A lot has been made of automation in recent years, much of the public understanding of automation focuses on replacing human workers with robotic ones. Depending on your perspective, this either moves us closer to the utopia of people spending more time on leisure and less time at work, or a world where corporate bottom lines have drastically increased unemployment and fiscal strife abounds.
Is it actually that black and white? Personally, I don’t think so.
In my mind, the outcome reflects the goal. If your business is seeking to reduce costs by reducing the number of team members then you’re going to pursue automation solutions that achieve that goal. A great example of this is self-serve checkouts. One person to manage five to twenty checkouts is a lot cheaper than paying one person per checkout. Obviously, shrinkage needs to be taken into account and some consideration for customer sentiment but on the balance of things its a net financial win.
Does this confirm that automation is out to get us and put us all out of jobs? No, it confirms that businesses pursuing cost reduction and increased efficiencies will sometimes seek to reduce staffing costs.
When you set your air conditioner to a specific temperature it turns off once it reaches that level, saving you power. When you sign up for a new product online and it sends you a welcome email with all your details, it makes sure that you won’t forget. When your calendar sends you a pop-up reminder about that all important birthday or appointment, it’s protecting you from errors or potential embarrassment.
Automation features in our everyday lives, much of it improves our quality of living by reducing the number of things we need to actively monitor in our busy lives.
How does this play into business efficiencies if not to reduce staffing costs? Often these automations can be leveraged to shift the focus or reduce the load of regular activities. Creating processes that leverage automation to reduce the number of steps, the number of errors, or the number of touch points can achieve a variety of things.
So the question really is; what is our goal?
If your goal is to reduce customer complaints, then your path there might be conforming and automating some of the customer followup process so reporting on timeframes is available, reminders to staff are automated, visibility is there for managers, and customers know that you have their information at your fingertips.
If your goal is to reduce the number of steps in a task, then the path there may be to automate the creation of documents and outgoing communications that are relevant to the task based on existing data.
So how do I define my goal? I’m so glad you asked.
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