The history of humankind has been filled with various inventions that made our work easier. Any innovation that did something instead of us — even the simplest tool — was a step towards automation.
As a civilization, we have finally reached the point where we can automate complex processes, so companies strive towards full automation. Even though we’re still not there, it seems that it could happen soon. According to McKinsey, after all, ⅓ of tasks in ⅔ could be automated.
Full automation benefits the company as much as it helps its employees, who will be able to concentrate on more meaningful work.
A fully-automated organization automates every business process (or individual steps of those processes) whenever possible and makes sense. Such a company has a clear goal it wants to achieve with automation.
Here are the four main pillars of a fully-automated company:
The automotive industry has been one step ahead in terms of automation, as it has been using it for decades in one way or another. Perhaps one of the most exciting uses of automation is collaborative robots — also known as cobots.
Essentially, these are machines assisting operators on assembly lines. Robots took over the dangerous and repetitive jobs, but operators were taught to work with those robots and use them to speed up and improve their work.
One of the earliest use of robots was for welding bodies of cars and trucks. Instead of workers doing it and risking serious health problems, their job was to instruct the robots and watch them do their work. The welding process became more accessible and sophisticated as workers refined vehicle bodies to make them even better.
Nowadays, these collaborative robots are used all around car factories. The only issue that car manufacturers face is the lack of labor subsidized with the use of robots. In other words, many new job opportunities were created in the automotive industry by introducing automation. Workers got educated to use these aids and could do more with cobots than ever before.
Automation isn’t only reserved for big factories and advanced industries, such as the automotive industry. Instead, we see instances of automation every day. For example, when we open an account on a site and receive a welcome email — that’s automation at work.
The point is, automation is nowadays available for medium and small businesses, and it can be used for all kinds of office tasks. Imagine a sales team that can entirely focus on their primary job — selling the product and service — while robots complete all administrative tasks and tedious paperwork with minimal human intervention.
Just like automotive workers managed to improve welding operations with cobots, office workers can enhance and facilitate their operations.
Companies already receive huge benefits by automating just some of their processes. These advantages will only improve in the future once they can fully automate all operations. Let's recall some of these benefits:
Like any other tool, automation is there to aid humans. We already mentioned some of the significant ways workers could benefit from automation in a fully-automated company, and here’s a quick recap.
It’s not possible to fully automate a company at once. It’s a step-by-step process that may take some time, but it will be worthwhile, as both the company and its employees will benefit from it, as described above.
The first step to implementing automation completely is making sure everyone understands what it is and how to use it. Educating all workers is beneficial for making automation work in your favor, as everyone will know what they should do once you start automating processes. The more people understand automation, the faster you’ll fully be able to automate your company.
Bots & People offers a knowledge hub, as well as engaging courses on everything related to automation, including automation strategy, process mining, RPA, AI, IPaaS, and more.
Automation as a Service (AaaS) assist companies with shifting from slow and manual to optimized and automated business processes. Such services are with the company on its every step towards automation, including research, education, consulting, and, ultimately, execution.
Centers of Excellence have existed for decades and are used for all kinds of purposes. Their goal was to share and implement the cumulative knowledge across sectors in a company and, ultimately, assess and improve business tasks. In the business process optimization and automation era, having an internal CoE could prove essential to achieving complete automation.
With the rise of automation, new job opportunities opened up, with many professionals focusing on helping companies implement automation in their processes successfully. They are often referred to as Automation Consultants, and they are often a small but powerful cog in your automation strategy that will set the entire clockwork into motion.
Some companies are one step away from full-automation, which could give them a significant advantage over the non-automated competition.
Automation doesn’t only improve the state of the company as a whole. It benefits individual employees as much since it helps them with everyday tasks, boosts their morale, and ultimately allows them to do more meaningful work.
All in all, automation is there to assist humans and not the other way around. Hence, a fully-automated company values its employees and gives them a chance to prosper by empowering them with automation and educating them about its benefits.
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