Businesses are always under pressure to live in the now. They’re charged with delivering the best products and services at the best possible prices and most importantly, they’re expected do it now. That’s why many companies look at automation as an all-or-nothing proposition. If we’re going to improve productivity and efficiency, they say, then we need to go all-in and automate everything to maximize the gains. This approach however, rarely succeeds.
That’s because most businesses and business processes are complex, with lots of moving parts and interdependencies. Attempting to upgrade these processes in tandem is often confusing, cumbersome and costly. Anyone that’s ever lived through a change in their company’s CRM or IT platforms can attest, change is rarely as easy as promised.
Fortunately, your company doesn’t need to make huge investments in automation to begin seeing improvements and getting value out of an automation platform. Tools like Qrvey allow for an incremental approach, where select users or departments can start small, then learn, improve and expand over time.
Starting small with frequent iterations is a strategy that has been proven over and over again in the technology space and it applies to automation as well. Companies can start by linking up just a few of their existing datasets or beginning to collect some basic information, then begin using that information for baseline analytics and maybe some business process automation. As time goes on, more information can be gathered and connected, allowing for more reporting and more automation. Soon other users and departments can join in, and before you know it, you’ve re-engineered a sizeable chunk of your business from the ground up, without huge investments in time or resources. Most importantly, you did so without major disruptions in your business or infrastructure.
There are other advantages to starting small, including increased user adoption. When tools are simply, yet mighty, they invite users to use them and learn more over time. This eliminates the need for comprehensive training on an entire platform. Users can instead start with a single form, dataset or process or begin with a predefined template that they can easily modify themselves.
Automation doesn’t have to be daunting. Like many things in life, the journey begins with just a single step.
