Automating Your Business

As we move into a post-pandemic world, what will our new business landscape look like? More specifically, which changes are temporary… and which ones will be permanent?

Those are the questions we all must answer if we hope to accelerate growth and streamline processes this year and beyond. And while we may not yet have data on which to draw accurate conclusions, it is clear that increased levels of remote interaction will remain a fixture in our business lives. Utilizing that as our starting point, where should organizations turn to optimize WFH collaboration and increase productivity? The answer is workflow automation, and that organizations utilizing it properly will experience fewer errors, improved processes and reduced costs… even with less team members.

Eliminate Costly Delays

The demands organizations place on their IT environments are growing in complexity and scale. Exponential amounts of data need to be stored, transmitted and analyzed. Intricate systems must be maintained and protected. Sophisticated platforms require training and integration. Additionally, employees working in remote environments have to contend with more distractions and competing calls for attention – caring for family, managing the home, ensuring compatible working hours – each can lead to less productivity, greater room for human error and increased costs for the organization. If an organization’s processes are not efficient and effective, it can create bottlenecks and miscalculations. To eliminate costly delays, organizations should consider utilizing modern process automation.

Companies that have not yet built automation into their workflows experience suboptimal productivity. The labor and management required to oversee repetitive tasks limits output and advances the risk of error. Sustaining such a system is expensive and can harm the bottom line. Customer experience suffers, and partners grow frustrated.

What’s At Stake

In a post-pandemic business world, the stakes are even higher. Companies that adopt automation will have a better chance of resuming normal operations… but at greater speed with optimized output! Companies that do not run a higher risk of stumbling as they reacclimate and restructure processes to accommodate the changing dynamics of their market space and individual teams.

Automation eliminates all kinds of adverse outcomes. Using technology to execute repeatable tasks minimizes costs, powers efficiency and streamlines operations. Organizations should consider automation as both a starting and a turning point in their digital transformation journey. Taken as a whole, such transformation may seem abstract and out of reach, but automation lets you start with single task repetition and apply it to many sequences.

Restoring clarity to processes is one of the immediate benefits to expect. Since it is critical to understand the tasks involved in a process and know who is responsible for completing them, developing a process map brings insight and distinguishes how a process functions now and how it needs to work in the future. Sometimes the simple review of task workflows will create brainstorming sessions as to improve the results.

Improve Performance Today

With automation enabled, accountability improves across the company, which leads to faster turnaround times, open communication and a unified focus. Standardized outcomes are delivered consistently, improving customer relationships, credibility and strengthening bonds both internally and externally. Additionally, compliance records are readily available, since business processes are recorded and monitored. If organizations have many task-oriented processes that require a team to execute, automation can relieve that burden.

In some cases, the concept of automation makes people uncomfortable, that robots are coming for our jobs. And while robots and AI may very well replace humans when it comes to completing repetitive tasks, such a change should be taken as an opportunity to elevate our teams, to educate and guide them into new territory, and as a result maximize strategic value for all contacts within the channel, including clients, partners, OEMs and distributors.

Automation and jobs are not mutually exclusive. To mitigate uncertainty as we find our way out of this crisis, we must focus on humans achieving their full potential and aspirations. This means founders, investors, industry leaders and public policy-shapers must all emphasize workers and the markets they serve.

Next-Generation Workflows

Next-generation workflow automation is critical to letting businesses proficiently function in an environment that is less par for the course. Automation is a platform on which a modern, digitally transformed business can be made, and, due to the pandemic, the conversion will be quicker than anticipated by most of us.

I see automation as an essential tool, one that ushers in new opportunities for personal development and organizational excellence.

Through automation (specifically the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform), organizations can expect to:

1. Restore clarity to processes
2. Increase accountability
3. Elevate productivity
4. Inform decisions with data
5. Reduce business expenses
6. Standardize security processes
7. Scale

And those are all changes we can get excited about!