5 major reasons why every business benefits from automating processes
Business process automation is the key to manifest your enterprise vision with minimum supervision and maximum efficiency. Every competitive edge matters in an ever-saturating market no matter the size or type of your business.
Many of your manually driven processes, such as sorting and redirecting PDFs attachments, prioritizing customer tickets, extracting information from operational reports, etc. demand precious time and energy. This inevitably takes a toll on your productivity while the rest of the industry is constantly innovating to perform faster.
Future-proofing your workflow: The benefits of automation
To future-proof your business is to evolve your strategic approach from reactionary to anticipatory. It’s time to stop reacting and start automating by harnessing your enterprise data to smoothen your internal processes and customer’s journey.
If you’re looking for reasons to fulfill your ambition and execution through automation, here are five key benefits to consider:
1. Cost and time efficiency
As a decision-maker, automation needs to be seen as a strategic investment with a long-term footprint. Once you cover the initial implementation costs, automating workflows regularly leads to reduced labor hours, minimal paperwork expenditure, and auto-piloted maintenance protocols. As a consequence, you can widen your profit margins and redirect your funds to create more value.
The beneficial effect on the bottom line, particularly of AI-driven automation, could be shown in a study from Accenture. According to their data, automating or augmenting processes with AI will lead to significant profit improvements in a wide range of industries by 2035:
2. Freeing up human capital & potential
Automation can be the great liberator of human capital in your organization by freeing them from tedious work. As a result, managers can manage their resources much better and assign high-value tasks to your employees.
To put this in numbers, WorkMarket reported that 53% of employees acknowledge that they can save up to two work hours a day through automation, while 78% of business leaders state that automation can free up to three work hours a day. This leads to about six weeks of time per year for regular employees and nine additional weeks of productive work time on the management level.
3. Lower employee turnover
The benefit illustrated above leads to a natural consequence: The introduction of automation has cut down employee turnover in most enterprises.
High turnover usually occurs in positions requiring people to perform mindless repetitive tasks. When you free your employees from mundane processes and assign them creative and engaging activities, it boosts employee satisfaction. Satisfied employees are high performers and more committed to rallying for your business objectives for longer stretches of time.
You may know best about its reverse, where high employee turnover not only causes a drop in employee morale but also incurs significant expenses for replacement.
4. Minimize human error
The various effects of human errors can range from embarrassing email-typos to data breaches that can cost millions. According to the market intelligence firm IDC, human errors in handling and processing data cost the average multinational corporation an estimated $62.4 million a year. And even though this may be far greater than what your business is facing, it sends a clear signal.
Mistakes are human. Even if we have the skills, experience, and willpower to conduct a routine task, it is likely that we will make a mistake at some point. Automating your workflows also reduces possibilities for human error.
Machines, on the other hand, work precisely according to pre-specified methods and without fluctuating attention. Once you thoroughly configured the automation set-up, it will deliver consistent results.
Systems using AI automation are similar in nature: Some applications require extensive tuning but achieve performance levels far greater than human beings could ever reach.
5. Greater customer satisfaction
A recent MIT study reported that 73% of companies affirm that automation can help boost customer satisfaction. Early adopters who started using automation technology to refine their customer services reported a 19% increase in operating margins over a five-year period.
How so? You may already be collecting lots of information on your customers and put them to great use. In addition to that, machine learning can be used to work with data that is not currently recorded in a standardized format. Be it inquiries via email or product usage — all these items can be effectively collected and, more importantly, analyzed and interpreted automatically.
The machine learning intervention: Paving the path to workflow optimization
Business automation is a simplicity-centric intervention meant to make human participation more meaningful and guarantee operational excellence in the long run.
Traditional automation, particularly Robotic Process Automation (“RPA”) is centered around rule-based processes and analysis of structured data at best. However, most processes do not follow simple rules and are often triggered by unstructured data to begin with — documents, images, messages.
Cognitive abilities give ML automation tools an edge over traditional RPA
The path forward
Irrespective of the size or nature of the business, companies around the world are recognizing that automation is their passport to productivity and profitability. And there is every reason to do so: new tools are making setup, use, and integration of such technologies comparably cheap and — probably more importantly — accessible for a wider audience.
We are ready for the dance. We hope you are too!
Originally published at levity.ai.
