Using Basic Automation on Existing Data to Maximize Efficiency
By Trevor Liss
On March 26, 2024
If you are a stakeholder in any business today, there are several things about your company that are very likely true:
- Your processes are internally governed within a centralized management software
- That software holds basic data about your company (product info, client info, etc.)
- You have a repeatable deliverable that is time intensive on your employees (a monthly report, client proposal, legal documents, etc.)
- Employee productivity and efficiency are a key KPI for your company
If these items apply to your business, it is likely that basic automation concepts can save your staff dozens if not hundreds of hours per year by removing predictable and repeatable tasks from their workflow. If a team member at your company spends 8 hours a week pulling names and addresses from your software onto a template word document that gets sent to clients, automating that template to autofill directly from the software can reduce that employees workload by 20% and save 400 hours of work in just one year of operation. The majority of businesses and employers have a workflow that is a prime candidate for automation, but due to the learning curve required to use many automation tools, or the time or development costs required for a solution, many of these businesses lose time and money dedicating human hours to a repeatable process. This article will talk about use cases for automation and how FourZeroNine can bridge your workflows with automation in more complex scenarios.
Use Cases for Automation
Not all workflows are created equal. Some business processes are volatile or flexible and rely heavily on the skill and ingenuity of the employee performing them for their continued function. On the other hand, some processes are little more than copying and pasting information from one screen to another, and don't require specific skills, just lots of time. To get the most value out of automation in your business, you must identify the workflows that are the best candidates for automation. Processes best for automation generally have the following qualities:
- The Inputs and Outputs of the process are predictable. Automation is little more then a nested series of “If This, then That” statements. If the information needed to complete your workflow and the deliverable created by your workflow can vary greatly depending on external factors, the workflow is unlikely to be a good automation candidate. Predictable data locations and output format are key principles for automating processes.
- The Input Data is in a consistent location and of high quality. One of the governing principles of analytics, integration and automation is the “Garbage In, Garbage Out” principle. It states that if the input data for any process is inconsistent in location or format, the output deliverable will be inconsistent and unreliable regardless of the sophistication of the automation process. Any workflow that is a prime candidate for automation must have input data that comes in consistently and is formatted consistently.
- It is possible to automatically collect/connect to the input data. This quality is the trickiest one for the average business owner to navigate. In order to automate a process, it must be possible to automate the connection to the data that is manipulated in the workflow. This is generally where the value of a developer or third party vendor is so valuable; a specialist, like our team at FourZeroNine Solutions, can make the connection to your data and open to door to automation. However, with the modern cloud-first and integration-focused development practices of the vast majority of popular business management platforms, there are often options for direct integration for someone trying to automate their workflows on their own.
Harnessing the power of automation is one of the best ways to improve the overall efficiency of your business. By automating away repeatable tasks, employees are freed to focus on work with a higher value, elevating productivity and the value-add of each team member. Getting started with automation can be scary, but by smartly choosing which workflows to automate, one can make a massive impact on their business with a minimal investment. Reach out to us at Contact 409 to learn more about how automation can improve your business.
Trevor Liss
Trevor Liss, BS is the Chief Data Engineer for FourZeroNine Solutions. Trevor is a programmer at heart and orchestrates data ingestion so that our clients can automatically have all of their information at their fingertips. When not creating automations, you can find him road tripping across the country, listening to his favorite rock music, or cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles.
You may also be interested in:
Measuring the Success of Your Data Analytics Strategy
How to Use Data Analytics to Improve Employee Productivity
