Automation

What is business automation? Isn't that just for industrial applications or manufacturing plants?

The answer is no. We define automation in a broader sense for business. Much of business automation today has little to do with the manufacturing plant, however, it does borrow from its methodology of efficiency, speed and consistency.

Business automation may be demonstrated with automated inter operation, a major way in which computers can be applied to more effective business methods is to allow them to automatically carry out the routine tasks involved in running the day to day operation of the organization.

This frees human effort for more creative tasks which can achieve smoother running and develop that all-important competitive edge.

It should be noted, that while increased market share and sales is one way in which a competitive edge can be achieved, the benefit is not linear. i.e. one dollar in additional sales usually achieves considerably less than one dollar in extra profit, depending on the cost of attaining that increase in sales and the cost of the sale itself. However, each dollar saved in the costs of operating the business reflects directly as one more dollar in profit on the bottom line of the Operating statement (Profit/Loss report).

How does this work?
This technology opens the way for many significant improvements in the application of computers to carrying out the routine business processes fully automatically: Business processes operated by computers either locally or remotely can trigger a new business process automatically. Currently, a piece of paper is received containing the transaction attributes. An operator calls up a data entry application program (implementing a business process) from a menu on a computer screen and proceeds to key that information into the computer. This initiates the responding processes required to perform that transaction initiated by another business process - either on the same computer, a remote machine or a human. Some of the areas to which automation is applied:

• Transaction Automation
• Sales Support
• Data Entry
• Accounting
• Posting
• Bookkeeping
• Taxes
• Reports
• Fulfillment of services or good
• Web site-company integrated automation
• Offline tools or equipment

Consequences of Improved Process
Inter operation
With automation in place, the operator's actions are completely eliminated - the inter operation process itself initiating the responding process. At the same time, the cost of manual keying and the cost and disruption caused by the attendant errors (detection and correction) are also eliminated.With computerized business processes being triggered automatically, the elimination of processing delays while operators complete other tasks is an additional benefit.

Redirection of Human Ingenuity
No matter how intelligent the programming of a computer might be in implementing a business process, there are always many exceptions that need human intervention. For instance, a purchasing process operated by a computer might be able to determine how many of what item to order from which supplier and when without any human assistance. But if all the suppliers known to that business process (i.e. are identified as alternate suppliers on the database) are out of stock, a human has to track down an alternative source or determine an alternative action.

In a smoothly running operation, these exception requiring human intervention are infrequent. So the human effort is now directed into the solving of problems in a more dedicated manner rather attempting to solve them on the fly in order to complete the data entry and get on with the next task The role of the human has changed from data entry specialist to problem solving specialist. This change in focus can only enhance the effectiveness of the organization and reduce operating costs.