Does your staff spend a lot of time on administration? Registration of the jobs they performed, the agreements they have made, and time registration are often time-consuming tasks. Automation makes it easier and better. Automation means less administration.
Less administration means spending more time on your "actual job"
By deploying software solutions that enable you to spend less time on administration, there will be more time left for your key tasks. Consider, for example, a service technician who handles the administration of work orders digitally instead of using pen and paper. He or she will be left with more time to perform service, maintenance and repair work. The productivity increases, the service level goes up, and your staff will enjoy their work better.
Proper automation prevents duplicate work and errors
Manual administration is error-prone and in many cases brings duplicate work. When you do the administration with pen and paper or in Excel, this causes delay in processes, extra efforts to put the data in another software system (e.g. ERP, CRM or financial) and high risks of errors, misinterpretation and data loss. Automation is not by definition error-free, the design must be good and data input remains a human task, but it reduces the risk of errors and duplicate work.
Automation makes data more complete and accurate
To make the right decisions, you must have the right information. Data must be complete, accurate and up-to-date. Automation helps you with this. Think for example about the sales department immediately registering their agreements and visit reports in a CRM application in accordance to the organizational guidelines. Or for instance automatic updating of spare parts prices and availability based on data from suppliers.
Everyone benefits from real-time, up-to-date information
Ultimately, the entire organization benefits from better information. A few examples:
- Real-time insight into where service technicians are located enabling optimal service planning;
- Being able to invoice directly (or within a few days) instead of waiting for the paper administration to be processed;
- Up-to-date insight into the availability, location and financial value of assets.
It is in the interest of the entire organization to administrate less and to automate more. But it is important to remember that automation is never the goal, but always the means. So do not automate for the sake of automating but do so to achieve the goals of the organization.
Philip van Kemenade is marketing manager at Dysel and is in contact with software end users every day.
