I always look for ways to challenge and improve myself. But how can you improve when you are doing same things over and over? Once, Albert Einstein said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Putting my workflow through this, I saw how much value automation produces. Think about it: Humans make mistakes and it is natural. However, machine is wrong only if you told it to be wrong. So, if we give correct instructions to it, amount of mistakes made is so little.
Automation is everywhere!
Take a good look at your typical day. You probably use your smartphone or computer to check emails in the morning. Now imagine what is going behind the scenes: those devices send, receive and interpret information. Would you like to receive your e-mail and would not be able to read it, because it is encrypted?
Perhaps, then drive your car to the office. Do you have to worry what the ratio of air and petrol engine should receive? Or you just simply like to get from point A to point B, while listening to Pink Floyd song? I like latter one. But then approach red traffic light. Do you see any people switching it from green to red?
The point I want to make is that automation is everywhere. In my opinion, it is key reason for our growth. Compare how people used to live 100, 10 years ago and now. You don’t even have to look close! It is obvious. If you are young, ask your parents – they can definitely see the difference.
Benefits of automation
Saves money
We both know that feeling when we f**k up. And it is not pleasant at all. It is called Human Factor and we can’t do much about it. Machines are different. They do what they are told. No more, no less.
Lets say we are launching a product. Marketing campaign went amazingly well and we have 1000 people waiting to buy our product for 95 Euros each. That’s 95,000 Euros! Now imagine launch going wrong. Some people will think that product will be bad too, since we are late. We are losing potential clients. But we have perfected routine for launch, that was repeated 100 times. Chance of failure is non-existant!
Reduces mistakes
My favourite benefit! I can sleep well because of this! For example, automated tests are guarantees that code is working as intended. Say we work on e-shop payment module. What if there is situation, when client will receive goods before paying? And he makes order for 5,000 Euros. We better take care of all scenarios before it happens. And with automated tests, we can repeat those tests anytime. It is written proof, that everything works the way it should.
Improves productivity
There are things that we all hate to do. But we have to. Our businesses depend on it, but doesn’t make it grow. For example, I hate accounting. I want to focus on creating things that actually help people. To follow up, I don’t want to spend big amount of my time dealing with bureaucracy and providing my clients with invoices. I choose to pay small amount for system, that deals with it. Now I have more flexibility and I am more happy. I know it is taken care for me, so I can focus on things that make me happy!
Saves time
I can relate to this benefit mostly as developer. We tend to automate anything. In one conference, lecturer told “If this is third time you are doing something, you should automate it!” Imagine you want to show product to your client and you have to deploy it to public server. So, after every change you made, you have to do deploy it over and over again. Eventually, in course of the day, you wasted hour of time you could be creating awesome stuff!
Conclusion
I believe anyone can take something out of this. Take a look at your day, your workflow.
What routines do you usually follow without putting your mind into it? It could be very good possibility for automation!
What are you doing for your business, that could be automated? Maybe I could help you identify those?
