A very wise man Benjamin Franklin once wrote, ‘Remember that time is money.’ This rings true with current business trends when it comes to creating efficiency through automation.
You might ask what does automation mean for my business? Good question! Most people instinctively think that this means having a robot or a machine doing particular tasks. Although in my experience it doesn’t always need to be a complicated or huge project, it can be as simple as redesigning your business processes and looking at more efficient ways to achieve the same outcome or using technology to complete steps that can be done without human interaction, also known as artificial intelligence (AI).
All too often, we hear people say, ‘We have always done it that way,’ and this is when we know we are starting in the right place. It is sometimes hard to manage change and difficult to see why you would want to update your processes, knowing the benefits of the automation highlights why it would be worthwhile for the business.
Some of the primary benefits include:
- Cost reduction
- Productivity
- Availability
- Reliability
- Performance
In particular, we have seen great opportunities arise in several areas of the finance department. Implementing new accounting technology (such as Xero) initially creates improvements and efficiency around bookkeeping and accounting requirements, however usually also highlights other administrative tasks and processes that can easily be redesigned to gain additional hours of extra time for the team member.
Having undertaken such projects in the past, seeing and hearing first hand how the changes impacted the business is a testament to Benjamin Franklin’s quote. In some cases, the results almost doubled what was initially intended by creating additional structure and reduced administration time on tasks which ultimately provided lower costs and overall created more opportunity within the business.
