By Juan Perez, EVP and CIO of Salesforce
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Summary: Business leaders are under immense pressure to deliver results in the face of market challenges. Automation is an immediate way to improve efficiency and productivity across every department. The technology is no longer a “nice-to-have”; it’s a must-have, because automation tools improve both business and employee performance. And automation can help combat burnout and improve work-life balance, which are critical retention strategies for companies adapting to a shifting labor market.
The C-suite is feeling extra pressure to deliver results. Protracted inflation, supply chain disruptions, market volatility, and recession fears are driving business leaders to trim costs and boost efficiency. Meanwhile, the imperative to provide better customer and employee experiences has not gone away. As a result, every company and organization must now strive to do more with the tools and resources at their disposal.
An investment in business process automation is one of the fastest ways to improve efficiency and productivity across every department: sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, human resources, finance, and more. Automation reduces the repetitive and monotonous tasks humans have to do by relegating those tasks to software, which usually means a better experience for customers, reduced error rates, improved compliance, and lower stress for teams.
Prioritizing automation helps business leaders focus on increasing efficiency, improving results, and delivering value.
The Benefits of Automation
Automation is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. Adopting automation is especially useful in challenging economic times.
With real-time data, automation technology can now trigger immediate automations based on real-time changes in customer behavior or market conditions. Paired with artificial intelligence (AI), companies can use more advanced systems that are not only capable of performing repetitive tasks, but also use AI to learn, adapt, and make decisions based on real-time data. Together, real-time data, automation and AI enable organizations to deliver highly personalized customer experiences, at scale, while driving higher levels of productivity and efficiency.
Today, many employees and leaders view automation as a complementary tool. More than 90% of workers recently surveyed said automation solutions increased their productivity, and 85% said these tools boosted collaboration across their teams. Nearly 90% also said they trusted automation solutions to get more done without errors and help them make decisions faster.
Beyond the business advantages, the human benefits of automation are often under-appreciated. The technology performs the tedious tasks that few people relish, like filling out multiple forms to replace a lost credit card, and helps to lighten employees’ workloads.
Vonage, a global leader in cloud communications, sought to unify and automate how its workforce and systems work together to help accelerate growth. Vonage used automation technologies to consolidate customer data, making it easier and faster for sales teams to understand the needs of customers and prospects.
Automation technologies enabled Vonage to simplify quote creation and management, cutting account/ provisioning time from four days to just minutes, while also reducing the risk of human error.
Business Results and Growth
In a recent survey, nearly 80% of employees reported that automation gave them more time to deepen relationships with customers and other stakeholders, take on challenging new projects, and learn new skills.
Automation tools also improve the overall employee experience: nearly 90% said they felt more satisfied with their jobs since they began using the technology, and 84% were more satisfied with their employer. Combating burnout and improving work-life balance through automation are critical retention strategies for companies adapting to a shifting labor market.
As a longtime CIO, I’ve gleaned best practices for getting started with automation. Here’s how you can adopt and scale automation tools to drive growth in any economic environment:
Succeeding with automation starts with what I call “business intimacy.” Developing an automation strategy in silos, without listening to stakeholders across the business, makes it difficult to choose the right technology and priorities for automation.
Instead, technology leaders must truly understand the needs and strategic objectives of every part of the company, including sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT. By partnering closely with key business leaders, CIOs can help elevate core priorities amid budget constraints and deliver the right technology to achieve teams’ most pressing goals.
With efficiency and customer success as our goal, we apply business intimacy internally to support Salesforce’s transformation. We’re using automation and AI to increase efficiency and deliver transformative automated capabilities across the company. For example, we’re exploring how Slack can be used to increase sales productivity and help close deals faster by automatically delivering real-time insights to connect sellers, account teams, and cross-functional stakeholders. We use automation to drive faster decision making, streamline internal processes, improve the way we interact with our customers, and drive better performance, productivity, and profitability across the company.
A critical step to automating business processes and drawing useful insights from enterprise data is to bring together information locked away in disparate systems. Look for technologies that can connect and harmonize data from a variety of sources into a single platform that provides a seamless view of the business. Funneling all that valuable data into a single source of truth for each individual customer is what allows automation to enhance the customer experience by acting on intelligent insights to personalize every customer interaction.
Building out complex, multi-departmental workflows has traditionally meant substantial investments in development and tooling. With operational efficiency top of mind, companies need low-code solutions that give anyone — not just admins — the ability to build and deploy automation quickly.
Choose solutions with plenty of off-the-shelf components that allow business teams and end users to automate any business process quickly. Solutions should also give IT the tools to build customized automation components that the entire business can use. The ability to quickly and easily automate workflows helps companies achieve faster time to value, whether by reducing case handle time, boosting conversion rates, providing faster quotes, expediting client onboarding, or streamlining order processing.
Once an organization has deployed these solutions, it can consistently quantify, track, and publish the results to demonstrate value; generate investment for other automation initiatives; develop new ideas; and stop projects with little to no return.
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Automation is often perceived as a mechanism to eliminate jobs and reduce costs, but humans are essential because they are uniquely capable of managing more strategic, relationship-building work. While the intrinsic purpose of automation is operational efficiency, the health of a business is really the driving factor behind adoption. An inefficient organization will eventually need to respond to business pressures or go out of business. Automation helps protect companies from the burden of inefficiency.
Encouraging team members to think about and share ideas on ways to remove inefficiencies and eliminate repetitive and manual processes can build an environment in which employees feel they are part of the automation strategy.
A Game Changer
Automation is a critical capability for any company looking to digitally transform. As organizations adapt to an unpredictable landscape, those that invest in automation are poised to reap significant cost savings and productivity benefits, while also increasing job satisfaction, work-life balance, and employee retention. Automation that enables companies to optimize processes and deliver personalized engagement at scale is a game changer for employee and customer experience.
Juan Perez is EVP and CIO of Salesforce.
Productivity knows that when it comes to manufacturing, change can seem overwhelming, time-consuming and scary — to say the least. While not all change is created equal, many shops resist changing to automation for a number of reasons. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way, and automation integration shouldn’t keep you up at night nor should workers fear being replaced. In fact, you’ll be surprised by the number of productive hours you’ll gain and new projects and business you’ll be able to take on with automation. The best place to start is with Productivity’s applications and automation experts who are committed to helping companies implement innovative automation solutions that meet manufacturing challenges. They’ll guide you through the process of your robotics integration projects from start to finish. Whether you’re adding one or many robots, automating your turning production processes with bar feeders, automatic pallet loaders (APLs), or using vending systems to automate control of tooling and accessories, this guide will demonstrate the multitude of benefits of automation and help you make the best decision for your manufacturing facility.
With the push for Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing and the importance of reaching higher productivity and efficiency levels, automation in manufacturing is paramount. Over the decades, automation has become a standardized production tool empowering manufacturers to gain better control of their operations and production processes. With automation’s ability to streamline repetitive, hazardous, and tedious tasks, an automated system can perform load/unload tasks, processing, inspection, assembling or handling of parts unattended or lights out, allowing one employee to work on several machines or other jobs at the same time.
Automation in manufacturing can help lower costs, improve worker safety, reduce factory lead times, provide faster ROI, allow your operation to become more competitive, increase production output, and so much more!
Explore the benefits of automation in detail with this guide. You can also check out Productivity’s Robotics & Automation Services.
Robots can perform the work of three to five people, depending on the task. And bar feeders and APLs allow your machinists to attend to multiple machines at once. In addition to savings on the cost of labor, energy savings can also be significant due to lower heating requirements in automated operations. Automation integration streamlines processes and increases part accuracy, which means minimal material waste for your operation.
Automated cells, bar feeders and APLs remove workers from dangerous tasks. Your employees will thank you for safeguarding them against the hazards of a factory environment.
Automation can keep your process in-house, improve process control and significantly reduce lead times compared to outsourcing or going overseas.
Automation solutions are based on your unique needs and goals and pay for themselves quickly due to lower operating costs, reduced lead times, increased output and more.
Automated cells, bar feeders and APLs allow you to decrease cycle times and cost-per-piece while improving quality. This allows you to better compete on a global scale. Additionally, the flexibility of automation integration enables you to retool a cell to exceed the capabilities of your competition.
A robot has the ability to work at a constant speed, unattended, 24/7, as do bar feeders and APLs. Automation in manufacturing means you’ve got the potential to produce more. New products can be quickly introduced into the production process and new product programming can be done offline with no disruption to existing processes.
Automated cells, bar feeders and APLs typically perform the manufacturing process with better consistency than human machinists. This results in greater control and consistency of product quality.
By streamlining equipment and processes, reducing scrap and using less space, automation uses less energy. A key benefit of automation is that it reduces your environmental footprint which can save you real money.
Consistent production by automation integration allows a shop to reliably predict timing and costs. That predictability permits a tighter margin on almost any project.
Automated cells have large amounts of potential capacity concentrated in one compact system. This allows shops to produce parts in-house that have previously been outsourced.
Robots are designed on compact bases to fit in confined spaces. In addition to being mounted on the floor, robots can be mounted on walls, ceilings, rail tracks and shelves. They can perform tasks in confined spaces, saving you valuable floor space.
Productivity will work with you to provide a complete robotics solution system — hardware, software and controls. Your cell will be proven out at Productivity and shipped out production-ready — allowing you to start making parts as soon as it’s installed in your shop.
Over the next three decades, statistics show that more than 76 million baby boomers will retire and only 46 million new workers will be available to replace them. During this time, your demand for labor will continue, making automation a real and viable solution.
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