The merits of small-scale automation

Think about automation and you may conjure up images of manufacturing robots on car production lines or driverless forklifts buzzing around enormous warehouses. In other words, expensive machines that replace humans and which are the preserve of large corporations.

But the truth is that many organisations including charities – especially small charities - can benefit from automation. Not the expensive robot-type of automation, but small-scale automation.

This involves automating individual tasks, activities or procedures, rather than whole business processes. This type of automation is often done using inexpensive software, it can offer big benefits at little cost, and it makes employees’ and volunteers’ lives easier rather than replacing them.

What is small-scale automation?

One example of small-scale automation might be an automated email that is sent out to one of your charity’s service users to remind them of an appointment they have with a charity staff member the following day.

Creating and running this type of small-scale automation costs almost nothing, but if it prevents someone from forgetting to attend an appointment then there is a big benefit to the service user.

There is also a reduction in time wasted by your charity staff member who may have prepared for the appointment and blocked off some time in their diary. By reducing appointments missed it can raise productivity.

Of course, your charity could send out appointment reminders manually for each appointment it has with a service user, but this takes up time which could be used more productively, is easily forgotten, and is, frankly, tedious.

What are some other benefits of small-scale automation?

In general, the benefits of small-scale automation to your charity include:

• Eliminating repetitive and tedious tasks, which can improve staff morale
• Ensuring that tasks are not forgotten or overlooked, which can make service provision and other charity activities more reliable
• Ensuring that important tasks are done consistently, accurately and in a timely fashion, which can lead to cost savings and better quality of service provision
• Freeing up the time that would otherwise be spent on those tasks to do more productive activities, which increases staff productivity
• Having a very high chance of being implemented successfully on time and on budget, compared to large scale automation projects which can suffer huge cost overruns and delays and which sometimes fail to deliver the anticipated benefits