Business Process Automation & Technology
Manual compilation and reporting takes time, creates inefficiencies in serving the customer besides being the biggest hurdle in retaining and winning over new customers. Further decisions if they are based on manual errors which if go unchecked may have a large impact on the costs and subsequently on the bottom lines.
Construction organizations today are lagging way behind in adopting to appropriate technological solutions for business process automation. It is more conspicuous today in the era of technological revolutions and artificial intelligence.
Peter Drucker’s famous adage ‘What’s measured gets managed’ seems more relevant today than ever before. In a world drowning in data and key performance indicators, where technology and automation solutions have become more cost effective and easier to implement, the decision of WHAT to measure and how to best manage it is critical.
Achieving a clear definition of existing processes and defining clear goals that a business process automation initiative should achieve are the pre-automation hurdles that any company would face with an objective of eventually getting it distinct and clearer as the automation process moves ahead.
It’s easy enough to agree that a process should be faster, easier and cheaper. But how do you measure ‘faster’? And how cheap enough is ‘cheaper’? And who decides what is easier?
While Business Process Automation projects have become more cost effective and easy to implement, they still require an investment and a commitment of time, money and attention to execute successfully. Measuring return on investment and demonstrating measurable success can not only ensure an ongoing commitment to the initiative, but it can impact how ready the company might be to continue to optimize other processes through automation. However, all of this still is managed by ‘Software as a Product’ which majorly
· Requires Large Capital Investment
· Hardware & Networking Infrastructure Cost
· Licensing Cost
· Upgradation Cost
· Change Management & Integration Cost
· Manpower & Training Cost etc.
This is all besides the waiting time for ‘Return on Investments’, Cultural impact, Timelines for PAN Organization implementation etc.
An organization which is into a specific business and starts implementing solutions which are predominantly ‘Software as a Product’ are obviously going to have an ever increasing ‘Cost’ of managing / operating their businesses and its goals. Managing evolving technologies over a period assumes huge mass that organizations get drifted away from their core business focus. Organizations predominantly forget that
· We cannot sole a problem with the management of technology with more technology
· We cannot blame the technology when we make mistakes
· We forget that success today relies heavily on the optimal, faster utilization, adoption and realization of technology benefits
We have to move from the traditional approach to technology which treats systems as assets to an approach which treats technology as a set of services that we can consume and integrate as needed, without necessarily owning the system at all. We need to remember that ‘Systems & Practices’ are always evolving in nature and therefore technology needs to adjust rather than the systems adjusting to technology.
Organization’s major worries today are
· Ever increasing Cost on Capital, Licensing, Operation, Maintenance, Repair and Upgradation Cost be it the hardware, software / networking infrastructure cost, communication cost, etc.
· Ensuring processes ‘Flow’ irrespective of any technology being used and therefore generate ‘Alerts’ as per pre-defined rules / escalation matrix, developing real-time or near to real-time communication and analytics devoid of human intervention, and therefore facilitate and support ‘decision making process’ in real-time scenario. Most of the software still generate lagged reports even today, they are not devoid of human intervention and on a real-time basis.
· Unable to evidence as the works progress is adding to the organizational worries as any delay in remedial action is again increasing the costs
· ‘Change Management’ which technology calls for
· Growing costs with growing business quantum – technology should enable to lower the cost per unit as the quantum grows and therefore look for solutions which adopt to ‘reverse pyramid model’
· Technology are vulnerable to become a liability and therefore call for huge investments every few years; solution lies in limiting the risk as much as possible and which adopts to the continuously changing requirements
· Business get adapted to the technology being implemented rather than technology facilitating to conduct the business smoothly – Technology may not be good across all businesses and their core practices and therefore should limit itself to imitating to facilitate the organization in being best at what they can rather than asking organizations to change its best practices.
Solutions need to build up / increase the spectrum of ‘Standardization’ and therefore bring-in more ‘Visibility’ besides improving ‘Efficiencies’. Technology based solutions however need to restrict themselves
· to pointing out the ‘Trends’ rather than getting into predictions and
· not to take actions where it is not asked for
Projects are the only source of ‘Revenue Generation’ and rest all are ‘Cost to Company’ in ‘Construction Contracting Organization’. Organizations should look forward to keeping the cost to the minimal while expecting faster realization of ‘Return on Investments’. This will facilitate to generate more profits keeping the costs same or lesser. Sustained achievement on these lines would be able to give organization’s their required ‘Competitive Edge’.
Organizations today should precisely look at solutions which
· Can save Effort, Time & Cost
· Ensure Timeliness & Correctness
· Facilitate / Substantiate Decision making process by way of timely and right analytics
· Ensures that ‘Workforce’ adopts and becomes adept without loss of time.
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