Many people have the perception that automation could be bad for business. Those people generally can be segmented as individuals who simply do not understand it, and therefore avoid it. Or, people who are fearful of it. Generally, people are fearful because they feel as though their livelihood could be limited by the introduction of automation. These people have visions of robots taking over their role completely.
Because many employees may be concerned about how automation can impact their roles, it means that inherently management are less likely to implement it to keep the peace.
The reality couldn’t be further from what people are assuming though, and the business risk in place here is ignoring the core benefits of automation for a business. PwC reports show that GDP in the United Kingdom will increase by 10% as a result of Automation in the coming years. This is an increase that equates to £232bn - you can therefore imagine how much impact automation will have globally.
Why is Automation a Good thing for Business?
There are several core benefits to a business that uses automation as a tool. Firstly, the management team will greatly benefit from it. Teams will become more efficient, and morale will increase due to a reduction of boring work. Many tasks will also become much more reliable, as you remove the risk of human error from them.
Automation Efficiency in a Business
Efficiency improvements have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line. The more a business can utilise automation to improve efficiencies, in theory, the more money that can be saved. In reality, the real benefit of efficiency improvements via automation is that the staff will no longer need to spend their time doing boring repetitive tasks. Instead, they can put their efforts into more human reliant tasks which provide more value to the business overall. Effectively, the business will be able to complete far more work in the same amount of time, without hiring more staff to expand that production.
Automation Competitive Advantage
Automation can lead to a pretty significant competitive advantage over those which are not utilising the benefits of automation. Think back 20 years to businesses that thought they didn’t need to go online and create eCommerce stores. Many of those businesses do not exist anymore. There is potential for the same to happen with businesses that continue to ignore the advancements in technology into the future. An admin company completely ignoring automation has no chance of competing against a company that is at peak efficiency through a blended approach of human and automated workflows.
From the perspective of management and business owners, the benefits of automation are clear. There should be no doubt in the mind of any management team which works in a company with many repetitive and consistent processes that the implementation of automation would have great impacts on their business. The reality is that staff benefit from automation too, with studies showing a reduction in burnout in teams where automation is used.
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