How automation saves you valuable time
Decision-makers frequently justify workflow automation as a time-saving measure. Yes, it saves time, but also so much more. Let's look at why automation can help you save time and some of the other advantages.
Why should you automate?
One of the most damaging features of a business environment is inefficiency. According to some studies, inefficient operations might cost your organisation up to 30% of its income. That could be a lot more than you'd spend on an automation solution to assist and prevent that inefficiency. It’s safe to say workflow automation systems usually pay for themselves in a very short time after the implementation as they help you save time, and it might sound cliché, but time still means money in a business environment.
Less margin for error
Inefficiency can cost a lot of money. Most manual processes relied exclusively on human intelligence before automated workflows were made accessible to even the smallest businesses. Manual tasks imply a risk for error, as your employees often have more than one task to focus on. Automated systems are less prone to mistakes, as even the most cautious employees can make mistakes, especially if their activities are very demanding and under a lot of pressure. Automation helps to take the lid off and depressurise your employees, especially in a fast-moving environment like the food and beverage industry. Making lesser mistakes also implies you save time, as there is no need to solve huge problems, or unravel inadequacies and failures.
Better decision making
Automation relies on data, and nowadays companies have to consider such a large amount of numbers it’s impossible to manually keep track of all of them at once. Making decisions without taking into account all relevant data is a set-up for failure. Workflow automation solutions give useful information and keep track of all relevant data you need to argument and support your decisions.
In addition, automation helps you gather your data a lot faster, allowing you to take swift and accurate decisions whenever you need. Hence, saving a lot of time in the decision-making process.
Not only does automation helps you save time, but it also helps you to collect and analyse data much faster as well. The more high-quality data you have, the greater the chances of making better decisions that’ll save your company a lot of money.
Better supply and demand management
Often a lot of time is lost when overproducing, or finding ways to stock production excess. In particular, supply chain waste within the food industry is always a concern, given the short shelf lives of certain products. Oversupply can also result in product waste if it is not utilised in a timely manner.
Secondly, demand isn’t always fixed… But we can forecast it. Having a forecasted demand implies you can optimise your warehouse management and your entire supply process. Add automation to the mix and we have multiple ways to improve supply and demand management, and thus save time and capital. An end-to-end solution, such as an ERP system, provides accurate data on the amount of stock needed based on real-time demand.
End-to-end traceability
Automation helps reduce errors, but that doesn’t mean your processes are 100% airtight. Sometimes, especially when working with food and beverages, a contamination can take place. Something that isn’t always picked up by an automated system. In this case there’s still ways to fix it in a standardised way. Modern automation can track products throughout the entire supply chain journey, that way, it becomes far easier to recall certain products or obtain relevant information from a certain item, such as production date. Long story short, automation allows you to isolate issues before they impact the wider public.
More with less
Companies are always on the lookout to cut back costs and save time, yet without impacting the quality of their goods. Modern technology, read: automation, is the answers to many of those prayers as it enables you to do more with less. Less time to produce, less money to fix errors, less people to overview the same processes… Workflow automation simply completes things considerably faster than any human worker could imagine, but that doesn’t mean we are headed to a world with only robots striding through our offices. No, we will always need people. Automation just offers a different more standardised, more accurate and above all easier way of working.
Bottlenecks
Every company has it’s specific bottlenecks, stages in the workflow where you consistently make errors, simply due to the difficulty of the task, or processes that just don’t run as smoothly as they should. Each stage of your workflow, reflects on your performance, especially those with evident bottlenecks. Therefore, if you want to optimise production, it’s crucial know and handke these points of improvements. Using automation in places where bottlenecks slow down your processes inevitably increases your productivity and saves you valuable time trying to figure out possible solutions. Why not let automation figure it out for you?
Integration between departments
Communication between departments is never easy, whether your company is a multinational of a small-medium enterprise. Teamwork crossing the boundaries of your departments often ask a lot of time and effort, simply because they don’t speak the same language or use different tools. Centralising data in one platform, solves the language barrier, ultimately improving collaboration and saving time.
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