With all the brouhaha surrounding Automation, it is not easy to decide on whether it is essential to the growth of your company. Budgetary constraints, or simply put, the cost of automation, is one among many factors which hold one back from investing in automating critical processes, which automation evangelists say will accelerate growth and success.
But have you ever wondered what not automating can cost you? Its time you did, because the opportunity cost of not automating mundane, repetitive processes can cost you more than you ever imagined, especially if you are in data-intensive industry like mortgage, banking or insurance.
Apart from the tangible resources of time and cost which are spent on manual, repetitive processes, your organization also loses out on critical planning, relationship building, employee well being, and more.
As industries become more competitive and try to outpace each other in terms of offering better quality of service, achieve customer satisfaction and ultimately higher growth, not having the first mover advantage can place you in a precarious position.
The Employee Experience Cost
The most direct impact of not automating your critical business processes in on the human component. Repetitive manual process can take a gradual toll on your employees, leaving them with a poor work life balance. Don’t be surprised if your top perform exit your organization for a better one that has already automated their processes.
It is wishful thinking that Bots and Human resources are mutually exclusive. While a bot can perform data extraction or classification, it is not your digital worker but the human who makes the final decision based on the reports. It’s a no-brainer that any intelligent employee would choose an organization where he is supported by a bot which results in a better work-life balance. The loss of every employee will then be followed by the monetary as well as time cost of acquiring and training a new one.
The Time Cost
When error free top-notch service is a goal, then the verification processes needs to be carried out very diligently. This translates into more time spent on each application or document which has been submitted, in industries like mortgage, Insurance or banking.
By not automating, you are applying brakes to your processing speed. Even the fastest team cannot complete more than a few loan applications/ claims per day thereby increasing the waiting period for other customers. And the probability of the new age impatient customers crossing over to your competition, who automated months back, is very high.
The Monetary Cost
Demand fluctuates and is never constant. It is also largely influenced by external factors over which one has little control. Having a large team can be detrimental when the demand is low and may suck your budget dry. A small team, on the other hand, may be unable to withstand a sudden flux in demand and buckle under pressure. A prime example of external factors having a deep impact on the demand is the unfortunate pandemic which strained resources of industries like insurance, healthcare, and logistics. A digital worker, as a bot is also referred today, is more flexible option and can adapt seamlessly to an uptick in data intake and deliver highly accurate outputs at no extra cost. The operations can be scaled up or down seamlessly as the situation demands.
Staggered Growth
Speed is the superpower that is essential to all organizations today that aim to achieve customer satisfaction. Without automation, the speed of data processing is akin to a snail.
Every organization worth its salt has both long-term and short-term objectives as part of its roadmap to success. The tactics for long-term and short-term objectives may vary, but the end goal is always of sustained, high revenue growth. Repetitive manual processes pose multiple roadblocks to the projection of an upward growth chart.
Brand Image & Credibility
A simple discrepancy or error during service can be amplified on social media and have a devastating impact on the brand image of organizations. An angrily worded customer review is always going to be a simple Google search away. The tech-savvy customer of today also prefers to hand his business to a service provider who is technologically empowered as well. Lack of modern automation tools at customer touchpoints will project the image of an obsolete company that isn’t adapting to the latest technology to enhance customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Automation is the light saber to fight the monotony of manual repetitive processes and empower your employees to offer superior customer satisfaction and grow your revenue. But it is also important to implement it at the right milestone during the growth of an organization. While large organizations can easily afford and implement automation to process large volumes of data, it is those belonging to the SMB category who will benefit most as they can scale at will and bypass the bottlenecks experienced during the growth phase to move into the big league.
