Automation: The fundamentals
- Ruth Kearney
- Archive , Learning
- July 10, 2020
- Updated:
Table of Contents
GoSmarter is an AI-powered tools and training support toolkit to help businesses optimise digital operations, saving precious time and helping increase productivity.
Our new webinar series takes you through each tool and up first this week was Less Admin, More Business with Smart Automation. CEO of Nightingale HQ Steph Locke broke the presentation into accessible chunks and covered important considerations regarding getting started with automation as a small business owner.
You can view the smaller video clips or the full webinar below and don’t forget, if you want to sign up and avail of free expert support to get automation up and running in your business go to www.gosmarter.ai and join our waitlist.
What is Automation?
Why is automation important for SMEs?
What is important to know to be able to automate processes?
What is the right approach for automating processes?
What tools are out there for SME automation?
Less admin, More Business with Smart Automation (Full webinar)
The GoSmarter webinar series has now finished. We covered some pretty powerful tools and how to use them, and you can catch up on all the webinars below. Please share with other SMEs who could benefit from saving time.
- Less admin, More Business with Smart Automation. Catch up here
- Cut out the Grunt Work and Automate your Social Media. 2020 Catch up here
- Win More, Win Faster with Sales Automation. Catch up here
- Need 24/7 Customer Service? Try no code FAQ Chatbots. Catch up here
- Drive Action, Not Notes with Meeting Automation. Catch up here
- Take back control of Processing Invoicing by Automating. Catch up here
FAQs
Why does automation fundamentals matter more than automation hype?
The technology press is full of stories about AI and automation that focus on the most dramatic applications — autonomous vehicles, AI that writes code, systems that replace entire job categories. These stories are interesting, but they are not useful for an SME that needs to decide whether to automate its invoice processing or its customer service FAQ responses.
The fundamentals of automation that SMEs need to know are more grounded: what types of processes are good candidates for automation, what does a credible ROI case look like, what are the common failure modes, and how do you build internal support for adoption. These are the questions that GoSmarter’s practical approach to AI and automation is built to answer.
What is the process assessment framework?
Before automating anything, it is worth asking whether the process should exist in its current form. The best automation projects often start with process simplification — removing unnecessary steps, consolidating redundant actions, and standardising inputs before deploying automation. Automating a bad process at speed just creates bad outcomes faster.
For manufacturers, this means looking at processes like mill certificate management, inventory recording, cutting plan generation, and quality inspection documentation with a critical eye. Where are people spending time on tasks that should be automated? Where are errors being introduced that a system would not make? Where is data being manually entered that already exists in a digital format somewhere?
