Automation Provides Downturn Protection and Upturn Acceleration
As economic storm clouds gather, there’s one investment mid-market businesses should consider making no matter how dire the forecast.
Automation.
We’re not talking months of custom-code development or enormous investment, but off-the-shelf software (typically) that streamlines repeatable processes, drives efficiencies, improves employee morale, strengthens culture, and frees talent to tackle priority challenges.
Let the computers handle the drudgery of common, stable, data-intensive workflows, such as accounts payable, expense reporting, or onboarding.
Your hard-won and hard-to-replace talent will appreciate being released from the grind of data entry, data tracking, and approval seeking. Your processes will accelerate, and automation will eliminate mistakes and never take a break.
Insurance for Downturns & Upturns
Speaking at the recent Wall Street Journal CIO Network Conference, Ali Ghosdsi, CEO at Databricks Inc., said tools that find inefficient processes or simplify operations can only help companies ride out a bad economy.
Automation is one of those tools. Like an insurance policy, it protects against downturns. Its efficiencies save money and give time back to employees who can use it more productively, decreasing a downturn’s severity. This insurance policy, however, is useful in good times, too, for the exact same reasons. Lower costs and engaged employees position companies to accelerate through upturns.
Bonus, automation boosts employee satisfaction and retention, too, by eliminating the mundane from job descriptions and empowering people to work on more meaningful projects.
Getting Started implementing automation
The first step to deploying simple yet powerful automation is taking time to investigate and document current processes and workflows. Fahrenheit performs these assessments and then looks at the many tools available on the market that can automate them.
Costs, of course, can vary depending on the solution. More complexity and customization costs more. But starting small doesn’t break the bank and typically takes days, not weeks. And implementation takes a couple weeks, not months.
The result is improved, faster processes, happier colleagues, and a business positioned to perform in good times and bad.
Ready to explore how simple automation can benefit your business? Download “The Unscary Guide to Business Process Automation for Growing Companies” and contact us today at Experts@FahrenheitAdvisors.com.
About the Author
Kim Moore is a self-motivated, self-reliant, quickly adaptive individual with over fifteen years of experience in project management and operations within the public sector, financial services industry, and nonprofits.