Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom 3 Business Tasks You Should Never Automate

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom 3 Business Tasks You Should Never Automate Many businesses have a bias against automation. People will tell you that automation makes them feel too much like an impersonal conglomerate. Others are afraid that if they automate, their services might lose value. Nevertheless, it’s critical that small businesses keep up with technology if they want to remain competitive. Automating certain portions of your operation will save time, enhance productivity, increase profits and help create a culture in which innovation is valued. By supporting automation from the top, you’ll encourage your employees to try new and more efficient methods for accomplishing their tasks. Take Baby Steps If you haven’t automated any of your processes before, keep it simple in the beginning. Decide on a single task that you can automate without much effort (online employee time sheets, for example). Seek vendor or staff assistance if appropriate. Before you roll out the new system, get your employees on board by explaining the big picture rationale behind the change, and how it will benefit them. Look closely at your preliminary results. You don’t want to automate just for the sake of automating. You should be able to see a clear return on investmentâ€"the money your business is saving because of the initiative should exceed the money you’re spending on the initiative. If you’ve just started automating the routing of service requests so your staff can now manage 10 per hour instead of five, that’s likely a positive ROI. Once you’ve gotten the automation ball rolling, keep the momentum going. Continue to add more processes in which the need for human input is nonexistent or very minimal and exchange ideas with your peers, and youll gradually grow more comfortable and confident. Of course, there are certain areas you should think twice about automating. These include: Finances You can leverage a variety of software tools to make your bookkeeping and financial management easier. But beware of setting up self-sustaining programs that oversee your accounts and pay and collect your billsâ€"and then leaving them alone for several months at a time. All it takes is one late payment, and your carefully constructed system could collapse like dominoes. Do not put your business’ solvency in jeopardy. Keep a human eye on those finances. For the other two things you should never automate, head over to the full post at the AMEX Open Forum.