According to automation statistics, 97% of IT leaders think that process automation is pivotal for the success of the digital transformation. In addition, 67% of businesses are implementing process automation to increase visibility across different systems across the enterprise. Meanwhile, 48% of organizations are doing it to automate manual tasks.
Despite exponential growth in automation adoption across enterprises, most businesses still don’t have an automation strategy. That is why their automation efforts fail to deliver the results they are looking for. Don’t want your automation initiatives to face roadblocks? If yes, then you need to create a strategy.
Want to create an automation content strategy from scratch? Here are five key elements of an automation strategy you need to focus on to create a winning automation strategy.
Why Do You Need An Automation Strategy?
Creating an automation strategy is not like setting something up and forgetting it. Instead, it is an incremental process. Your automation strategy will constantly be updated and tweaked according to the situation.
Here are some reasons you need to take a systematic approach to automation.
- It helps you achieve higher productivity
- It gives you more flexibility
- It makes it easy to achieve your automation objectives
Successful automation strategies are usually enabled by technology and prioritize people and processes. This is what makes them so effective. If you want to create a winning automation strategy, you will have to replicate that.
5 Key Elements of Automation Strategy
Here are five important elements that lay the foundation of a successful automation strategy.
- Set Goals and Priorities
One of the biggest reasons most automation initiatives fail is that they try to do many things simultaneously. Instead, it would be best to focus your efforts on important tasks. That will only happen if you set the right priorities and know what you want to achieve with your automation initiative.
Puneet Mehta, founder and CEO of Natomi thinks that you should start your automation journey from areas causing the most pain to your employees. Yes, that might not seem sensible as there is a higher chance of failure, but you have first to remove the biggest roadblocks to impact your organizational culture.
Most organizations embarking on an automation journey ask where to start. Identify something redundant and try to streamline it or automate it. For example, if your employees have to update the same data on multiple locations, this could be a great starting point. By streaming and automating this single process, you can help your employees save their time and effort. This allows them to focus on more value-driven tasks instead of wasting time on these mundane tasks.
- Align Automation With Business Goals
If you want to pursue automation on an ad-hoc basis, it will work independently. However, even if it succeeds in solving your company’s biggest pain points, you will find it difficult to map automation objectives with your overarching business goals. This renders the whole exercise worthless.
According to Becky Trevino, Vice President of operations at Snow Software, “The single most important question they should ask themselves is: ‘How will automation help my business achieve my long term business objective?” In addition, she thinks you should create yes-no metrics for decision-making purposes and answer every question accordingly. For instance, ask yourself, do your automation initiatives help you achieve X business goals? If yes, you can pursue it, but if not, there is no point in spending time and effort on it.
- Value Creation and Delivery
Ask any employee, and they will tell you that they are sick and tired of listening to statements like, “Do more with less” and “Increase operational efficiency without increasing the costs.” Instead of giving these vague statements, create an automation strategy that is forced to value creation and delivery.
What’s more, the focus should be on creating and delivering value to individuals and at a collective level or team, even if you have to buy a dedicated server for it. It should not be limited to your company’s finances only. According to Trevino, “CIOs need to think long-term, communicate their vision, be direct and transparent on how these changes will impact staff, and invest in their people to bring them along this journey. Vision can help you bring different groups together.”
- Impact Evaluation
One of the main reasons why employees tend to resist automation is they think that it can take their jobs. According to a survey conducted by PwC, 60% of respondents say that they are worried about automation taking their jobs. Therefore, if you are an IT leader who wants to implement automation, you need to assess the impact of automation on your employees and organizational culture with Server in Spain.
You will have to convince your employees that automation will help them be more productive and get more done with less effort, but it is also good for the organization. Proactively address all their concerns and fears and ensure that automation will not make their lives easier instead of taking their jobs. Their lack of information creates fear, and when you provide them with the necessary information, you can eliminate that fear.
- Benchmark Tracking
You can never improve what you cannot measure. You might have heard this on many occasions, but it is true in the case of automation. If your automation strategy is replacing one tedious task with another one, there is no point in creating a strategy in the first place. That is why it is important to establish benchmarks and track your progress from time to time.
Select projects that offer measurable benefits so you can easily evaluate where your automation initiatives are heading. To prove to stakeholders, you need a portfolio of success. This will help them visualize the results and evaluate you based on your past track record.
What elements do you include and exclude from your automation strategy and why? Please share it with us in the comments section below.
