You need to automate your business. But first, what is business automation? It refers to the use of technology to execute recurring tasks or processes in an organization where manual effort can be replaced. It replaces human labour to machine labour. It is done to minimize costs, increase efficiency, and streamline processes. It also helps free up employees’ time to do higher value works. With automation, Henry Ford successfully reduced the time it took to manufacture a car from more than 12 hours to 2 and a half hours in year 1913.

Whether you’re operating a small business or a large organization, automation can help improve your operations and grow your business. Here are 5 reasons why you should automate your business.

1. You gain better transparency and control over your operations.

Automation will enable you to collect all parts of your operations into one dashboard so that you can always see your processes in their current stage. You maintain control over the processes by managing the tasks, reviews, approvals, access, and timelines. By gathering information from all steps in the operation, you get the data you would need to make informed decisions.

2. You would be able speed up your processes and reduce errors.

Automated business processes replace manual, administrative, and paper-based tasks. While it is important to making copies, distributing documents, seeking approvals and processing paperwork, these works are repetitive and require a lot of your time and energy. Even a small error in these operations can be costly. Automation reduces human error and saves time by centralizing the process.

3. You gain more time to work on more valuable tasks.

Business automation will lead to you having more time and energy to focus on what matters most, the higher value tasks, for example building relationship with your customers, suppliers, stakeholders and responding to their needs.

4. You get to streamline and standardize your processes. 

Among the business automation outcomes are achieving streamlined and standardized processes. You would have clear responsibilities and accountability, valuable insights, consistent quality outcomes and faster turnaround times. Waste, defects, mistakes and complaints can be eliminated, thus helping to increase customers’ confidence.

5. You increase your customers’ satisfaction. 

In the very competitive market, customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in any industry. Automating your business leads to operational excellence that helps you meet and exceed customer expectations, example in terms of quality or timely delivery. Meeting and exceeding customer expectations lead to customer satisfaction, and business growth.

So, which part of your business should you automate? Business automation is not restricted to a certain process or operation. The followings are some factors to help in determining where you may need automation:

• Processes where there are high-volume of tasks.
• Processes where there are many people required to execute the tasks.
• Processes which are time-sensitive in nature.
• Processes which would have impact on other processes or systems.

If you face the challenges above, consider to automate your business. You should be spending your time pursuing new opportunities instead of running and solving problems in your operations.

Reference:

1. https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/automation/whats-business-automation
2. https://kissflow.com/workflow/bpm/business-process-automation/streamlining-business-process/

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