If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. That’s a phrase used by everyone and their uncle. But unfortunately, it isn’t often stuck to.

We’ve made a business off the back of broken processes, so in some ways, we’re grateful for them – but you definitely shouldn’t be.

If you already know there is something you or your teams do that just doesn’t work properly – whether there are communications challenges, technology errors, security incidents, issues with workplace safety, or quality control – you need to get on it ASAP. But is automation *exactly* what you need?

Perhaps. But it’s not where you should start.

Don’t Patch It. Rebuilt It.

Our phone rings pretty regularly with calls from businesses desperate to drop automation into the middle of their operations. But 9 times out of 10 their business isn’t ready for it. The processes they want to build on aren’t sustainable and adding automation is just going to add cost for minimal gains – not good. Even worse though is when they suggest that they can tweak it to make it fit. If it’s broken don’t ever just patch it – rebuild it better than before.

Because of automation’s recent addition to the pool of tech buzzwords, people think it’s a one size, fix all, easy win. While it does have a good amount to offer, it isn’t going to fix what is already there. If your process is inefficient, automation will just execute that inefficiency at a higher rate.

The Real Battle

Change though is its own mountain to conquer. Whether you’re battling to fix something while it is in motion which often can’t be done or you’re trying to tap into your IT team who are already pushed to get everything else finished. This is where bringing in an expert really helps.

Automation experts, like us, have seen it all before and can provide guidance on how to rebuild processes with as little impact as possible to your operation and your people. Because we see your business from a fresh perspective (and have been doing this for longer than we’d care to admit!) anything that doesn’t work jumps out at us.

Case in Point

Let’s take an example, something simple that businesses, maybe even yours, have to do – adding record IDs to a report. It might start to sound familiar. This manual Excel report is stored in a folder that is only ever dusted off to update the report. No one has read the report or used it at all since it was introduced. Now is there any point in automating this process? Of course not.

As experts, it’s also our responsibility to let you know when something isn’t just broken, but also redundant. If you’ve been carrying out a process poorly for 50 years, why would we want you to invest in doing it for another 50? That wouldn’t help us build a strong relationship with you and that’s what we always want. We’ll help you find a way to make the process more efficient and less error-prone – and then supercharge it with automation to give you the maximum kickback on investment.

Process improvement is present everywhere you look. An efficient process creates more value and automation makes it scalable. We won’t take “because we’ve always done it that way” as an excuse. Let us help you fix your processes and then we’ll look at automation.

We’ve got the complete toolkit and the right experience to fix your processes – contact PAteam today.