thought leadership

So as another pretty challenging year draws to a close, we see those businesses that have taken practical steps to strengthen operationally are those that have responded best to the market’s prolonged volatility.  Continuing to build this resilience into 2022 will be crucial. With last year’s accelerated trends of remote working, e-commerce and digitisation now firmly considered the norm, smart businesses have realised they must now introduce a leaner operational platform to weather future storms to maximise customer service and reduce waste.  As businesses learn to live with the “new way” of doing things the scalability digital automation provides to help meet this end goal will be pivotal. 

A lean operational approach should be at the top of every CEO’s Christmas list. This approach – where the central business goal is to focus on providing greater customer satisfaction whilst using as few resources as possible – requires leaner processes and procedures.  By digitising these processes, many successful businesses in 2021 have already been able to track, monitor and efficiently manage their growth. Critically, by automating routine tasks as much as possible, they have left themselves breathing space to scale-up, and if necessary, easily scale down as market demands change.  

The cost of automation has previously been too high or too unique to a particular business. But the low-code automation solutions now available democratise technology making automation more accessible to the everyday business user.  The use of cloud-based low-code (simple scripting) and no-code (drag and drop) automation platforms, means that companies can build, operate and support an automated system with non-technical staff on a budget typically of just a few thousand pounds a year. Given the challenges of constricted budgets and fewer IT resources to support internal processes (as IT is simply still too busy digitising the whole business!) line-of-business teams should be looking at self-service by turning to low-code solutions to automate business operations, documents and knowledge quickly and easily. 

Similarly, one of the critical benefits of digitisation is the ability to scale up or down quickly and seamlessly.  Cloud-based software gives organisations the option to increase or decrease capacity with the click of a few buttons of a website. 

One of the advantages of digitisation that perhaps we had not appreciated so much until this year is that modern cloud-hosted digital services do not care where you are in the world.  They don’t care if you are at home or in the office as long as you can log in. Not every employee in every business can work from home, but there is no doubt that the more digitised savvy companies found this transition much more straightforward.  

 Lean automation can deliver time savings of 75-99% on routine work, and perhaps more significantly, increase accuracy.  While it is overstating the case to say most businesses can be completely automated ( these kinds of gains can dramatically increase a team’s capacity.  That means when your company finds itself back on the now familiar rollercoaster ride of recent months over 2022, your teams will have the time and ability to navigate and successfully manage the ups and downs.

The wide-ranging benefits of digitalisation to business has never been more obvious.  Recent McKinsey & Company research demonstrates the pandemic has had such a profound effect on digital transformation that seven years of progress was made in a matter of months.  No wonder this has thrust digital transformation to the forefront of business goals.  According to a survey by HCL Technologies, 80% of organisations now see it as a priority.

However, despite the obvious benefits, data also indicates that SME’s lag behind big business in the adoption of nearly all technologies.  The largest gaps are in the digitalisation of internal organisation processes where automation can save time and money. Why is this the case? Are SME’s unsure how to proceed to best benefit their business? What are the barriers to digital transformation? How can SME’s also ride the wave of this technology revolution?

Process automation and digitalisation could be the answer. Using simple, cost-efficient technologies, SME’s can transform manual operations into digital ones.  For SME’s, the benefits of embracing automation are huge:

• Save time to focus on what matters
• Reduce costs
• Boost sales
• Reduce human error

We acknowledge SME’s are a diverse group but some processes are common to us all.  Think how long the sales process can be. Quotes, approvals and sales contracts going back and forth in countless emails and phone calls.  Routine documents such as NDA’s, onboarding new clients (and staff), invoices and reports are also extremely time-consuming.  Overcomplicated communication, slow approvals, rerouting of documents, fixing errors and digging through piles of paperwork and emails.  Automation is the answer – it simplifies the systems, eliminates the tedious tasks and replaces staff time with tech, freeing up more time for them to do what they do best (which let’s face it, is what you employed them for).

So, what is holding SME’s back?  Why is there this digital divide? Is the perception that the cost of automation is too high for a small business?  Automation doesn’t have to be expensive just strategic.  Simple tools can be used to do repetitive tasks for you, saving time and money for the business.  But implementing automation must require specialist skills by IT programmers that we simply don’t have, right? Wrong! New low or no-code platforms like AUTTO puts the technology directly into the hands of people who run the everyday business without the need for specialist programming skills.  Valued staff are empowered to identify their own pain points and easily automate their day-to-day tasks with no-code automation.

The McKinsey research concludes that although small business is less likely to automate than large corporates it is more likely to succeed.  We at AUTTO want to help you realise this. Get in touch today to book your free demo:  https://www.autto.io/book-a-demo

Business automation has become a key part of driving success forwards and is no longer the preserve of big corporations.   With platforms such as AUTTO, small businesses can now afford to easily incorporate automation in every aspect of their business, leading to huge time and cost savings.   It can be quite confusing for small business owners to identify exactly which daily tasks should be automated. So, in this post, we explore our recommended top 5…

1. Sales Completion 

Salespeople hate paperwork but heaps of forms are inherent when closing a deal. Documents such as:

• Sales Agreements
• Invoices
• Client information gathering
• Updating CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems can all be automated.

It transforms the sales process into a highly time-saving, more accurate and less laborious one for the team responsible.  This frees up their time and energy to do what they do best – sell more and grow your business.

2. Managing Approvals

Automation cuts down on time spent seeking complicated approvals across the business. Getting approval for example for a PO over a certain amount or for a discount being offered to a client would usually require manual input from multiple people.  Each of these can hold up the time taken and make the process open to human error.  Automating this process makes it seamless, accurate and cuts time dramatically.

3. Employee Onboarding

Taking on new staff is a time-intensive process for all and for the new employee, there is nothing worse than arriving for a new job, full of excitement than spending the first day filling out forms! Let automation handle the lot.

• Employee contracts are created and signed digitally,
• Processes are created to ensure all new hires have access to the passwords,
• Keys and important files they need from day one
• Automatic background checks, verifications and screenings.  This last one provides an important audit trail, vital particularly for those companies that have regulations. This leads us neatly onto…

4. Audit Trail for Compliance

Many industries have regulations specific to them and must demonstrate compliance with certain processes – a lengthy and painful process. Automation takes the headache away by automatically providing an audit trail to prove compliance. At AUTTO, for example, we use our own software in-house to ensure and prove all new employees have had the information security training required to honour our ISO 27001 status.

5. Information Gathering and Creating Reports

For organisations that need to gather and compound large amounts of data to produce bespoke reports for clients, automation will transform their business.  The time it would usually take to collect and collate info and create a relevant client document can be shortened dramatically with automation.  That frees up time to grow your business.  Small business consultancies, balance scorecards in the construction industry and talent management can for example all benefit from this.

So there it is – our top 5 automation suggestions.  If you’re interested in automating your business, talk to us now. We’d love to hear from you CONTACT US or sign up for our FREE TRIAL!