3 Ways to Save with Automation
Many people out there believe that the 4th industrial revolution is the rise in automation. This rise in automation will lead to a significant increase in business growth, labour markets and benefit the economy greatly. However, it can be difficult for those without experience in automation to know ways in which automation could save them both time and money.
Firstly, it is important to look at the different types of automation which can provide three different ways to save your time, in an increasingly more complex manner.
Automation software is often used as a tool to aid companies in creating systems to handle any of those boring repetitive manual tasks. These tools aim to save time, improve operational efficiency, and therefore reduce costs over time. Automation software is being used throughout the world in a myriad of different industries and types of processes. This includes (but is not limited to) the financial industry, medicine, and manufacturing companies.
Automation isn’t a simple solution all of the time, and it isn’t a simple “one-size-fits-all” approach to operational efficiency. Every company which wants to implement automation will have different requirements and a different setup that needs to be automated.
Basic Automation
This is the type of automation that involves very repetitive work which is easily understood and replicated. This is relatively high-level automation and is all about automation high-volume tasks which do not require human intervention. Think of the type of copy/paste type admin tasks that we all hate. These tasks generally aren’t prone to human error but are the type of tasks that reduce staff morale due to their repetitive nature.
Enhanced Automation
Enhanced automation is slightly more complex, and generally do involve the potential risk of human error. This involves a little more sophistication and specialised automated approaches. An example could be scanning business emails for specific information and then organising them based on the outcome. This can be incredibly helpful when attached to an invoice processing team. For example, internal invoices could be automatically filed and sent to one individual for processing, while invoices from an external party could be sent to another individual for processing. These tasks often seem simple, but something which can take 30 minutes of someone’s time every day, when compounded over a working year equates to over 100 hours saved
Cognitive Automation
This is the most complex type of automation that a business can utilise, and as the name states ‘cognitive’ relates to a subsection of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This level of automation will attempt to imitate human reasoning and thinking. Therefore, it will look at something, analyse it as though a human would, and make a decision. Generally, AI is incredibly expensive to implement due to its complexity, but we are seeing it become more accessible in recent years. A common example we have seen sprouting up globally is the utilisation of AI in customer service roles. Many live chats on websites have fixed answers for a set number of questions. However, some AI chatbots can almost hold full conversations with people where they would think they are talking to a real human.