How Automation Can Improve Your Business
Getting the best from your business in the modern era is often a matter of knowing when to automate. There are certain processes and tasks that demand human attention – but then there are other (usually more mundane) tasks, that can be performed fairly mindlessly by machines.
Thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence, however, it’s become difficult to see where the line should be drawn. Here, let’s take a closer look at what automation can do for you, and where it might be appropriate to use it.
Enhancing Operational Efficiency
Automation is at its best when it’s removing drudgerous labour from human hands, and leaving those hands free to pursue other, more creative and fulfilling tasks. You might think of an office worker who is asked to name documents in a particular way, based on the contents of a spreadsheet.
When this task takes up a significant number of working hours each week, automating it can lead to huge amounts of extra productivity and value. But even if it’s just a small task, a little bit of automation can help to free up mental energy, and make a given job seem that much less onerous.
Improving Accuracy and Reducing Errors
In many cases, automation can do things more accurately, as well as more quickly. Those documents we’ve mentioned would be renamed precisely as the spreadsheet would dictate. Of course, this would sometimes mean that any errors are also carried over from one location to the other.
But in some cases, modern artificial intelligence, informed by large language models like GPT-4, might be able to spot and correct these errors in the same way that a human being would – and then notify a human being that a correction has been made, so that the action taken can be approved.
In industries where accuracy is critical, like engineering and finance, the role of automated systems in eliminating human error can be hugely beneficial.
Enhancing Employee Satisfaction and Engagement
Freeing workers from mundane tasks can help to lift their wellbeing and morale. This can have a widespread impact, lifting the mood of a given workplace, even among workers who are not directly benefiting from automation.
The end result here is typically higher rates of productivity, lower absenteeism, and reduced rates of staff turnover. After all, no-one wants to perform dull, repetitive work.
You might think of the role that an automated people-first platform for HR might have in overseeing a workplace. It would allow human HR professionals to focus on the people being described by the system, rather than being distracted by the system itself.
Gaining a Competitive Advantage
Workplaces that are not automating will be disadvantaged, relative to those which are. Automation can allow workplaces to be more responsive, more efficient, and more pleasant to work within.
It might also allow operations to scale effectively, since it eliminates the administrative burden of expanding a workforce and procuring new premises.