Too many companies and business leaders believe that using automation technologies is one of the smartest ways of gaining competitive advantage and profit. They are completely right; however, they overlook the human component frequently. When you run business automation technologies (RPA, process automation, intelligent document processing, data extraction etc.) within your organization, obvious benefits occur: reducing costs, speeding up operations, minimizing human error, getting more control and transparency.
All these benefits create great business results yet they can help to achieve something else, which is equally important: employee upskilling and satisfaction. If a company is able to use automation technologies to bring out the best in people, then it will take advantage of a lasting transformation of organizational structure and corporate culture.
How Does Business Automation Help Employee Upskilling?
In a recent Deloitte survey of more than 11,000 business leaders, more than 60 percent of respondents said they actively redesign jobs around artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and new business technologies.
Robots, machines and business automation software can execute repetitive tasks much faster and more precisely than humans. Nevertheless, there are many critical skills such as innovative thinking, creativity, ethical judgement, responsibility, intuition which can be performed by only your human workers. And when people find room and time to use their skills, it is shown that they feel much better and engaged to work.
According to a recent survey, daily stress level of employees is getting higher. Intelligent automation can also help employees to cope with stress. When people have proper tools to use, they feel more secure and comfortable in terms of finishing their jobs on time and with success. 89% of employees believe that automation helped them to be more efficient on work.
Where to Start Intelligent Automation From?
It is always better to start simple. First, define what you need and specify bottlenecks of your processes. Listen your workers and involve them in decision making. Afterwards you can start looking for alternative solutions. Try to go step by step, but never miss the big picture. If you need an invoice extraction tool, for instance, be sure that it can integrate to your existing ERP or is able to streamline with a proper intelligent document processing framework.
