Today, automating processes is essential to maintain the operability, productivity and competitiveness of companies. This process is not exclusive to large corporations. Whether you are the owner or manager of a small or medium-sized company, or even if you are self-employed, digitization is key. Through this you can streamline tasks, manage the supply chain and provide quality service to your customers, among other possibilities.
Read on to learn more about business automation and its benefits. Here we also suggest some tools that may interest you, according to the nature of your company.
What does it mean to automate processes?
It basically consists of integrating technology , be it software or machinery, in order to streamline the tasks of the organization and thus guarantee greater productivity at a reduced cost. Companies in general have a way of working that follows a specific line and, in turn, involves various collaborators in different areas, resulting in a process that may or may not be formally defined. This is usually known as a work system and it works specifically according to the characteristics of the company that we are managing. As our business reaches high production, we may need to automate processes that allow everything to flow more quickly.
Benefits when automating processes
In addition to considerably increasing efficiency, productivity and effectiveness, automating processes also generates other advantages. These will allow us to obtain a completely solid base when implementing an operations automation project. The benefits are as follows:
Cost reduction
It is one of the main benefits when it comes to automating processes . Every business will face global pressure to increase profitability. One of the necessary approaches to achieve this is to apply cost reduction. However, that would imply reducing the capacities of the IT center, which could have a negative impact on our company. So, what to do?
For this case, using automation software would be the ideal and smart approach to control and reduce costs. Another opportunity that may arise is to improve customer service, while systematically reducing costs.
Productivity increase
The second benefit that it gives us is that it significantly improves the increase in our productivity. At this point, job scheduling software can optimize performance by automating batch scheduling in production. The current solution is to prevent the computer from sitting idle while waiting for one of the operators to release the next job. We can save time and money by eliminating downtime between jobs; thus minimizing operator intervention. Once job scheduling is set up and started, the software takes care of executing commands in the correct sequence, thus eliminating operator error.
Availability
Nowadays, companies have become increasingly dependent on computers. Most businesses routinely use the online environment, whether it’s to take inventory or review shipping orders. Therefore, if the computer is not operational, our business can suffer. A crucial advantage of doing automation is that you have the ability to automate your systems, both save and restore. In this way we can protect ourselves against delicate situations, such as the loss of the hard drive or other damage to system objects, as a result of human error.
Reliability
Apart from being a benefit of automation , it is also considered an important factor in any IT operations department . Without it, an environment of chaos and confusion can be created. Automated processes ensure that activities or tasks are not forgotten or carried out or executed out of sequence, also ensuring that the data is correct at the time it is entered and that some type of special procedure is carried out, in case it is required. By applying automation software , it is capable of solving complex tasks intelligently and dynamically, based on certain predefined parameters.
Performance
Two options to optimize performance when applying process automation are to upgrade our hardware or purchase a newer system. However, both options can be expensive for some companies. Another option is to adjust and configure our system, so that it has better performance, but it would require the work of a qualified person to do it. In these cases, automation software can help us solve these types of obstacles and/or challenges, in order to optimize the performance of our systems.
Now, how to automate processes in my company?
Depending on the activities carried out in our company, it must be determined which part of our systems require process automation . For this, it is important to know which processes are the ones that take the most time and what part of these can be carried out by people. Following this guideline, it will be much easier to know what must be acquired in order to automate the process. In addition, we must take into account some factors such as:
- Choose the automation provider well .
- Be aware that if our system fails, the entire operations of our company may be compromised.
- Be aware that the automation system could only work for a specific type of business.
- Take into account that not all processes have to be fully automated. It is possible that part of them need to be carried out by a staff, identifying of course which parts are the ones that need it.