Task Automation- Struggles and solutions

Automation helps you save time by cutting out unnecessary steps and clearing the schedule of employees who regularly deal with repetitive tasks. Just like anything else in the world, automation has its downsides and comes with its challenges. Here are some of the most common struggles you may face and a few tips on how to avoid making mistakes.

1.The complexity of the workflow.

In order to automate your workflow efficiently, you need to understand your processes in their complexity. The entire process that you want to automate must be defined step-by-step so that it can reach your desired outcome. Otherwise, the automation cannot improve your workflow.

2. Overwhelming the system

It comes naturally to want to put your workflow software to work right away, but you may want to think about this twice. Speeding processes up can lead to confusion and disappointment. Our advice to you would be to first automate a clearly definable workflow, test it and once it proves itself successful, choose others and continue.

3. Lack of engagement and training of the team

Making the decision of changing workflow can be easy, but making  people you work with accept this change is the real struggle. Not taking your team on board is a mistake often made by businesses. You need to keep in mind that your team guarantees the success of the automation through phases like testing, implementation, training and adaptation.

Training is an important aspect of automation. Only by investing time in your staff’s training, can you achieve an increased efficiency. Our advice to you is to prepare a team of people that will be in charge of monitoring the whole process. They will be then able to mentor new members of staff and so you will always have assistance right around the corner.

4. Pushback from employees

When you decide to automate your workflow, be careful with the way you transmit this information to your employees. Some of them might think that their job is at risk and that they will be replaced by computers. This leads to lack of concentration and confusion. Make sure you show your employees that you care and help them understand that the role of automation is to supplement their job, not replace them. In case automation leads to jobs redundancy, consider offering them the opportunity to get trained for other positions.

5. Lack of supervision and follow-up

The key to controlling automation tasks is monitoring. The operators need to know what tasks are being performed successfully, and which tasks are failing. The challenge is derived by the wide variety of ways in which the individual tasks can be monitored. Longer-term follow-up is necessary to deal with unforeseen problems.

Business automation is a great way to improve performance, effectiveness and reduce costs. A carefully planned and well-implemented automation can push your business in the right direction. So don’t let small mistakes that can easily be avoided ruin your plan!