Business automation!

Business automation!

You may think that most of the work that is done every day is carried out in the same process every time. The part that performs this same process is the part that can be most automated. If we can automate this part, we will be able to afford more time for our daily work and spend more time on our new work. This time, I would like to introduce an article on effective means.

What are the effective means to effectively improve work efficiency?

Advances in technology are driving automation and mechanization in every part of our work. However, some companies may have become accustomed to the traditional way of doing things, and even though there are ways to streamline their operations, they may be left alone. This time, we will introduce how to effectively improve work efficiency.

What are the purposes and benefits of improving operational efficiency?

The purpose of operational efficiency is to increase sales and improve employee performance by streamlining the day-to-day operations of a company. By eliminating "waste," "waste," and "unevenness" in your work, you will be able to make more effective profits.

Muri: "Business is biased toward the person in charge" "Too much work" "Impossible schedule"
Waste: "There is unnecessary work" "Excessive production" "There is inefficient movement"
Mura: "Results are not stable"

By eliminating muri, waste, and unevenness, human resources can be devoted to other tasks and the burden on employees can be reduced. There are five main merits of improving work efficiency.

- Cost reduction
If you eliminate waste in your work, you can inevitably cut costs. For example, if meeting materials can be made paperless, paper and printing costs can be reduced.

- Productivity improvement
Eliminating unreasonable schedule management gives employees more time and psychological leeway. The more you can afford, the more you can bring out the performance of your employees.

- Responding to labor shortage

By introducing IT technology and automating and mechanizing it, we can reduce the number of people involved in business. As a result, it will lead to the elimination of labor shortage.

- Improving the work-life balance of employees
If you can streamline your work and reduce the effort of your employees, you can increase your private time. The time created by automation and mechanization can be used for taking vacations and improving skills.

- Business stylization
You can reduce wasteful work by standardizing your daily work. Even if personnel are replaced, handing over is simplified, responsiveness is improved, and mistakes are reduced.

- Method to realize business efficiency
Next, let's look at specific ways to streamline operations.

- Visualization of business
If you don't know what is reducing the efficiency of your work, you cannot take measures. Therefore, we will grasp the problem and devise a solution by "visualizing" it in an easy-to-understand manner with graphs and charts using numerical values ​​for each business process. For example, in call center complaint processing, we collect data such as how long it takes to process one complaint, attributes and characteristics of Kramer. By quantifying the data and analyzing the trends, if the countermeasures are made into a manual, complaint processing can be performed more efficiently.

- Improvement of work environment
A comfortable working environment leads to improved work efficiency for employees. Thorough 3S (organization, tidying, cleaning) of environment maintenance is the basis of work efficiency.

Organize: Determine what you don't need and what you don't need, and immediately throw away what you don't need. With nothing extra, you can spend less time finding what you need. Decide what you should do and what you don't need to do, and if there is something you don't need to do in your daily work, consult with your boss to eliminate waste.

Organize: Put used items back in place. This alone will prevent clutter around your desk.

Cleaning: If there is dust or dirt, clean it immediately. If you notice dust or dirt, you can clean it immediately to keep it clean.

- Introduction of IT tools
By introducing IT tools, you can improve business efficiency. For example, in the sales position, a series of operations related to sales can be automated by introducing IT tools, such as listing the companies of business partners, creating materials for business negotiations, and making appointments.
There is also a tool that automatically picks up companies that meet the conditions and lists them by setting the conditions of the business partner in advance. There are also tools that have the ability to automatically send emails to potential customers and approach them, rather than just listing them. You can also quantify the feel of prospective customers and take measures to further improve sales efficiency. With such tools, you can save time and effort in creating customer lists and inefficient approaches, which can help you work more efficiently.
In addition, IT tools such as business chat can be used to make contact within the organization more conveniently and efficiently.

- Three tools that can be used to improve work efficiency
Here are three specific tools to improve work efficiency.

Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that allows you to access data anytime, anywhere outside the company by storing data files related to business in the cloud. You can access your data at home, on business trips, or even overseas 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on your computer or smartphone.
Data is stored in the cloud and backed up, so you don't have to worry about data loss like external media. In addition, it is easy for multiple people to share data, and documents created by a team can be edited in parallel.

Groupware
Groupware is software for sharing information within a company or organization. Over the network, you can integrate the systems you need within your organization, including chat, bulletin boards, data sharing, task management, schedule management, attendance management, and electronic payments. For example, you can centrally adjust the schedule and time of meetings without having to contact each member individually.

RPA
RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is the automation of human tasks by machines. Technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning are also included in RPA. Robot-based automation is already progressing in factory production lines, but it is expanding into higher-dimensional fields such as data entry and data collection.
For example, by automating the data entry work for invoices, it is possible to process each case in tens of seconds and eliminate typos. Until then, humans had to spend a huge amount of time entering data, and I couldn't handle other tasks. What's more, it's difficult to maintain concentration by simply entering numbers, and if you work for a long time, you will inevitably make mistakes. RPA can replace such human-intensive tasks.

One bank has succeeded in automating the tedious task of fetching data from an in-house system every hour and copying the confirmed data to Excel with RPA. By introducing 20 types of RPA, we saved 8,000 hours of work per year.
Another company has automated the task of properly displaying information such as inventory, prices, and point redemption rates for specific e-commerce sites. There are more than 3,000 task items, and even if three people work 24 hours a day, it will take more than a week. For this task, RPA has made it possible to automatically collect information about products online and display them in real time. It is said that RPA completed the work that took more than a week for three people in half a day.

- Utilization of IT holds the key to improving operational efficiency
In recent years, it has become possible to improve work efficiency relatively easily by utilizing IT tools. Why don't you review your business so far and then introduce new technology to improve your business efficiency?