With India aiming to be globally competitive, the business scenario in the country is continuously evolving. Today, it has become imperative for the business entities to become future-ready to gain maximum profit from the arising new opportunities. This has necessitated businesses, be it big or small and to increasingly adopt new technologies which have become the backbone of business innovation and are required to maintain the competitive edge in the market. This has further led to the adoption of automation solutions in business to make it more efficient.
Advantages of business automation
In the present times when the business world is highly dynamic, fast-paced and customers and business clients want immediate service, staying abreast with new technological trends such as business automation is utmost necessary. Here is the list of advantages offered by business automation solutions…
- Saves times: Manual tasks always take time but by employing right business automation solutions, the time to perform any task is reduced considerably. The time that is saved can be utilised by the employees for other productive activities.
- Reduces the chances of errors: When the employee is loaded with work, his/her chances of making mistakes increase not because he/she is inefficient but because of the fact that humans are prone to making errors and are unable to consistently perform to the highest standards. While some mistakes can be covered up, mistake made while performing some important tasks like counting the currency notes can prove very disastrous for any business. However, if automation solution in the form of currency counting machines is put in place, then such mistakes can be eliminated. Thus, countless hours and human efforts can be saved and any big fraud can also be averted. Take another case, in businesses, huge amount of data needs to be maintained. Manual management of such huge and complex data may create room for inaccurate data. Hence, here also, the importance of automation solutions cannot be negated at all.
- Leads to operational stability: Achieving operational stability in daily business processes also becomes easy through automation solutions. Further, such solutions help to define and streamline the process, make it more accurate, constant and dependable. This further reduces the turnaround times for both staff and external customers.
- Reduces overhead costs: Automation can also save the labour costs considerably as businesses would need less number of employees to perform any task.
- Boosts productivity: Businesses can also increase productivity through the use of automation solutions as they can help employees perform more tasks at the same time. This can boost employee motivation as well.
- Helps to beat the competition: Automation also helps the companies to stay ahead of their competition as if the work is finished with more accuracy, efficiency and before time, then obviously, they will have an upper edge over their competitors. Also, staying updated with technology and automation solutions can help businesses prepare well for their consumer’s demand and expectation.
Thus, it is seen that generally those processes in business are automated that are time and resource intensive, are subjected to human error and that can be accelerated through the use of machines and technology.
Business automation not only drives profit for the company but it leads to employee satisfaction as well. According to Michael Page India’s ‘India Automation Trends Report 2017’, nearly 87 per cent of the respondents who participated in the survey stated that business automation has a positive impact on their work situation and is not at all a threat for their job.
This brings us to the point that time has come for all the businesses to opt for business automation, which offers more than one benefit. A few years ago, many business owners kept on asking the question, “Is it worth to automate the office processes?” Well, the answer seems to be evident now that ‘Yes, it is essential for operational and overall growth of business.” Even facts seem to be supporting this. As per a survey by Willis Towers Watson, “The use of automation at workplace in Indian companies is expected to increase from the current 14 per cent to 27 per cent in three years, higher than the global and APAC average.” Hence, today, this significantly growing trend of opting for business automation has definitely given a boost to the business process automation industry in the country.
Views expressed in this article are personal opinion of Harshal Dunakhe, Chief Operating Officer, Kores India.
