tools undergo strenuous testing with multiple API integrations, proper variable definitions, and version controls.
Nisum develops and measures resources in a balanced manner, and has driven business transformations with automation through its three pillars Digital Transformation, Business Agility, and Insights and Analytics at the focus. Nisum can help businesses formulate a clear strategy to guide the implementation of automation with long and short-term objectives. Focusing resources to identify key areas to improve on is something in which Nisum excels.
Nisum has generally identified the following steps for automation:
- Identify the workflows which can take advantage of automation (identify and remove toil) by gathering data on the current processes.
- Make sure the processes are analyzed before they are optimized so that they become cost-efficient before standardization and automation (a sub-par process can amplify inefficiency if not assessed).
- Choosing the right tools for the job within the budget and requirements is also another part of the ROI of any business when automating.
- Finally, every business has to measure the results and tune its strategy using the KPIs tied to the business objectives.
Machine learning and AI will play essential roles in the next generation of IT automation. Automation helps make decisions easier and ML will use automation to use resources efficiently to meet deadlines, and will also help in understanding when not to use resources. If you want to automate your business to boost efficiency and make smart real-time decisions based on fact-based intelligence, contact us.
