The Automation Myth: How to reset your

The Automation Myth: How to reset your practices using people power

@SuiteFiles

Kim Anderson, Marketing Executive, SuiteFiles

Kim is a passionate Jane-of-alltrades marketer who fell into software a bit by accident after trying her hand at design and teaching high school English. She’s one of SuiteFiles’ first employees and loves learning about how businesses tick. Her goal is to make file management less boring.

Automation is the way of the future, but how do we know we’re automating the right things? Here’s how to take a step back in your business and utilise people power to get your processes right!

Elon Musk, CEO at Tesla,

recently tweeted that ‘excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake… Humans are underrated.’ That’s a pretty big admission from, arguably, the King of Automation. Elaborating in an interview with CBS, Musk said that fully automating the final stages of their Model 3 car production wasn’t working. In fact, they had gotten rid of a ‘crazy network of conveyor belts’ because it was slowing them down. In their pursuit of speed and automation, Tesla had created a highly complex web of machines that was difficult to maintain.

Do you have too many conveyor belts?

In the accounting industry, it’s common to hear that automation And why not? - Automation can improve productivity and help you work more efficiently. It saves time on manual tasks and minimises human error. It ensures that tasks are done correctly and on time, and data is often more secure, more accessible, and more connected to other important systems.

However, automations are still processes – ones that need to be maintained as part of a wider network of workflows and tasks within your business. of automation, here are some questions to ask yourself and your business:

There are two key risks that • Has our productivity increased businesses run when introducing due to automation? automation: • Despite automating processes, are we still using a lot of 1. Applying it as a band aid workarounds? or a replacement for • Have we over bad processes, and automated? E.g. 2. Neglecting “The people in your Do we have a lot of automations once business are your apps that we feel they’re in place. This can easily single greatest asset” like we’re not using well or that are difficult to maintain? lead to greater • Are we using our inefficiencies and cause apps effectively or do we businesses to lose sight of need more training? how they’re actually doing. • Do our apps integrate with each other? and apps are the way of the future.

Do a health check-up of your • What areas do we feel we need to processes automate, and why?

Whether you’re new to automation in your business, or you’re an Elon Musk-level pro, it’s always a good idea to temperature check your business. Asking yourself questions about the state of your processes and how well automation is working for you so far is a great way to start. These questions can be difficult to answer. However, one effective way to get clear insights into your processes is to use something that you already have near to hand – your team.

Why is people power so important to your processes?

If you’re worried that you’ve missed the big picture in pursuit The people in your business are your single greatest asset. Over the

years, we’ve seen that the role they play in identifying, creating and perfecting processes in a business directly affects the success of any app they implement.

To develop good processes and automations, here are three approaches we take:

Strategic

Here are 3 reasons why involving Identify where your greatest your team in process creation pain points, and therefore your and subsequent automation is greatest need for automation are. important: It’s tempting to tackle every part of your business at once, but it’s 1. They’re the subject matter often hard and messy to do. Start experts – they’ll know with one part of where the issues are your business, in your current like onboarding processes and can “Automations are new clients, and offer suggestions still processes automate processes for fixes, that need to be there first. 2. They’ll take responsibility maintained” Collaborative for apps and automations if Once we’ve identified they were involved key areas that we need to in the decision making and develop processes around, we implementation process, and start with paper (or a white board) 3. They can tell you immediately and work through what the goal is if an app is effectively solving a and how to get to it. Particularly problem or not. with automations, we map where data or information is entering our How to work with your team to business and where it needs to go make better automation decisions from there.

At SuiteFiles, we’ve found that our processes and automations need to be maintained constantly. It’s easy to hook up some apps, turn on an automation, and forget about it. As our needs change, we need to review old processes, create new ones, and have app owners who can take responsibility for how certain parts of the automation work, especially through integrations. Involving relevant staff members during planning ensures that we don’t miss any vital information, and we’re able to co-create the process together. Staff are encouraged to take ownership of an app or process and we can avoid making assumptions that may lead to bad results. Iterative

Businesses grow and change all the time, so we take an iterative approach to developing and building our processes. For any given process, we constantly cycle through 1) Testing, 2) Reviewing, and 3) Improving. We may need to go back to the drawing board and change the process completely, but with every iteration, we’re reaching a better version of that workflow.

With a slew of new apps on the market, it can be easy to buy into the ‘dream’ they often offer – automations that easily solve your problems. Automation can improve productivity and make you work more efficiently, but it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. Understanding how an app will fit into your business and if it will help you achieve your goals is vital. At the end of the day the goal isn’t automation but better processes – it’s what your business relies on.

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