Process Automation - finding
ways to work more efficiently and creatively
...
"...
organisations are human creations. They consist
of people rather than material assets ... It is
individuals working within an organisational structure
who produce the product, make the decisions, conceive
the strategies, etc."
(Susan Cartwright,
Business Studies, October 1992)
The dilemma facing most organisations today is
they would accept the opinion expressed above,
but a large part of most people's working life
is still taken up with tasks that could be at
least improved, and at best eliminated by a greater
degree of process automation. In 'Organisational
Behaviour' Huczynski & Buchanan identify 4
primary activity areas; Steady state, policy-making,
innovation, breakdown (i.e. crisis).
Approximately
80 per cent of typical organisational activity is
'Steady-State'. By identifying and automating even
a few basic activities, results in improvements
of time, cost and satisfaction will be obtained.
...
or why do we have washing machines, ovens, toasters
...?
We are used to appliances
making our everyday lives easier, allowing us to
have more time to devote to family, friends and
hobbies. Quite simply put, they remove or reduce
the need to do boring, repetitive tasks and free
up time to do other more interesting or creative
things. The same philosophy should apply to our
professional workplace, where creativity can be
harnessed to create more value for the organisation
and the individual.
Automating
'boring' Business Processes
In practice, this
means a constant appraisal of tasks to try to
identify steps that could be partially or fully
automated. Typically these are also tasks which
human beings find 'boring', which normally means
they involve people acting partly like computers,
transferring reference codes and data by voice
or fax - a very inefficient use of their time.
What
can be done about boring business processes?
Note boring does NOT
mean 'unimportant', simply that human intervention
is probably unnecessary if correctly designed and
maintained. For example, a bank transfer is very
important, but once set in motion a human cannot
and does not want to be involved.
