Automation was coined around 1946 to describe the increased use of automatic devices and controls in mechanized product lines.
Automation took hold in mass manufacturing starting in the 1950s.
The software industry started its automation journey in the 1970s. From 2015 onwards, software companies have been adding various levels of automation to their products.
Software that automates processes are referred to as workflow or process automation products. These products are also referred to as business process automation or orchestration, depending on the niche.
Scalable software platforms like Origami.ms are the next evolution in automation. They can be used to automate processes across your entire company. Each step that is taken, its inputs and outputs, notifications, approvals, and documentation are completed by the software. Steps that require human interactions trigger those interactions.
Platforms also automate the monitoring and generation of warnings and escalations when processes are outside of expected boundaries.
Some of the benefits of automation platforms include:
- Elimination of data duplication that most companies face when each team has its own software silo.
- Collaboration across teams is encouraged when stakeholders identify the different data they need about the same topic such as customers, suppliers, and products.
- Companies can evolve quicker, as only one system needs to be updated when business changes happen.
- Stakeholders have increased confidence and costly problems are prevented because the data is always the correct master data, and doesn’t need to be compared, interpreted, cleaned up and matched across systems.
- Analysis of business performance from a single platform is much quicker and less costly, as costs and time to implement Business Intelligence or Master Data Management solutions across system silos are avoided.
We’ll be exploring various aspects of automation platforms, such as “Do I need an automation platform” in our upcoming blogs.
