Don't Leave Millions on the Table: The Hidden Goldmine of Automation You Are Overlooking

Automation is no longer a luxury but a necessity in the modern business.?Companies that fail to adopt automation are missing out on significant opportunities for growth and efficiency. This article aims to shed light on the value of automation, its current status, the missed opportunities, and how to seize them.

The Value of Automation

Automation brings many benefits to businesses, including cost-saving, efficiency, and scalability. It streamlines operations, minimizes human error, and allows companies to focus on core competencies.?

Contrary to popular belief, automation is more than extensive programs reserved for large teams. In today's modern workplace, individuals and groups of all sizes can benefit from DIY automation.

One colleague recently joined our team and was amazed by the Power Automate workflows we use. These automated processes have replaced tedious manual tasks, allowing our team to concentrate on more critical work and saving us much time. He was even more surprised when he saw how easy it was to build the automation by using simple drag-and-drop and configuring a few dropdown menus.

The Status of Workflow Automation

According to a?report by Kissflow ,?94% of companies perform repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Automation has improved jobs for 90% of knowledge workers and productivity for 66%.?

The business process automation (BPA) market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 15% between 2022 and 2027. The?market size?is forecast to increase by?USD 9 billion.

The Opportunity

Companies must pay more attention to the time and resources spent on repetitive manual tasks. According to recent research by Workfellow (a company specializing in task mining), the typical office worker spends 10% of their time on manual data entry into business applications like ERP systems or spreadsheets.

The average employee does over 1000 copy-paste weekly, accounting for over a million copy-paste activities in a year for a typical business operations team of 20.

Significant benefits can be achieved by automating even a tiny percentage of workers’ time. Imagine the possibilities if you give your people 10% or 20% of their time back.??

Automation Is No Longer a Luxury but a Necessity in the Modern Business.

This time could be better spent on tasks that add value to the business, such as strategic planning or customer engagement. The cost of this lost productivity is staggering and represents a significant missed opportunity for companies.

How to Unlock Your Workforce's Potential with Automation

Initiating a shift in your team's operations may seem challenging, but there are several ways to kickstart the automation revolution and demonstrate its value as a worthwhile investment.

Automation Does Not Mean Making People Redundant

Be clear about what automation means, and create options for your people.

There is a common belief among many people that if they incorporate?automation?into their work, they will be made?redundant. This has led managers and workers to refuse to automate tasks to secure their jobs. The only way to break this cycle is by educating individuals and?ensuring they have access to more meaningful roles.

Create an Automation Specialists Team

While everyone can easily automate many of their tasks today, having someone pioneering new tech and processes is a good idea. Depending on the size of your company, this investment can be made by one person or an entire team, but it will pay off tenfold in a short amount of time.

Use the Tools You Already Have

Based on a Statista study, Microsoft 365 is used by?over a million?companies worldwide, with 145k customers in the United States alone using the Office Suite software.

Office 365 includes a tool called Power Automate that enables workflow automation for all Office tools, such as Outlook, OneDrive, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, as well as many other services outside of Microsoft. To illustrate, I'd like to give you a few simple examples of automation that can save time.

• Organize Your Email Attachments?in OneDrive: Still wasting time searching for that PowerPoint presentation someone sent you last month? Consolidate all your attachments in OneDrive for quick and easy access.

• Consolidate all your?business travel expenses?in Excel by simply photographing the receipt.

Power Automate offers thousands of pre-built templates that can be easily customized.

And if You Don’t Have Them, Get?Them.

Numerous Low-Code and No-Code tools in the market can automate simple tasks and create complex applications to streamline more significant processes. For instance, Low-Code platforms like Zoho Creator allow users to automate inventory management for small businesses, while Mendix can be used to create digital insurance applications with logistics tracking.

On the No-Code front, AppMaster offers a drag-and-drop interface for building e-commerce apps with secure payment gateways. Bubble allows for the creation of mobile-responsive social interaction apps. These tools make it easier for companies to adopt automation, regardless of their size or technical expertise.

One of the most straightforward yet most potent apps for automating workflows is Zapier , with connectivity between over 6,000 different applications. It is the Swiss Army knife of automation and can accomplish almost anything you can imagine.

Build an Automation Education Program.

With busy schedules and overwhelming workloads, expecting employees to self-enroll in automation courses and test workflow automation tools sounds like wishful thinking. Use success stories from other colleagues to encourage them to?“set it and forget it.”?More than anything, managers must include automation as part of teams' OKRs or yearly goals.

If you want to learn what it means to automate most of your work, in my new cohort course, “Unlock 40% More Time: Master Productivity, Analytics, and Focus for Life and Career Success,” I teach busy managers to?free up to 40% of their time using intelligent automation, prioritization, and focus techniques.

Get a 10% discount today using the code "EARLYBIRD2023" or a $100 discount per person when enrolling a group of four or more.

Map Your Current Manual Tasks...

It's important to understand that?not everything needs to be automated.?So, you need to map out the tasks that consume your and your team's time.?You don't need fancy tools?to do this –?everyone knows where they're putting their time.?Once you have mapped out the tasks, prioritize them to select the first task. You should start with tasks that free up more time and require less effort to automate.

...and Measure your Automation efforts.

Precisely, as with any other investment, you need to ensure your automation efforts are yielding results or at least that you see signs of a change.

Some metrics or KPIs to measure automation are, for example:

• Hours recovered: This is simply the number of hours your employees recover on average in a given week or month.?
• Automation ROI: Measured as number of hours saved times cost per employee/hour.
• Another attractive measure is the?number of new initiatives?derived from freeing up managers' time.

Although it is a relatively lengthy funnel, relieving your people from tedious, repetitive tasks will also increase employee satisfaction in the long run.

Make Automation a Company Priority

Automation should be treated as something other than a one-time project. Therefore,?senior leadership must intend to automate and reward employees?who take on automation efforts.

Offering?incentives for new ideas?or projects is an excellent way to encourage employees to step out of their comfort zone, automate their work, and take on new responsibilities. This approach will increase efficiency and productivity and?create a culture of innovation?and continuous improvement.

Conclusion

The potential benefits of automation are too significant to overlook. Many companies are losing time and money waiting for large-scale initiatives to automate their workloads. However, with the availability of Low-Code and No-Code tools, there's no excuse for not embracing an automation culture. It's time to take action, one step at a time, and start reaping the benefits of automation.

Please note that I am NOT affiliated with or receive any commission from any companies or platforms mentioned in this article. The references are meant for informational purposes to provide value to the reader.