Business Automation: Key Advantages And Disadvantages For Your Business |
Posted: October 5, 2022 |
“Automation” is a word that is still far too controversial, far too often. People hear it and immediately jump to visual images of robots taking over the jobs of humans, and people being fired from their workplaces wholesale. That’s not how it actually works, of course, and while automation has some major benefits, it also has limitations that makes the human role within organisations all the more important. As automation becomes even more ingrained within organisations these benefits and restrictions become all the more clear, and organisations that can integrate automation well within the human environment are the ones that stand to benefit the most. Those organisations that try and have automation stand alone, or refuse to engage with automation at all, are the ones that will be most disrupted by what automation brings to the working environment. What is business automation? There are many categories of automation that have been developed in recent years. Business automation, in particular, refers to technology applications that have been designed to perform repetitive tasks that employees then don’t need to manage. A good example is an AI-driven chatbot that answers low-level questions that are delivered to the website. Another example might be contract information that an application automatically fills out and files. The key benefits of business automation Most of the benefits around business automation have to do with automation’s ability to add efficiency to working practices: 1. Business automation frees employees up for higher value tasks. To refer back to the chatbot example above, by allowing the chatbot to field low-level enquiries, employees can focus their energy on more complex and unique customer problems. This means faster resolution of those challenging tasks, and stats show that customers actually prefer dealing with chatbots for simple questions, meaning you’re improving the customer experience. It also means that employees don’t have to ensure the boredom of answering the same questions over and over again. It’s a win-win for all. 2. Business automation helps an organisation to scale. It is much cheaper to implement automation solutions than continue hiring new employees as you scale. When combined with a good, fast, and reliable Internet connection, the 24/7 workloads that business automation can handle can assist in rapidly scaling the business far more quickly and efficiently than would be possible without the automation. Most organisations that implement business automation do scale very “lean”, and therefore sustainability, thanks to this benefit. 3. You’ll be able to limit mistakes and maintain compliance. No matter how good your human employees are, and no matter how well trained and detail-orientated they are, humans inevitably make mistakes and, when those mistakes overlap with areas of compliance, they can become very expensive to remedy, and even attract legal action. As long as the business automation is set up correctly, it will never make a mistake, and as a matter of compliance risk management, it is often considered to be an important investment by CEOs and boards. 4. You can achieve a true 24/7 business. When business processes are human-driven, they are put to rest when they employee goes home for the day or weekend, but in the modern era of online, global business and 24/7 operation, being unavailable can cost opportunities. There are two ways around this; build a business schedule that runs 24/7 – which is intensely expensive in terms of labour costs, or leverage business automation to keep the pipeline flowing between human shifts. Even a small business can start interacting with customers from all over the world with the assistance of business automation. The challenges of business automation Of course, while there are many benefits to business automation, like with anything new, there are challenges that need to be overcome, and the way that we do – and finance – business needs to change in kind. 1. Business automation requires jobs be changed. Note! This does not mean job losses, as many often fear. Rather, employees that were previously engaged in the menial tasks now need to be up-skilled and moved into new areas of work. This is actually a good thing, as the employee will inevitably find the more complex work more interesting and rewarding, but there does need to be a change management programme implemented so that no one gets left behind. 2. It can become expensive to make changes. Business automation generally involves a fairly substantial up-front investment, to roll the automation out, upgrade and configure systems where necessary, and tailor the automation the business’ unique needs. This up-front cost is well any truly covered by the ROI – which often exceeds the costs within a year – but it does make business process change potentially expensive. Every change within the business to its processes and systems then requires new configurations of the automation and, potentially, incompatibility issues to resolve. Businesses will need to factor automation costs in to each change and transformation going forward. 3. Automation isn’t very flexible. One of the biggest challenges with business automation is that the moment you need flexibility, the automation struggles to adapt. Usually, this is the point where the automation would escalate the workload to a human to look at, but if this happens too frequently, it can actually add in a layer of inefficiency into the workplace. In short, it’s important that the business automation is only used for the easily repeatable and inflexible processes. 4. Business automation relies on the technology being available. As reliable as modern systems are, they can still crash, power outages can still occur, and hackers can still down systems. In all cases, if this happens, then your business automation stops working and work stops getting done. The impact of this can range from the inconvenient (angry customers calling in when they would rather deal with a chatbot), through to the catastrophic (contracts going unsigned or invoices being lost). You can mitigate this risk by properly considering redundancy, but even then, the more your business relies on automation, the more inherent risk it faces. So should you implement business automation? The pros definitely outweigh the cons when it comes to business automation. There are some costs involved and it does introduce a small degree of risk to the business that wasn’t there previously. However, the speed and efficiency with which business automation works means that if you’re not making good use of it, your competitors (who will be) have a significant advantage. Just consider the greatest example of automation in business – Amazon automates as much of its physical and digital systems as it possibly can, and by doing so it has a business that runs so efficiently and productively that smaller businesses simply cannot compete with it on its terms. Of course, you don’t need to go from “0” to the level of automation that Amazon employs overnight. You can (and should) start with a small and non-critical process within the organisation, and automate that first. Most businesses do, in fact, experiment with automation via a chat bot application. See how that works for your organisation, use it as a test case for change management programmes, and, only once you’re comfortable with it, start to look to scaling the range of applications that you automate.
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