Automation involves eliminating or minimising manual labour so a process or workflow can run automatically based on preset rules. These rules are logic-based, so the output of the automated process is always consistent, reliable, and error-free.
That said, for successful automation, you need to know what to automate, how to automate, and when to automate. For more insights about the what and how aspects, check our articles here and here.
Automation in the Real World
In the 21st century digital economy, many companies are implementing automation in a range of areas. These include customer support chatbots, customer/employee/supplier onboarding processes, operations management, document processing, marketing, software testing, and even accounting and bookkeeping.
Automating mundane or repetitive tasks frees up your employees’ time so they can use their valuable skills on higher-level tasks. It will also improve their efficiency and productivity, which will ultimately positively impact your company’s profitability and ROI.
Automation also reduces business costs because it speeds up processes, generates better-quality output, and minimises the need for rework. In the long term, automating the right processes can boost your innovation engine and improve business agility, resilience, and scalability.
So now you know why your organisation should automate. But still, it’s natural to harbour some doubts because you may not know when to automate. The best way to answer this question is to keep an eye out for five key signs. These signs are like guideposts that will help you understand if your organisation is ready for automation.
When to Automate: 5 Surefire Signs
Many companies migrate data between systems or from on-premise data centres to the cloud. There are many reasons for data migration projects: the need to retire legacy systems to increase competitiveness, IT modernisation to improve operating systems, an upcoming merger or acquisition, etc.
Depending on the size of your data stack, migrating everything to a new system or location can be a huge undertaking. Developers will have to translate every piece of code to be migrated and check that it will function properly after migration. At several points during the project, they will be copying, pasting, transforming, cleaning, loading, and testing data – all labour-intensive and error-prone tasks. Most likely, the team will also spend countless hours tracking down the data to be migrated, identifying dependencies, and tracing the lineage of enterprise data warehouse (EDW) code, legacy ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs, etc.
Despite all their hard work, some data may still get lost or the team may miss migrating some (business-critical) data from A to B. The migration may also result in forced downtime, which will disrupt your business operations. And needless to say, it will be a time-consuming and expensive effort that may result in potentially catastrophic and costly mistakes.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) provides a fast, low-cost, zero-error option for data migration. With effective automation design, process modelling, testing, and training, you can implement RPA bots that will work quietly in the background. These bots require very little human input and will reduce the migration time by a substantial amount, even if you are migrating massive amounts of data. They will also improve migration accuracy since they are rules-based and will work consistently per those rules. And last but not least, bots will minimise downtime during migration so your processes, systems, and databases are minimally impacted.
All in all, automating the migration process with rules-driven RPA bots can bring numerous benefits that a manual process just cannot provide. But data migration is just one example where automation can have a tangible impact on your organisation. Whether you want to speed up data entry tasks, free up time spent on low-value work, or productively connect your people to technology and processes – there are numerous use cases for workflow and business automation in your company.
But how can you identify these use cases, and how will you know when to automate?
Here are 5 signs that will be the biggest indicators:
1. Your people are busy but not productive
One of the biggest myths of the modern world of work is that busy = productive. It’s not. If your people are forced to fill their time with work that keeps them busy but doesn’t quite generate tangible value for your business, you may want to consider automation.
Per Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index survey of, the majority of employees’ time (60%) is spent on work about work that involves tasks like:
- Attending unnecessary meetings
- Responding to emails
- Communicating about tasks
- Replying to instant messages
- Searching for documents and files
Working about work involves coordinating across old-fashioned technologies and processes like spreadsheets and email, which results in staggering amounts of time losses. It allows workers to only spend 27% of their time on skills-based tasks. Since they spend so much time on busywork rather than on productive work, companies frequently miss out on true productivity gains and value generation. Working about work also leads to substantial $$$ losses. Unnecessary meetings alone cost the U.S. economy almost $400 billion in lost productivity in 2018. If your organisation is facing these challenges, the answer to your doubt about when to automate is now.
2. Customer satisfaction is slipping
Your customers are the reason you do business. But is the way you do business satisfying customers? Do they enjoy their experiences with your brand? Or are they complaining about inadequate customer service, poor-quality products, or delayed problem resolution?
In many industries, customer satisfaction and loyalty depend less on product price and more on the experiences you can provide. That’s why:
- 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
- 65% say they have switched brands because of a poor experience.
- For 83% of buyers, good customer service affects their decision to buy.
- 49% share their brand experiences on social media, good or bad.
- 63% of consumers and 76% of B2B buyers expect companies to know their unique needs and expectations.
Automation can help you deliver great experiences to boost customer satisfaction and happiness. For example, automated chatbots can speed up response times to frequently-asked questions. Similarly, ticketing tools can automatically create tickets and assign them to the right support representative to accelerate problem resolution.
3. Errors are creeping into processes
Businesses comprise of people and people occasionally make mistakes due to carelessness, fatigue, or inadequate training. But if these mistakes happen frequently or have a tangible $$$ impact, it may be time to consider introducing automation into those workflows. For example, are you frequently seeing errors in payroll processing? In vendor payments? During compliance audits? In shipment dates? In order or pricing information?
Any of these errors can damage your company’s finances or reputation. Automation based on rules that you set can remove the possibility of errors from repetitive processes. The tool will perform all the tasks consistently and adhere to the same quality goalposts that you set in advance. In this way, you get consistent and expected output, while also helping your employees to save time and focus on other tasks where their inputs are really required.
4. Operational costs are escalating
High or growing operational costs in your business could indicate that there are inefficiencies in one or more processes. Implementing automation can eliminate some of these inefficiencies. Automation technologies are now available for many enterprise applications and use cases. For example, in finance and accounting, you can automate the vetting of new suppliers, pre- and post-payment reconciliations, and sales order validations. In supply chain management, automation is very useful for creating shipment documentation, catalogue management, claims management, and query handling. Similarly, you can implement automation in recruitment, payroll, data migration, and customer transaction management. In the past, all these tasks required human input, which slowed down processes, sometimes generated erroneous output, and occasionally required rework – all of which increased operational effort and costs.
Automation tools such as RPA bots can mimic human actions to perform repetitive tasks in many front or back-office business processes. You can program bots with static rules, artificial intelligence, and machine leaning models so they can accurately interpret information, trigger required actions, and even make appropriate decisions for an activity or process. The bots can work consistently and continuously without making errors or requiring rework, which can not only increase process throughput, but also drive greater efficiencies, and ultimately, reduce operating costs.
5. There is no visibility into processes
Do you have visibility into your processes? Can you identify problem areas and blind spots? If not, it may be because:
- Your processes are not clearly documented.
- You have not identified appropriate metrics to measure process health.
- Informational silos hamper communications.
- You rely on anecdotal, subjective evidence instead of statistical, objective evidence.
- There is no reporting process or format.
Automation can help you address all these problems. The right tools will increase your visibility into processes and act proactively to improve process health and performance. They will also improve intra- and inter-team communication, streamline reporting, and help you capture new opportunities and meet project deadlines.
Conclusion
If you operate in a highly competitive industry or serve demanding customers, automation will help you speed up simple tasks, make smarter decisions, and give workers the gift of time – all of which will enable you to compete effectively in the industry and keep up with customers’ demands and expectations.
But it’s not just the potential benefits that should encourage you to think about automation. You should also consider investing in process or workflow automation if you see any of the above five signs in your company. Knowing what and when to automate can empower your company to overcome the challenges related to lower productivity, slipping customer satisfaction, increased errors, rising operational costs, and lack of process visibility. So, make sure you keep an eye out for them and act quickly to capture all the benefits of automation.
Good luck!
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