How automation can support employee productivity during economic downturns.
Today’s tumultuous business climate presents firms with tough dilemmas on how best to move forward. Many enterprises are looking for the most efficient and cost-effective ways to boost productivity without major overhaul. The key to doing this successfully is by prioritising meaningful automation – technology that actually eliminates the menial day-to-day work that takes up too much of an employee’s time.
This era of meaningful automation must start with content, and particularly documents. Regardless of a role, when work is completed it likely needs to be documented – whether it’s a report, presentation, proposal, article, the list goes on and on. But in today’s world, too often it takes employees more time to create the documents than do the work itself – providing a huge opportunity for automation to become a crucial tool for achieving optimal efficiency.
By automating high-volume, high-value, tasks such as document generation, businesses can save significant time and resources, allowing employees to focus on more strategic and revenue-driving activities. Let’s take a look at the problems organisation’s face today with content creation and management, and how automation can be used to solve these pains.
Content anarchy reigns
In the digital, hybrid-work era, we are increasingly dependent on disparate systems to manage inordinate levels of content, from presentations, to reports, and even slack messages. Research from Templafy shows that on average, employees spend 15 hours a week creating content, updating documents, and sending emails.
Without adequate tools to manage content, workers invariably end up in a state of ‘content anarchy’. Content anarchy occurs when there is a lack of infrastructure to ensure consistency and integrity across business content within an organisation. It can lead to wasted time, lost revenue, and employee burnout. Perhaps even more worryingly, content anarchy can pose significant security risks, such as the potential for incorrect or unreliable content to be shared externally, which can damage a company’s reputation and potentially lead to violations of security requirements.
When workers are bogged down by manual tasks such as formatting documents, it takes away from time that could be spent on more valuable, business-critical tasks. Knowledge workers end up burnt out, unable to do the impactful work they were hired for, and businesses lose productivity and miss out on opportunities for growth.
In addition to the time spent creating content, data shows that almost half of employees say their company’s process for reviewing and approving content delays other work. This creates a culture where employees are constantly being asked to fix minor details, further hampering productivity. Professions which require compliance and legal requirements exacerbate this further. A staggering 88% of UK employees state that company revenue would increase if content bottlenecks were eliminated.
Streamline and automate
Luckily, there are simple technical solutions to ease the burden on workers and business. By investing in technology that streamlines and automates manual content creation and management, enterprises can improve productivity and drive success throughout the downturn and beyond. Intelligent document automation solutions make it easier to find, use, and manage content, by directly serving employees with the latest approved, on-brand, compliant content within the applications they’re already working in. As a result, all legal guidelines are met, and the risk of non-compliant, off-brand documents being created is drastically reduced.
This slashes the level of manual work and human error created when drafting financial reports, reviews and customer presentations. By leveraging these software solutions, employees can cut hours of admin tasks off their already heavy workloads, and rest easy that their bosses won’t be sending them late night emails asking them to fix a logo in a presentation, or re-format a report.
Automation can also help businesses improve their bottom line by reducing errors and improving accuracy. This is crucial to workers, with 75% stating that good content is the number one most important driver for business success. Document automation solutions ensure that all documents are consistently formatted and contain the most up-to-date information, reducing the risk of costly mistakes.
Next-generation content solutions can also help businesses streamline their technology stacks by reducing the need for multiple different tools and technologies, enhancing workflows. By using a solution that interfaces with the entire tech stack, businesses can create more holistic workflows, utilising all the data within the business instead of leaving it in disparate silos.
For example, instead of using multiple different systems for document generation, version control, and content management, a single solution can handle all of these functions. This means that employees only need to learn and use one system, rather than multiple, making it easier for them to navigate and use the technology. This improves productivity and user adoption as employees are able to work more efficiently and effectively.
Weather the storm and come out stronger
Ultimately, automation is encroaching into the business world at an increasing rate. In the current climate, enterprises that deploy automation effectively now will be leagues ahead of competition, and future proofed for years to come. The current downturn is not a time to shy away from innovation. Instead, it’s an opportunity for brave businesses to boost productivity and drive employee engagement. By targeting content as the first port of call for this transformation, businesses can make an immediate impact, receiving high ROI by alleviating a large level of strain for workers and employees.
