There is Always Time to Automate Business Processes

Several years ago I worked for a yellow pages publishing company that was in the process of automating their advertising sales and production.  Being a young professional at that time I could not believe that they had not already automated this paper based, time-consuming process.  The year was 1996 and looking back at it now they were being very proactive!

Ever since then I’ve always looked at how business processes can be automated.  Many times it’s out of necessity to meet deadlines while delivering value.  This past month I’ve been working with the Zencos team on a business process automation project that keeps me grounded that there is always room to improve how we manage our processes.

Recently Zencos completed a project for an electrical cooperative organization that needed a better process for gathering and reporting on electrical meter data.  New technology allows these organizations to better gather data using digital devices.  However the data collection and reporting is still a manual process involving spreadsheets, small databases and many hours to produces the necessary reports.

These reports are important for several reasons.  They allow the electrical coops to better manage their power resources and plan for peak usage times.  Regulatory and federal funding requirements require the data to be collected and submitted on a regular basis.  All of this data helps to increase electricity usage efficiency and deal with outages when they occur.  With all the green initiatives and need for smart utility management, this data is important to how we live on the planet.

Our team was able to reduce the amount of time these reports were compiled and produced from an estimated 9 to 3 months!  The data also allows the organizations to measure against benchmarks and predict line usage to ensure efficient delivery of service.  And it’s a scalable solution that can incorporate impacts ranging from weather changes and consumer demand.

We’re excited about this new opportunity and look to roll it out in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned to see if it’s applicable to your business and can automate your business processes.