Why Your Office Is Still Messy, Even with All the Tech
Why does running a business feel like a never-ending game of “copy and paste”?
What new business owners are unaware of when they first startup is that your ‘thinking’ work will only make up about 30% of your day-to-day activities. What takes up the majority of your time is the transfer of data. For example, you receive a PDF via email. You download it, rename it, upload it to a cloud server and send a link to the PDF file you have just created. This is not strategic. This activity is simply a transfer of information.
Some managers believe they can leverage an immediate human solution (e.g., a person who is faster) to eliminate this redundancy in their workflow. However, the true solution is to utilize a system (such as an AI enterprise automation systems) that does not require your assistance to perform the mundane repetitive activities. Automation systems are great in this respect because they are able to execute processes without fatigue or there is a lack of patience. They can be programmed to check for emails every 5 minutes. Never become bored with copy and pasting column C and column D. Therefore save you valuable time so you can devote time toward strategic thinking related to the needs and wants of your customers that will result in more satisfied customers.
Can a machine really handle the messy way we actually work?
Let’s be honest right now, our workflow is anything other than spotless. There from PDFs to screengrabs of PDFs to poorly shot cell-phone picture invoices, our work has taken some weird and terrible forms. Older software requires information to be placed in very particular ways, file names too, but software that is based on artificial intelligence and intelligent workflow automation is much more flexible. It is like having a robot who is much more accommodating than a cold piece of metal, it will instead be like having a very patient intern who gets to know you and the method with which you do your work; e.g., if on a consistent basis you take the “Order Number” from an email and place it in your invoice and save it to your database, the software will learn that.
I have a friend who works in logistics who just eliminated his biggest issue; tracking numbers. He had a guy who spent 8 hours a week copying tracking IDs from a courier’s website into the client’s portal. He put in a simple AI-based robotic process automation system to do that job. Now, the software checks the courier’s website every hour for tracking IDs and automatically populates the client’s portal, and the guy is now dealing with customer service issues and closing more business than before. The shift that AI-based business process optimization creates does not mean putting bodies out of work, it means allowing those people to stop acting like USB drives.
The Core Insight
Key TakeawayAutomation isn’t about speed; it’s about sanity.
Most people think AI enterprise automation systems are for doing things *faster*. But the real benefit is reducing mental load. When you stop context-switching between ten boring tasks, your brain has space to think clearly. The ROI isn’t just saved hours; it’s better decisions and less 5 PM burnout.
Is AI enterprise automation systems only for the big tech companies with huge budgets?
When it comes to automating things, you might be wondering how in the world would you do that? To be honest with you, five years ago, it would have been impossible to set up an “If this, then that” rule without having a team of engineers on your side. The automation landscape has changed tremendously. Automation is now available to everyone, from the owners of small-medium enterprises in PJ to a family-own hardware store in Ipoh or a digital marketing agency in Penang. There’s no need to learn code anymore. Most automation tools today look like flowcharts and say something along the lines of, “When someone sends an email containing the text ‘Complaint,’ put it in this folder and notify the manager via Slack.” A simple set of rules will now get you through.
Artificial intelligence (AI) enterprise solutions have been developed to integrate nicely with your current tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox, your CRM, even WhatsApp Business. Think of this process as changing out an old ceiling fan for one with remote control capabilities. You won’t have to change the wiring; all you will need is a simple way to control the fan from your couch.
What does “automation” actually look like in a normal day?
Let me paint you a picture. A very boring, normal, realistic picture. It’s 9:00 AM. A customer fills outHere’s how submitting a “Contact Us” form on your site looks today, without any automation: Someone wakes up, goes into your backend to find your customer’s information, copies the information, opens their Gmail account, pastes the information into an email and sends the customer a generic response, and prints off a ticket for the sales team.
Now, add some AI Task Automation tools that are running in the background of your platform each time a customer submits a “Contact Us” form. Here’s how it plays out: The data goes directly to the CRM immediately. The system determines if the customer is a new or existing customer. If it’s a new customer, the AI will automatically generate an automated “Thanks for your inquiry; here’s our brochure” response, with the AI customer Service Automation up and running.
While that happens, the sales rep gets an alert on their smartphone that reads: “Leads are waiting, call by 11 AM.” Nobody typed anything. Nobody forgot to follow up and dropped the ball. This is true Digital Transformation Automation at its finest; it’s not science fiction, it is simply ensuring that you do not drop the ball. For most companies, consistency is worth much more than being a genius.
Can we really trust the system to make the right call?
I am sure that many of you are feeling anxious about this next step. You may be asking yourself, “Will the AI send me an incorrect message?” or “Will the AI delete my important files by mistake?” These are very valid points to bring up. The purpose of AI decision automation is not to take away your decision-making abilities. Rather, it is designed to do all the things that do not require any type of decision-making. One great example is AI document processing applications. An invoice has a number, date, and total amount; therefore, the machine does not need to use any type of reasoning to complete this task. It simply needs to read the invoice and file it accordingly.
However, if the invoice was either damaged or the amount was very different from the original amount quoted, then the best systems would not go any further; they will stop processing that invoice and indicate it has a flag next to its record. This is where the human will get involved and provide a solution to the machine. The machine can process invoices, which follow rules; however, you will process invoices with exceptions. Therefore, BidaTech AI follows that same principle but applies it across the entire enterprise system. You will have created an enterprise system that provides a partnership between humans (who are responsible for making major business decisions) and machines (who are responsible for executing repetitive processes).
Wait, is this going to steal our jobs?
AI & EmploymentLet’s clear the air on whether these tools are here to help you or replace you.
