Network Process Automation, Focus on Tasks

The most successful IT projects that I have been involved in are those where change management and user acceptance  have been recognised as a top priority.  With research organisations citing that up to 47% of jobs will be lost to robotisation it has never been more important to have user support for an automation project.

At the recent Automate 2019 conference, many of our customers and partners shared their experiences in introducing automation to their organisations and it seems that no matter the size or complexity of the organisation, one key response always emerged when this type of project was announced to staff and management.  FEAR.  People were terrified that in supporting an automation project, they were potentially putting their job at risk of being taken over by robots.

Whilst businesses are going to see automation create new ways of working and creating value, what needs to be clearly communicated to staff and stakeholders prior to undertaking an automation project is that it is more than likely that process automation will enhance their performance in their current position, rather than take the position away.

When introducing process automation to a business, it is the ongoing, repeated, time-consuming TASKS that will yield the best outcomes for automation and these are the processes that will be replaced.

To get your staff thinking more positively about the benefits of automation, ask them to think about the time that is spent each day on running and analyzing reports, making configuration changes across multiple machines, recording change and maintenance requests – they will soon realise that these tasks that will likely be automated are actually the preliminary steps that must be taken in order for them to complete a job.  So by automating these tasks, your staff can actually complete their job more efficiently and effectively!

It is not the tasks that are completed but the outcomes that are produced that indicate a job well done.  If your staff see their value as their ability to input or output data, they will lose to robots.  If they understand that their value comes from the other creative and intangible skills that they bring to a role, they will realise that there is little to fear.

To take a look at some of the ways that Opmantek customers have used automation to enhance their network operations, improve efficiencies and to move from a responsive rather than a reactive operation model, contact us and we can show you how we have successfully implemented this for other organizations.