Technology is moving fast and whilst many companies are trying to automate procedures and workflows, some are still afraid to take the step and often left wondering why their competitors are surpassing them in company growth. Why can they do it and not us?
New products, increases in customer demands, excessive staff costs or a desire for company expansion globally, are just some of the reasons that many of our clients have headed down the automation path. Data driven minds that want to go beyond the boundaries on reliance of human labour, to get the desired outcomes or success. In my opinion, human labour will always be required, but where automation can be employed, in the vast majority of cases, it should.
Scoping your automation needs does not need to be a scary path. Scoping does not necessarily mean committing full resources and money to the project. Initial discovery of automated tools and platform testing, can often unearth some amazing, low cost automated solutions for your company. To remain relevant in your industry, you do not have to automate, but automation does often provide for a competitive advantage in certain key areas of business. Sometimes, small automation steps are all that is needed to significantly improve the bottom line and increase work productivity.
Some may argue, that automation costs are very expensive to embark upon, but trends are showing that automation pricing is now very competitive, due to the number of new players in the market that can assist for a more modest price. Once upon a time, large companies with automated solutions, were charging exorbitant fees, just to scope an API project, today, they need to compete in a more robust environment to win a contract.
My view is, start with simple things like talking to your CRM provider and finding out whether they have any additional automated tools associated with their product. Or, if you are using a Data Partner, ask whether they have any automated solutions in place of existing systems that could alleviate manual labour and allow you, to redeploy your staff more efficiently in areas of need. Simply ask your Vendor suppliers what alternative automated solutions they have, that you may not be taking advantage of.
For those with Data-Driven ambition, feel free to get in touch with us here at Global Data if you want assistance with automation. Whether we can help with our IDFEX API solution that has integrated seamlessly with many CRM’s, or assist with pointing you in the right direction for your automation needs, we would love to hear from you.
