Automation refers to the use of technology—such as software, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics (RPA), and machine learning—to perform tasks, processes, or workflows with minimal human intervention. Organizations of all sizes across all industries deploy automation to streamline operations, reduce manual effort, and increase efficiency. This technology can handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks, allowing staff and management to focus on higher-value activities that require critical thinking and creativity.

If you’re new to automation, read on for a concise introduction to this remarkable and versatile technology.

According to research from the International Data Corporation, inefficient operations stemming from manual processes cost organizations between 20% and 30% of their annual revenue. In addition, manual effort often results in higher error rates, shrinkage, and an increased vulnerability to fraud.

Automation is a crucial way to mitigate these risks and save time, costs, and resources. Here are five ways that automation benefits your organization:

1. Streamlines processes and workloads: Automation standardizes and accelerates complex workflows, ensuring tasks are completed consistently and efficiently across departments like finance, HR, customer service, and supply chain management.
2. Minimizes human error: By minimizing manual data entry and human involvement in routine processes, automation significantly reduces the risk of errors, leading to more accurate outcomes and improved data integrity.
3. Saves money: Automation lowers operational costs by reducing labor-intensive tasks, minimizing the need for rework due to errors, and improving resource utilization.
4. Enhances customer service: Automated systems can provide faster response times, personalized experiences, and 24/7 support through chatbots, automated emails, and self-service portals.
5. Drives growth: As businesses scale, automation enables them to handle increased workloads without proportionally increasing costs. It allows for greater agility, faster decision-making, and improved scalability.

Overall, automation is a strategic tool that helps organizations improve productivity, optimize operations, and remain competitive in an increasingly digital economy.

In the modern organization, virtually any process, job, or workload can be automated to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and preserve critical resources.

Here is a selection of common tasks that could be automated, organized by department or function:

IT and infrastructure management

• Server maintenance: Automating backups, updates, patch management, and system monitoring
• Batch processing: Scheduling data processing tasks like report generation, file transfers, and system cleanups
• Database management: Automating data replication, backups, and performance optimization tasks

Finance and accounting

• Invoice processing: Automating the generation, distribution, and tracking of invoices
• Payroll management: Scheduling payroll calculations, tax deductions, and direct deposits
• Reconciliation: Automating bank reconciliations and financial data matching processes

Human resources

• Onboarding/offboarding employees: Automating account creation, access provisioning, and compliance training for new hires or terminations
• Employee scheduling: Creating and managing shift schedules, leave requests, and time tracking

Sales and marketing

• Email campaigns: Scheduling personalized email blasts, follow-ups, and performance tracking
• Lead management: Automating lead assignment, follow-up reminders, and CRM data updates
• Social media posting: Scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and generating reports

Customer service and support

• Ticket routing: Automating the assignment of support tickets based on priority, topic, or agent availability
• Chatbots and auto-responses: Providing 24/7 customer support for common inquiries
• Surveys and feedback requests: Automating post-interaction surveys and feedback collection

Operations and supply chain

• Inventory management: Monitoring stock levels, creating low inventory alerts and automated reordering, and vendor communications
• Logistics scheduling: Coordinating delivery routes, shipment tracking, and fleet management tasks
• Production planning: Scheduling manufacturing processes, equipment maintenance, and resource allocation

Data reporting and analytics

• Report generation: Automating the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of data for real-time dashboards and reports
• Data synchronization: Scheduling regular data updates across systems and databases

Legal and compliance

• Document management: Automating contract generation, approval workflows, and document archiving
• Regulatory compliance reporting: Automating regulatory examinations, audits, and compliance checks, and scheduling compliance reports and deadline reminders

Today, organizations don’t interact with a single server, application, or system. Data centers are made up of multiple solutions and operating systems, working within several environments, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid. When considering an automation solution, it’s important to identify one that supports cross-platform execution and scheduling and works with a variety of common standards and protocols.

Not all automation solutions are created equal. Here are a few key terms and capabilities to understand before you invest in a modern workload automation platform:

• Tasks: In automation, a task is a specific, individual action or operation performing a single, discrete function. A task is a component of a job.
• Jobs: A job is a complete workflow or multi-step process to be automated. It’s made up of one or more tasks.
• Remote management: The ability to access key services remotely is often a prerequisite for an automation tool. Because automation solutions often manage complex distributed systems in geographically dispersed areas, remote management provides centralized oversight, making it easier to monitor, configure and control processes for a single user interface (UI).
• Monitoring: The ability to view current system status is an essential component of automation. It comes in several forms, including manual monitoring, which enables humans to observe and track the status of jobs in progress, and automated monitoring, in which the automation tool reacts to various pre-configured system changes such as events and triggers.
• Triggers: In automation, a trigger is a condition or mechanism that starts an automated workflow. Consider it the starting point of the automation process. Triggers can be based on specific actions, changes, or schedules. For example, in an automated email marketing campaign, a trigger may be activated when a new subscriber joins the mailing list. This trigger would kick off a specific automated action, such as sending a welcome email to the new subscriber.
• Events: An event is an occurrence or change that happens within a system. It’s a broader term than “trigger” in that not all events cause an automation to run. An easy way to think about this is as follows: “The doorbell rings” is an event. “The doorbell rings, causing the porch lights to come on” is a trigger.
• Dashboards: In automation, a dashboard is a centralized user interface that provides a real-time overview of automated processes, workflows, and system performance. Useful features to look for include real-time monitoring, visual data representation (in the form of charts, graphs, and key performance indicators (KPIs)), alerts and monitoring capabilities, robust analytics and reporting, and audit logs for compliance.

You may already have a clear vision of how automation can help make your operations more streamlined, efficient, and effective. But many organizations make the mistake of limiting their view to the IT department. It’s important to spend some time analyzing the whole company to identify those manual processes that take significant resources and human effort to complete. Examples of such workloads include document handling, data analysis and reporting, and file extraction and transferring.

Once you’ve identified these manual processes ripe for automation, you can plan your strategy. VisualCron offers hundreds of pre-coded tasks designed to automate myriad technologies and process steps. With VisualCron’s Web Macro Recorder task, you can even record mouse clicks and keyboard strokes within applications and in the cloud to simulate and automate any human-based process, including online document handling, logging into a website, or creating and downloading a report. See a full list of tasks here.

When you’re ready, begin your automation journey by simply downloading VisualCron and activating your FREE 30-day trial subscription. Why not get started today?