Automate your business work? Improve user experiences by automating certain parts of your business.
Are you hearing too much talk about Automation and someone suggested you to include automation in your business? If you are thinking of integrating business automation then let me clarify one thing very honestly. Not everything can be automated and it is also not advisable to try to automate every pieces of your business.
Reasons?
Answer me the question. Why do you need to integrate automation? For improving user experience or cutting business operational cost?
Exactly. You need to ask yourself what are different objectives of integrating business automation. You know every business has certain pieces of works that can be automated without incurring extra cost and that also improve user experience while some are better not to be automated.
Every business is different and have various business processes and therefore single automation system can't be applied to all businesses. I find there are three pieces that business owner wants to or can be automated.
Note: I assume, many businesses already have their invoice or similar system for generating invoices. However, I am taking example of Invoice management system that not only generate invoice but also take care of reminding and payment system.
Complete business processes
Every business have different work and therefore they have derived various business processes for making their work more efficient and effective. The basic objectives of business automation must be same. To improve efficiency and effectiveness by reducing operational cost. Find business process that requires less human interaction and have certain defined rules and flow to complete.
For example, think of generating invoice for service based customer. You don't need to have human intelligence for generating invoices. If you have defined tasks list and their status and total time spent on each task, then this can be automated.
The important part of any business process automation is feedback system. If automation doesn't send you feedback signal then something is wrong. Make sure to add some gates and review system for ensuring correctness of business automation.
Partial processes that require less human interaction
Might be, your business processes are coupled with each other and therefore can't be separated. In such cases, you can find out partial routines that are good candidates for automation. Again remember, the objective of any automation must be to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Otherwise there is no need to invest your money on just making the shifts.
Again let me clarify using example. In our above example, suppose you don't monitor tasks and their status update, then you can start getting update from employees and then add them to spreadsheet or any other format. You can intelligently decide, if task are billable. Now, integrate automation here. It frees you for sending and reminding customer for making invoice payment.
Certain generalized tasks
This requires very small amount of automation depending on task unit. But still, you get all the benefits that you might get after automating complete process. Moreover, every automation start from automating small task unit. The basic of automation is to divide complete processes into different task units and then start automating them. Doing so, business owner can guide if certain tasks are required or not.
If you can find certain tasks than might be good candidate for automation then don't hesitate or wait for right time to make it automate. I know, many owner don't want to break their work processes, however let me ensure you that you are not breaking the business processes but upgrading them to be more efficient and effective.
I discussed with certain business owners and found they don't have any right mind set to start automating their business. They want to apply automation either because of hearing too much about automation or someone suggested them to start automating their business for making more profit.
Remember, every automation costs your business and therefore you must wisely decide if it is really important to have automation. Sometime, business might take years to recover automation cost.
General rule of thumb are;
- If you have high volume of traffic and certain tasks are taking too much of operational cost then start analyzing if that can be automated.
- Think about user experience before automating user related tasks. Automation must remove bottleneck for user rather adding new stage of complexity.
- Don't automate the tasks that must be completed by human intelligence. Otherwise, you might loose loyal customers. Think of telecommunication IVR systems. They don't add to user experience but surely frustrate them.
We, at Greencode Business Software, are doing automation for our clients and happy to share our knowledge and deep insights to others. If you are thinking of integrating automation in your business, then you are welcome to connect with us. We will love to assist you.
Last, we have automated ourselves and therefore we don't need large team of engineers to deliver our services on time and according to specification.