A 5-part series to share some warning signs and explore how automation may help.
Part 2 of 5: Does your business feel slow or wasteful?
(You probably aren’t wrong.)
Perhaps you have a business process that takes too long – such as processing an order – and this process involves both people and computers. Nowadays, most business processes do. When the business started, someone set up those computers to aid the human effort needed to complete the overall workflows. However, as any business grows over time and the complexity increases (such as new order types, new procedures for processing orders, new regulations, etc), the balance between the amount of work being done by humans versus computers can shift. Today, the humans may need to work harder since there are more “scenarios” to remember, while the computer is still doing the same exact thing it was originally designed to do. Without updating the underlying IT systems to support the new rules, the humans are forced to carry all the added burden. After all, those orders still need to be processed!
What can this look like? Perhaps you have certain employees who need Post-it notes all over their desk to remember key information for doing their jobs. Maybe you have difficulty onboarding new people due to your complicated workflows and/or training people on every “what if” scenario. Or perhaps you rely too heavily on your experienced people to handle your complex issues and problematic orders since it’s too hard to train people on Day 1. Even worse, you may have to create Step-by-Step manuals to help the humans complete their complex tasks, which takes additional time away from productivity. In these situations, business owners may see huge advantages (like 10X ROI in 12 months or less) by utilizing some form of business automation to reduce the difficulty of performing key roles, such as Account Manager or Customer Service Representative. These employees, freed of some tedious tasks and extra rules they need to remember, can now spend more time in value-generating activities and will probably feel less anxiety in performing their job duties.
In Part 3, we will ask a blunt question to consider whether automation can help you:
Are your people making too many mistakes? (Maybe they can’t help it)