Fit for purpose process, workflow and reporting automation
Consider how much time your team spends on manual, repetetive tasks in a typical day. What is the economic cost of that time? What is the opportunity cost of that time? As a leader, you are likely to find yourself in a conundrum - your team is spending too much time on activities that don't add value, but stopping those activities is not an option either.
Without the time, capabilities or resources to do anything about it, most leaders accept the inefficiency and move on.
Realistically, what are your options
Most leaders assume that to fix the problem (automating manual processes), significant effort and cost is required. Everyone remembers the ERP installation that is 3x over budget and hasn't delivered the expected benefits (or hasn't even been finished yet), or the small army of business analysts, consultants, project managers and programmers that seem to be required for even the simplest new systems. So if the option is that or continuing with the manual effort, it's no surprise that manual effort prevails.
The happy medium
There is a more nuanced path that businesses can take, which reduces almost all of the risk of bloated and costly technology projects, but frees your team to focus on higher-value work. There are applications and programs on almost every computer in the workplace that are waiting to have their automation potential unleashed. And where the job requires slightly more sophistication, there are a new breed of web applications that live and run in the browser that can automate just about anything that your team are currently doing manually.
For example, Miscrosoft Excel, which is in equal parts hated and loved, can be a surprisingly powerful tool to automate manual processes. While it certainly doesn't have the scale or feature-set to rival an ERP, it can often be a perfect fit for internal project that needs to be tracked and reported on (not least because that's probably what your team is currently using, without the automation). Perhaps you need to solicit and track feedback from internal stakeholders, or even customers or suppliers, you could create a web-enabled application in Airtable or a low/no-code platform in a matter of days.
Fortunately, the automation options available to us are far more advanced and configurable than they were even a few years ago. The challenge is knowing which projects are good candidates, finding the right tool for the job, and then rapidly deploying it.
Our approach
We follow a straightforward approach that moves from idea to functional product with minimal risk, time and cost:
- We take the time to understand how your business makes money, it's strategy, what success looks like, and the business and project's key constraints
- We perform a market analysis to identify the most suitable technology to proceed with - we extend our existing market knowledge with regular research to identify new or improved options that may better satisfy your requirements
- We provide a recommendation. In addition to the recommended technology, we will also perform an analysis of the development cost and time saved, which may actually confirm that the current manual approach is optimal
- We scope and build the solution. The core functionality is usually built within days. From this point forward, development happens in partnership with our clients, where additional features and modules are added as needed. This approach ensures that a functional system is prioritised, with each additional feature an add-on, which, if not built, will not compromise the functionality that has already been built
