Many companies are in a hurry to deploy various software technology tools or applications to automate business processes, from facility management to large scale business processes like data intelligence. In the rush to gain the fruits of automation, businesses fail to realize that automation is more of a strategy than mere technology adoption. Organizations are busy pursuing technologies and failing to develop clear goals and strategies. Here we present the process to follow for a successful automation journey.
Before we dive into the process of automation, let us answer the question: what is business automation?
"Automation doesn't just mean using robots or artificial intelligence. Automation is anything you do to make a manual step automated. This can be done with with apps or APIs, even connecting your data via IoT is a form of automation."
Companies can execute automation purely by visualising data- looking at trends, looking at an issue or inefficiency and understanding what the root cause of that issue could be. This can be done only through visualizing of the data.
Many companies do not have a way to visualize data. They might have the data in a central location, but without visuals, there is no way to draw any inference or do any analysis.
Once you are able collect, integrate, centralize and visualize data, you will be able to analyze the data and which in turn allows you to optimize the business and understand how you can run your business, department or project more efficiently.
The best place to start in your automation journey is to understand your root cause of inefficiency, not by picking a technology or taking a solution and trying to see how it can fit in your organization.