Do people in your organization spend a lot of time on administration? Recording work performed, appointments made and hours worked are often time-consuming jobs. Automation makes it easier and better. By automating you need to administer less.
Less administration means more time spent on your 'real' work
By deploying automation solutions that ensure you spend less time on administration, more time is left for your core tasks. Consider, for example, a service technician who does the administrative processing of work orders digitally instead of with pen and paper. He or she is left with more time to perform service, maintenance and repair work. Productivity increases, service improves and job satisfaction also increases.
Proper automation prevents duplication of effort and errors
Manual administration is error-prone and, in many cases, means double work. Doing the administration with pen and paper or in Excel leads to delays in processes, double work to put the data into another software system (e.g. ERP, CRM or financial) and a high chance of errors, misinterpretation and data loss. Automation is not necessarily error-free, as the setup has to be right and data entry remains human work, but it does reduce the chance of errors and duplication.
Automation makes data more complete and accurate
To make the right decisions, you must have the right information. Data must be complete, accurate and up-to-date. Automation helps you do that. Think, for example, of salespeople recording their appointments and visit reports directly in a CRM application according to guidelines agreed with them. Or think about automatically updating item files based on data from suppliers regarding price and availability.
Everyone benefits from real-time, up-to-date information
Ultimately, the entire organization benefits from better information. A few examples:
- Real-time visibility into where service technicians are for optimal service planning;
- Be able to invoice immediately (or within days) instead of waiting for paper records to be processed;
- Up-to-date visibility into asset availability, location and financial value.
It is in the interest of the entire organization to administer less and automate more. But it is important to remember that automation is never the end, but always the means. So do not automate for automation's sake, but to achieve organizational goals.
Philip van Kemenade is marketing manager at Dysel and has daily contact with end users of software.
