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With the global competition being tighter than ever, businesses are compelled to align their strategy towards reducing costs, developing new products and services quickly, and streamlining processes. Enterprises are urged to address the demands of evolving business processes through the optimization of information systems, tools, and applications.
One of the most effective methods to achieve the goals above is business automation, made possible by the rise of artificial intelligence, robotization, and machine learning in recent years. Businesses — from startups to enterprises — have started to automate processes in order to gain competitive advantage.
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What will business automation do for your business?
Increase productivity.
Automation aims to reduce the time spent in tedious and repetitive tasks — freeing up a lot of productive time that could be spent on more crucial and value-adding tasks. It also minimizes human errors. The bottom line is that employees are unburdened from the stress and time consumption of manual tasks and the errors they entail.
Secure data better.
Data breaches mean revenue loss and distrust from customers, not to mention legal problems in your business. Automating data security can help your systems better detect threats. Automated security tools also have the ability to run a triage and eliminate threats fast — all without human involvement, depending on how the system is set up.
Serve customers better.
Your company’s customer service can greatly benefit from automation as it provides opportunities to gather data and analyze them faster. Customer insights gathered by automated systems can help your business understand your patrons better and anticipate their needs.
Why do you need custom business automation tools?
Automating business processes can give you a competitive edge, that’s a no-brainer. However, you also have to consider that your business has unique needs. If your company is looking to up its green initiatives, for example, you’d probably want a software solution that will efficiently track your company’s carbon emission. No matter what your unique needs are, the business automation tools that you will invest in must cater to your requirements. Here are a few reasons why you need custom business automation tools.
Scalability
Think big and consider a future where your company has grown. As your business grows, its needs grow and change, as well. When you purchase off-the-shelf software, it’s likely that it won’t be able to support your needs down the road. Go for solutions that you can scale and grow over time, so that you won’t find your business getting limited by software in the future.
Integration
With custom business automation software, you can easily integrate existing tools with the new one. With telecommuting being the norm now more than ever, it is a savvy choice to integrate tools for remote work with the solution you are developing. When your software is custom-made for your business needs, it is less likely to upset the software ecosystem you currently have.
Maintenance
When you decide to get off-the-shelf tools, you will greatly depend on the software developer for updates, fixes, and improvements. This puts your business in a vulnerable position. Whereas, if you opt for custom solutions, you take control of the maintenance and anything that you’d like to do with it.
Security
When a software is only used by one organization, it becomes less attractive to hackers — as they would rather hack into software used by multiple companies. Custom developed software is definitely harder to penetrate and infiltrate.
Cost
The goal of custom business automation is to develop solutions that will fit your business needs and existing tools and hardware. This helps you avoid extra costs and save money. When you license off-the-shelf software, it is likely that you would need to purchase additional hardware in order for it to work seamlessly.
How do you get started?
- Set the requirements. What exactly does your business need? Make sure that your requirements are communicated properly to avoid misunderstandings down the line.
- Organize. Set a roadmap of costs, value, deliverables, assignments, and initiatives.
- Test. Aside from the technical tests done by the developers, tests must also be done to ensure that user experience is seamless and effective.
- Document. For better knowledge transfer and future training needs, documenting every step of the development process is a best practice.
- Hire the right team. Ensure that the team you’ll hire has the expertise for the particular solution you are developing.
Final Thoughts
Choosing to develop custom business automation tools over purchasing off-the-shelf software can help your business address problems directly and scale your business. It makes more sense that the software solution you get is tailored to what your processes require.
About The Author:
Chatty is a freelance writer from Manila. She finds joy in inspiring and educating others through writing. That’s why aside from her job as a language evaluator for local and international students, she spends her leisure time writing about various topics such as lifestyle, technology, and business.
