The Connection, Inc Blog

Automation has been a hot-button issue in the business world over the past few years. Many business owners have tried to find ways to automate some of their operations, while workers wonder if this strategy develops as people in the know suggest it will, they could be out of a job. We think that automation is actually a massive benefit for organizations and workers alike. This month we will go through a few tools that small businesses can easily leverage to use automation to their advantage by taking a look at some of the tools that companies depend on.

It’s no secret that automation is one of the major trends that most businesses have tried to incorporate into their business plans, most with some middling success. The problem becomes that many businesses don’t really have a strategy for building out automated tools for their business, so they may not be able to take advantage of the benefits automation can bring. 

The way you invest your business’ IT budget will have a considerable impact on how it performs. If your technology dollars are well spent you should see improvement year-over-year. Technology improves time management and allows for more automation than ever, not to mention the cost savings you see as a result. Let’s briefly discuss the IT budgeting process and how to build budgeting priorities that work.

We’re always talking about boosting productivity and the role your technology has in that quest. What we don’t always talk about is how boosting innovation can help free up your employees to produce better results. It’s the same technology, and it can have multiple benefits. In this week’s blog, we’ll discuss how focusing on how these two thoughts can be one and the same.

Communication is critical if you want to maintain positive working relationships with your customers and clients. If you want to optimize communication, you should be considering the latest and greatest technology solutions that provide operational benefits as well.

For years, we’ve heard about how machines are coming for our jobs. We may even know some people who have been replaced by machines of some sort. This has given workers an overarching fear that once the machines are smart and capable enough to do what they do, that they will be out on their cans with few real options. This is mostly a fallacy. Today, we will explore the notion that machines are out for our jobs and how they may actually work to make our jobs better. 

The most successful businesses are those that are always seeking to improve what they offer—oftentimes, taking a successful element and simply making it more efficient to deliver. In the past, this basically meant that businesses needed to have their employees work more quickly. However, today’s improved technology and the automation that it makes possible have delivered a much more consistent option.

In modern businesses, automation can be implemented in a lot of ways, but for small businesses, it may be more difficult to find ways to incorporate time-saving automation. In this week’s blog we’ve decided to point out a few ways even the smallest business can use automation to their advantage and give their employees the freedom to focus on revenue creating processes. 

If you ask a person that has been using the same technology for years what they would like to see in new technology, you’ll often get the answer, “for it to do the work for me.” This is a popular response that is almost always delivered as a joke. With technology going the way it is, it’s not as funny as it once was. Today, automated tools are being developed that work to actually do a lot of that work for you. This can be both a detriment and a benefit for your staff. Today, we’ll take a look at both.

Automation has helped many businesses improve their output and efficiency, but what is the cost to the people that work for these organizations? Many systems rely on the autonomy of artificial intelligence systems to keep certain tasks and workflows on point. Automation could replace up to a quarter of the current workforce in the next ten years, so people are naturally skeptical and worried about how safe their jobs are going to be with more and more businesses utilizing software automation. 

Today’s fast-paced work environment demands multitasking and juggling various projects at once. Thankfully, there’s a lot of great technologies designed to make workloads more manageable. If you’ve not yet looked into utilizing automation apps for your business, you may be surprised to learn how they can improve efficiency.

The holiday season has always been one of deep-seated traditions, some that draw from ancient customs, and some that are inspired by more contemporary trends. These traditions have been shaped, and often inspired by, the technology available in the day. Today, we’ll reflect on how the technologies we have now have impacted our celebratory traditions.

Holiday Cards
While the practice of sending holiday cards has always seen dips and rises, today’s technology has largely reduced the popularity of a physical card sent in the mail. Social media has made it much easier to keep in regular touch with friends and relatives and stay up-to-date on the events in their life. As a result, the importance of a holiday card or self-produced family newsletter has diminished. Additionally, the younger generations are less accustomed to physical correspondence, and so are not likely to change their preferred means of communication -- social media and other digital avenues -- during a single season.

Automation to Make Life Easier
There is no denying that this time of year is a stressful one, with so many considerations to make in preparation for celebrating the holiday. This stress is only added to that which comes from the tasks of everyday life, that unfortunately, doesn’t go away during these weeks.

However, the ability that we have today to automate many tasks through technology can help to simplify things. The menial, but necessary, tasks like grocery shopping and paying bills can be set to automatically take place, freeing up schedules to be filled with holiday concerns.

Shopping
Regardless of what you see as being “the reason for the season,” it is undeniable that retail and commercialism are a significant portion of the holiday. As such, it should come as no surprise that technology has made a considerable impact on this tradition as well. The rise of online retailers has forced brick-and-mortar stores to adapt and integrate their online presence with their physical location, as well as offer an improved shopping experience for those who do visit in person.

Furthermore, stores are embracing technologies to improve their own processes as well. Online price tracking allows a customer to increase their chances of finding the best available deal, while smart shelves and beacon technology allows them to find the item they’re looking for while it is in-stock. NFC technology, or near-field communication, provides these shoppers with a more convenient means of completing a transaction with their mobile device.

However, it is also undeniable that online shopping is booming. With so many retailers competing for their shoppers’ dollars, the holiday season is one of the biggest times of the year to find sales, bargains, and other incentives. Specialized browser plugins can help shoppers find the best deals (or discount codes) for the items they are searching for as well.

Of course, this is just a small sample of the effects that technology has had on the holiday season. What other changes can you think of?

From all of us at The Connection, Inc, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and great success in the new year.

In order to build a profitable business, productivity has to remain consistent. If your business offers a service, and you are having a hard time managing all its moving parts, professional services automation (PSA) software may be right for you. Today, we will give a quick overview of what exactly a PSA is, and how it can serve as an extremely useful tool for businesses who operate in the professional services space.

Automation has been a hot button term for some time. Whether it is in reference to robots that manufacturers use to make their assembly lines more effective, the integrated workflows that today’s customer relationship management software presents, or A.I. crawling through mounds of data to help an entrepreneur better understand his/her business, automation is helping businesses move faster and be more agile. Today, we will look at how organizations are using automation, and how, even if it isn’t a big part of your business strategy today, it will need to be in the future.

What is Automation?

Automation, in a business context, is the process of having automatic control over certain processes in the production cycle. Most elements of production can be automated which is becoming both beneficial for business and dangerous for production workers. With profit margins continuing to shrink, businesses are looking to do more with less, and one way they are able to do that is by leveraging automated systems to perform tasks that traditionally have been done by people.

Specifically, this shift is advantageous for cost reduction, providing a business the opportunity to increase its profitability through simplifying individual processes. Leveraging machines to do a lot of the mundane and repetitive jobs that people typically would have done can save businesses untold amount of operational capital. More dynamic systems are being developed every day that provide even more benefits--using structured data to drive machine learning--providing a much more comprehensive ability to identify and alter processes as needed.

So Not Robots?

Well...not like R2D2 or anything like that, yet. The manufacturing sector has been using automated robots for decades, but for the service-based business, retail organization, and the like, robots haven’t yet become a big part of business. Most of the automation that is accomplished today is done by software that has been further integrated into existing software. These automated solutions are available for almost every part of a business. Most feature some type of machine learning software designed to make it more responsive to a user’s needs. Let’s take a look at the many ways businesses can use automation.

HR and Management

One of the most popular ways that businesses are using automation is for their HR and management systems. Most businesses have gone to a digital payroll system, but many businesses, including service business and retail organizations have a need to centralize all their payroll, benefits, health information, and the like. Instead of having multiple pieces of software working to accomplish all this, they instead depend on centralized software in the form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). 

A CRM not only allows a business to manage their interactions with their customers, it also automates several key functions, integrating the management of all major business processes in one piece of software. The CRM also allows a company to manage most of its HR (onboarding/training/benefits) and accounting (payroll/accounts receivable/expense) processes with a dashboard. Other titles using automation to manage large portions of a business include Professional Services Automation (professional services) and Enterprise Resource Planning (manufacturing).

Sales & Marketing

Most CRMs, ERPs, and PSAs also have automation tools for your sales team to use. Sales is often a rinse-repeat activity with the only different variables being the prospective customers. Since there are a lot of repeatable tasks, automating part of the sales process is something many businesses do already. 

Marketing, as it pertains to your sales team, can also use built-in automation tools to complete tasks as a way to, ironically, build more targeted products. Tasks like email marketing--as part of outreach or as a part of a project/service--can allow for a personal touch while still making processes much more efficient. Personalization has proven to be a must-do strategy for marketers, as people are constantly inundated with messages and advertisements of all types. 

Security

Both physical and network security are extremely important for the modern business, and today’s strongest solutions utilize automated tools to enhance their systems. In physical security, automating an intrusion detection system can make a huge difference in the response times of authorities as a result of unauthorized access. Automation is all about making tasks easier and reducing cost: surveillance and security automation systems do just that.

As far as network security goes, automation makes the whole thing cost effective. Securing your business' network at the cost you pay today would be nearly impossible without automation tools. Even if you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for your IT department, they are (or at least should be) using automation tools to ensure that your computer network is both free from threats and working as expected. The question then becomes, “Why are we paying so much for our IT department?” The IT experts at The Connection, Inc can effectively manage your organization’s IT, procure IT solutions, and fulfill complicated technology projects at a fraction of the cost. If you’d like to learn more, call us today at (732) 291-5938.

The Future of Automation

As you might imagine, the future of automation is limitless. With a digital revolution breaking down productivity barriers, automated systems fueled by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will likely push future generations forward faster than the breakneck speeds 21st century innovation is taking us. Advances in smart products and other Internet of Things devices, 5G connectivity, and industry-changing technologies like fintech will leverage automation in crucial ways. It will likely be the driving force of technologies that will completely change the way people buy products and services, communicate, and use machines.

While the sky seems the limit, there are detriments to the shift to more automated systems. Some experts have gone on the record stating that 40 percent of the jobs people have today will be obsolete in 15 years. Other sources say the number is closer to 25 percent. Either way, there will be a glut of unskilled, untrained, and out-of-work labor in the very near future as a result of automation and the advancement of AI and ML.

Many analysts are bullish that other jobs in the service sector will be created or filled, but the workforce will need to be trained, a huge cost that will have to be absorbed by individuals, businesses, or governments. As jobs are displaced, there will inevitably be millions of workers who have lost their jobs to automated systems that are mid-career and have a mortgage, children and can’t afford to go back to school for two or four years. In this case, businesses will need to take on the cost of re-educating individuals, seemingly losing out, at least initially, from the windfall of profitability they would experience integrating automation. AI is coming, and people have done a woeful job planning for what seems like an inevitable shift.

What do you think about automation? Do you like how fast it seems to be moving? Will the gains outweigh the losses? Do you use it for your business? Leave your comments below.

There are certain processes within an organization that take a considerable amount of time to do. These include applying patches, monitoring network traffic, and updating software as needed. While it might seem like something your business can handle on its own, some small organizations struggle to accomplish everything they set out to do--especially with a limited budget or workforce. Our staff’s powerful monitoring and management tool can aid in this initiative.

Even if artificial intelligence is still a long ways off, people always try to emulate it and push it toward greater heights. One of the best, most recent examples, is how an artificially intelligent program co-wrote a short novel (or novella) that almost won the Hoshi Shinichi Award. If it won the award, it would have been groundbreaking, but the fact that it came so close to doing so begs the question: how long will it be before computers can emulate human creativity?

If you were asked to recall the last time you restarted your PC or smartphone, could you? Too many people don’t take the few minutes required to promote quality efficiency and productivity with their machines. In fact, rebooting can be very much like a full night’s sleep for a computer, and without it, its performance might not meet your business’s expectations.

Automation is an increasingly sought-after convenience in the workplace, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks. Some professionals foresee a world which has fully automated assembly lines, but most are only concerned about what this can do for their assets. Instead of freeing up menial positions for others to take on more meaningful existences, could automation destroy these jobs completely?