In so many ways, man hours are expensive and inefficient, so if you’re allowing employees to spend time doing simple but time consuming tasks, you’re probably wasting your own money.

 

Automation is a word that should be on your mind daily as you run your company. Analyzing your business for improvements is crucial to staying successful, and automation is one of the most significant things you can do. Making processes more efficient (even on the smallest scale) is something that has been pushing humankind forward since our existence began. 

 

Without innovation and automation we’d still be in the pre-industrial revolution days - no vehicles, no cell phones, no personal computers, and no manufacturing machinery (actually, no manufacturing at all). Pioneers in manufacturing learned quickly that to be more successful they needed to identify repetitive or time consuming parts of a process and improve upon them.

 

In 2015, we have endless examples of processes that have been automated and we can see how that has continuously pushed society forward. You should be taking these examples into consideration because each step towards automating a new process is a step towards growth and efficiency - and if you don’t, your competitors will beat you to it. 

 

Are members of your team having to take data from one place and enter it into another? Are you regularly needed to give approval or guidance for a part of a manufacturing process? Is there anyone in your business that is frequently having to wait around for the system for the next step in their assigned process? What about making sure you’re getting paid - are you having to keep track of who has paid you and keep bugging those who haven’t?

 

These are all things you should be taking as signals that you have processes that need to be improved. Data should never have to entered more than once, and entering it the first time should be as quick and easy as possible. If you’re being interrupted regularly for the same thing, it’s time to find a way to automate that process. You shouldn’t have to be paying for an employee (or yourself) to make sure your money is collected for you - cash should be flowing without taking time away from your day to day.

 

Some people are afraid of too much automation, perhaps fearing that they may stray too far from their ‘mom and pop’ feel. But the truth is, by automating your business, you can actually spend MORE time being a ‘mom and pop’. When you automate the mundane, you have more time for the things that really matter.

 

Take the time to study what your least efficient processes are each week - the ones that take the longest, have the most mistakes, or need the most oversight. Once you have a good list it’s time to find ways to cut those processes down to the best versions they can be. Next look for ways that technology (and technology isn’t just something on a computer screen) can make that process happen automatically.

 

Poorly executed processes can seriously hold you back from having quick turnaround times, low waste, low production cost and high reliability. Don’t live in the pre-industrial age. Allmoxy can help.