Covid-19 has thrusted the need for automation into the global spotlight.
As social-distancing measures force people to eliminate the human element as much as possible, customers may now prefer non-human, contactless interaction, airports may speed up their automation efforts for touchless passenger processing, and businesses may need to reduce labour costs and are likely to look into automation as a way to do that.
Automation may simply be the key to pandemic-proofing the global economy.
As companies continue to reel from extended, and unavoidable, closures, it is now clearer than ever that those who fail to automate key components of their businesses will lag behind.
According to Dr Hendrik Bohn, head of strategy at Nedbank Business Banking, there is much debate about where workplace automation will lead the economy, but observers tend to agree on one thing: The trend is only gaining momentum.
“Every business process, such as human resource management and customer service departments, is on the table for automation, especially as technology becomes more sophisticated,” he says. “No matter what the outcome is, automation will undoubtedly change the workplace and, indeed, the wider economy. The only question is: How much will it drastically transform the workplace?”
Automation at a smaller scale
In South Africa, as companies struggled under one of the world’s strictest Covid-19 lockdowns, many of the interesting developments happened among small businesses.
Bohn continues: “Larger companies thought about, explored and had been using automation long before Covid-19. Their sheer size and scale often make the smallest improvement highly beneficial, but smaller companies often did not see enough benefits in it. The lockdown changed this notion almost overnight and suddenly it was no longer about marginal improvements in efficiency, but about sheer survival. Nowhere was this more relevant than in the retail sector, where for small businesses to survive they needed to shift rapidly from a brick-and-mortar store operating model to handling online orders.”
Due to the short implementation time, many companies performed these tasks manually. But this led to errors and bottlenecks that resulted in unhappy customers and overwhelmed employees.
“The only way to fix this was to automate at least parts of these processes. And it was not about driving efficiencies – it was about survival for many of these businesses,” says Bohn.
Small steps and minimal investments
But not all automation investments need to be of this scale – at least not in the middle of a pandemic. Many of the automation developments in South Africa during the Covid-19 lockdown showed that meaningful automation can be done rapidly, in small steps, and with minimal investments.
Bohn says: “There are a lot of cost-effective tools and software available that can serve many business functions, such as order management, stock management and payment management.
“Application programming interfaces, or APIs, provided by financial institutions, for example, can automatically handle complex tasks like payment processing, with the business needing little knowledge of complex coding. APIs make it easier than ever for online stores to improve the user experience for end users by plugging in to automated tasks – a critical factor in automating online shopping and closing sales.
“This is also true for mobile users, where many customers abandon shopping carts because of a poor user experience.”
This type of automation, says Bohn, is cost-effective and highly efficient, and can eliminate inevitable human errors that may undermine operations.
Consulting with a team of experts
Bohn says Nedbank Business Banking can help businesses grow by unpacking their automation needs and, where required, provide flexible solutions with which to finance machinery or acquisitions of existing producers.
“In addition, we have a team of experts that aim to cocreate client-specific solutions with our clients using internal capabilities, as well as leveraging capabilities from our vast network of clients and suppliers,” he says.