That automation is everything as far as efficiency in the running of a business is concerned is no secret. Businesses that can automate most of their processes tend to outperform those that have systems that cannot be automated.
As business grows, you’ll often find yourself repeating particular tasks and they can really be time consuming. As a result, your productivity may be unfavourably affected. Such effects on productivity may slow down the growth of your company, something that no entrepreneur wants.
That’s why it’s always a good idea to consider implementing ways to make these repetitive processes run ‘on their own’. This is what automation is about.
It is the use of control systems, machines and information technologies toenhance productivity in the delivery of services and production of goods.
Automation however has its shortfalls when used at the early days of starting up. It’s only applicable at the stages where you are intimately familiar with your systems and processes and have optimised them as much as possible over time.
Here’s the reasons why you should keep from automating while starting up:
There’s the risk of automating an ineffective system
A business will often automate as many of its processes and systems as possible to achieve maximum growth efficiency.
The market is flooded with apps to help businesses automate tasks in virtually every area: from marketing to bookkeeping, payroll to staffing; the list can go on and on. Automating your operations in the early stages may however lead you to automate an imperfect system.
Such a system or process does not yield desired outcomes or it may not be resource efficient in the first place.
It’s therefore best to keep everything manual in the initial stages of a start-up’s lifecycle. In these early stages, the business is still testing with a variety of options to find out what really works and as such no processesshould be made permanent yet.
We apply automation in order to magnify the efficiency of our systems. That means that if you apply the same to an inefficient system, the result will be a magnified inefficiency.
Conclusion
Any business can be successful with manual operations while starting up. That’s why small business lenders like the First American Merchant have no scruples advancing a business loan to startups in virtually any industry.