Five ways businesses can benefit from automation

When thinking about IT automation, some of the biggest benefits that come to mind are efficiency and increased productivity. Automation can certainly help companies do more with less by introducing smart workflows and removing redundant tasks. Automation also increases the visibility of what’s happening in daily operations, freeing up even more time to focus on critical business matters. Here are five ways businesses can benefit from IT automation.

 

1.    Improved organisation

 

Automation tools distribute information seamlessly. For instance, automatically creating a quote for a new project and being able to invoice it from the same system, all of the information regarding the project is in the same place. It stops the need to go looking for the information across multiple systems.

 

Automation ensures that the information is automatically sent where it’s needed it, keeping the information current, and preventing teams from spending copious amounts of time looking for it.

 

2.    Reduced time spent on redundant tasks

 

One of the biggest benefits to IT automation is the amount of time teams save on manual, repeatable tasks. Leveraging automation helps IT professionals reduce the time spent on creating tickets and configuring applications, which adds up over time. Based on estimates, it takes 5 to 7 minutes for tech teams to open up new tickets due to manual steps like assigning companies and contact information, finding and adding configurations, and more.

 

With automatic ticket routing, time spent on tickets can be reduced to just 30 seconds. For someone that works on 20 tickets a day, that results in 90 minutes a day, or 7.5 hours a week, in additional productivity.

 

3.    Well-established processes

 

The best way to leverage the most benefits from IT automation is to ensure workflows and processes are created that are set up in advance. Establishing these workflows will ensure a set of standards are created, that everyone on the team can follow without having to do additional work. Once these workflow rules are established, these processes can help establish consistency and efficiency within operations – and ensure a consistent experience is delivered to customers, regardless of which teammate handles their tickets.

 

Furthermore, the documented, repeatable processes can help businesses scale by making it easier to accomplish more in less time. Teams can focus on providing excellent customer service and doing a great job when they don’t need to waste time thinking about the process itself.

 

4.    Multi-department visibility

 

Maintaining separate spreadsheets, accounts, and processes makes it difficult to really see how well a business is doing. To see how many projects are completed a day or how quickly projects are delivered, professionals may need to gather information about each employee’s performance to view the company as a whole.

 

Automation tools increase visibility into business operations by centralising data in a way that makes it easy to figure out holistically how a company performs, in addition to the performance of each individual team member. It’s even possible to isolate the performance of one department with automation.

 

5.    Increased Accountability

 

With so many different systems in place, it can be difficult to know exactly what is happening at every moment. For instance, if an employee wanted to delete tasks they didn’t want to do, businesses need processes in place to know this went on. What if deleting something was an accident? How would you know something was accidentally deleted and have the opportunity to get the information back?

Automation reduces human errors by providing a digital trail for the entire operation in one place. It provides increased accountability for everybody’s actions across different systems, so issues like these aren’t a problem.

 

Automation is an easy way to develop the increased accountability, visibility, and centralised processes required for businesses to grow and serve more clients. Technology that helps manage workflows, automate redundant tasks, provide consistent experience to all customers will help businesses provide superior levels of service – and help improve your bottom line.