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The Automation Black Hole
By Naveen Lohia | January 8, 2010
Automation has become the buzzword all around. Every business entity is looking at automation as their sure shot way to success. Wherever you go whatever you do everybody believes in the word Automation, but falls trap to the fallacies associated with it. Let me explain it further by an example -
Recently I met one of our potential clients where we were supposed to automate their business in-order to streamline the workflow and increase the effectiveness of the services being offered. Believing in the ‘Push instead of Pull’ theory, the client said instead of pulling potential customers into our services fold; we should go whole-heartedly to push ourselves to the customers.
Our firm coherently agreeing on the client’s business acumen delivered a product that met most of the specification listed by them. Initially the software worked wonders as everybody was excited about the new automation toy and were eager to get into the play-mode. The hoopla died once the pressure of targets and revised organizational goals got hold of the enthusiasm head-on. The resetting of goals meant employees were supposed to put in extra effort to meet the extended targets. Adding to the woes was an unofficial whip that made it compulsory for the each one of them to put their best foot forward to report technical glitches in software provided by us to ward of floor pressures. The human mind found a unique cure for this target headache.
We as a company, were initially quiet worried about the trend and were thinking of going back to the drawing board to reinstall or rework the software and were gunning for our project manager for the possible glitches. Upon careful monitoring it was found that service requests weren’t real tech issues and were merely the hapless employee’s way to ward off work pressure so that at the end of the day when reporting on employee performance was done they had an alibi that it was the software that was hindering an effective performance delivery from their end.
The above scenario was our first case but might not be the last as organizations retrofit themselves for the great chase i.e. emerging from the recession debacle and looking for a possible growth path across the cost-cutting maze. People need to understand that automation is not a so called ‘magic wand’ that will do wonders for an enterprise and organizational thrust for such an activity should come with simultaneous changes in its perspective of its internal aims and aspirations, its core competencies and above all its understanding of the market.
Blind stakeholder belief in automation has always led businesses to plunge in a black hole like situation from which they cannot emerge unscathed. The Risk-to-Return theory falls flat in situations where collated understanding of business proposition has not taken place. Waiting for automation to increase your business value does not always give the desired results as automation can only be an enabler and not to be considered as a proposition that works standalone.
The onus also lies on the technology firms delivering a service to such business entities. They shouldn’t just sell; it should be an IDEAL sell which should come with a proper understanding of the exact business requirements of the clients and not just something done for the heck of it!
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