The digital transformation is in full swing in almost every industry today, a development that has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The expression “digitalize or die” describes it quite well – digitalization is no longer a choice but something most organizations must adapt to in order to survive. Digitalization has many benefits, including significant efficiency gains. Let’s take a closer look at why it’s important for businesses to automate their processes.
You can also read more about automation here.
When a value is manually entered, there is always a risk of a mistake being made. After all, we’re only human, and the human factor will come into play sooner or later. Small errors here and there may not have major consequences, but if you’re really unlucky, a small mistake can be extremely costly for you or your customers. An automated process minimizes the risk of errors and provides a more reliable process.
When multiple individuals are responsible for manually moving data between different systems, they can interpret both rules and data differently, leading to variations in how the work is performed. They may also have different levels of experience and work methods, which can also result in variation in how the work is carried out. With an automated process, the established rules are always followed, ensuring consistency in the process.
A manual process depends on key personnel being present and working. When a key person is absent due to sickness, parental leave, vacation, medical leave, or even resignation, it affects the process and creates unnecessary bottlenecks. However, an automated process continues to run regardless of whether your key personnel are present or not.
Manual processes come to a halt outside of working hours when staff are not present. By contrast, an automated process can run 24/7, 365 days a year. This leads to a significant boost in efficiency!
An automated process that operates around the clock naturally leads to time savings. It also operates faster than if the work were done manually by staff, allowing those resources to be allocated elsewhere. When employees no longer have to spend several hours of their days on repetitive tasks, they can instead devote their time to more value-creating work – and the company gets more motivated employees.
An automated process can handle more cases in less time and with fewer resources compared to a manual process. This increases the ability to scale up operations, especially for smaller companies. This can mean that you don't need to hire more personnel to perform the increased number of tasks (or lay off personnel if you're scaling down).
By automating a process, it's possible to collect real-time data from various sources and quickly identify important insights, patterns, and deviations. Automatic monitoring and other security measures can also be implemented, allowing potential security threats to be detected immediately.
Automation involves us humans to some extent handing over control to technology. For those used to manual processes, it can feel like a major step, much like getting into a self-driving car for the first time and letting it drive on its own. It's scary at first, but those who dare to trust technology and continue their automation journey have everything to gain.
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