Working in accounting and office administration lends itself to a lot of "smarter, not harder" solutions. We all know that the automation of daily activities can increase productivity and decrease human error. When working on something that is going to be repeated again and again, I ask myself, "Can this process be automated?"

Questions

When determining if processes have automation potential, I seek answers to the following questions:

• Why do you do the task in the first place? This is the first and most important question to ask. Sometimes we get caught up in tasks that we have always done, but, when you stop and think about it, there might be steps or whole processes that have outlived their original intent and can be discontinued.
• Is this a paper-heavy process? Is there a paper form that gets routed around the office?
• Are there routine tasks that are time consuming?
• Are there repetitive tasks that have a high probability for human error that can lead to misleading or unfortunate results?
• Will automation simplify the process? Automation should not make an activity more complicated. The goal is to simplify the process.

Roadblocks

I work for a small nonprofit trade association. One of the biggest roadblocks to automating a process can be the initial investment. Automating a business process can be expensive, and an automation project competes with other association initiatives for funding.

Another roadblock is lack of time. Automating an activity ideally should reduce workload; however, it is getting from the manual process to the automation process that is time consuming. This can be challenging for any size organization, but I find it particularly challenging in my association, where all the employees wear many hats.

There is also the fear of change. Many times we do things a certain way because it is the way we have always done it. The process in place is familiar, and it might be uncomfortable to imagine doing it another way.

Our Automation Project

My association took on an automation project a couple years ago that was not easy, but the association has seen the benefits and will continue to realize more benefits in the future.

One of the many things that we do is organize events such as conferences, seminars, tradeshows, and committee meetings. In the past, some staff used individual Excel spreadsheets that contained critical paths for some of the events. The critical path contains tasks that need to be done along with a timeline for completing each task and the person responsible for completing the task. The problem was that staff were creating their own critical paths that all looked very different, with different levels of information, and they were not accessible to all staff.

Our CEO proposed that we might be able to find some software, such as project management software, that would allow us the opportunity to put all event planning in one place for all staff to see and discontinue the use of individual spreadsheets for each event. We formed an internal committee to research software for this use. What we found was that there were hundreds of project management software choices, and it took us a year to find the right one to fit our needs. Once the software was selected, it took another year for training and getting our events set up in the software.

The benefits of the time and funds spent in automating our event planning include total visibility, knowledge retention, and improved collaboration. Total visibility was gained by providing a vehicle for staff to see a detailed overview of the event-planning process. Knowledge retention was gained by providing the detail and timeline required for planning all of our events. Then there is the benefit of improved collaboration because it unites the departments involved in the event. Everyone knows what is expected of them, and when it is expected, so that tasks can stay on schedule. This is especially critical when the completion of one task relies on someone completing another task.

Summary

The initial cost of automating can be seen as a roadblock; however, you need to analyze the benefits and cost savings you could realize in the future. I know that sometimes the initial funding is not just perceived as a roadblock but is an actual roadblock to automating, especially in small organizations. The cost of automating can be disproportionately expensive to the benefit gained. You need to ask the questions and do your research.