The 7 Cs of Process Automation

In developing a workshop for the new year I have stumbled across one of those 'number letters' things that are so beloved of management texts everywhere - the 7 Cs of Process Automation. Specifically, these are the reasons why you should consider using automation in your business processes.

1. Capacity - very simply, by automating your 'low skill' process you liberate your people to do more of the higher value activity. 'Low skill' here is not derogatory. Every business has stuff it needs to do which does not require massive industry knowledge - recording annual leave, approving invoices, etc., as well as a number of company specific bits of administration, knowledge sharing, etc.
2. Customers - automation can improve your customers' experience of dealing with your business. For example, Adobe Sign integrated with SharePoint can spin up order documentation to a template, send it to the customer and record their approval to proceed in a few clicks with no paper, no word files being emailed around and no admin load on the customer.
3. Consistency - automated processes will always behave in the same way. That means your customers know what they're going to get, but it also means you will build a meaningful and accurate dataset describing your business. This is incredibly useful for planning, analysing and of course for...
4. Compliance - with automated processes, and noting everything in point 3, it's very easy to identify and demonstrate what happened, when, why and with what result. Passing audit and certification days goes from being a scramble to find records to a simple data query.
5. Control - including approval steps in your processes gives you control when you need it. For example, you may identify that some customers want the automated path and others want a human touch - and of course which ones it is can depend on the mood on the day. Insert an approval request for the Account Manager: if approved, the automation runs down one path and sends the outputs directly to the customer; if rejected, the automation assembles the output but sends it to the Account Manager instead.
6. Cost - There are lots of ways that automation can help control your costs, but I'll focus on two. The first is 'cost per unit'. Put simply, as a consequence of the capacity benefits, you can do {whatever it is you do} more with the same resources. That reduces your cost per unit. Secondly, by driving up the consistency, you reduce the number of errors and rework, saving you cost and improving the customer experience - meaning account management don't get sucked into complaint resolution.
7. Competitiveness - this is the sum of all the above. By increasing capacity, enhancing the customer experience, operating in a consistent way. guaranteeing compliance, controlling your processes and reducing your cost per unit you become a more competitive business.

Get in touch if you're thinking about automating processes and want to talk through how.