THE PRICE TAG OF MANUAL BUSINESS

Published on April 19, 2021
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Icon Saphyte Team
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Manual tasks are often used to copy and paste data between internal and external systems. This data can be extracted from websites, portals, enterprise applications and legacy systems.

Though the world is advancing, many organizations are still reliant on manual tasks to collect, review and input data. More often than not, these repetitive, remedial tasks require workers to log in and out of multiple systems. This situation is often referred to as the “swivel chair integration.” It is best illustrated with employees reading or copying data in one computer screen and keying it into another.

These activities might seem harmless upfront, but they’re actually costing your business money, time and resources. Here are some interesting facts about manual processes.

45% of current paid activities can be automated by today’s technology, an equivalent of $2 trillion in total annual wages.

A study by Unit 4 revealed that globally, office workers spend 69 days a year on administrative tasks, costing companies $5 trillion a year.

Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking can be counterproductive and costs companies 40% of lost productivity simply due to constant task-switching.

Professionals, on average, take 18 minutes to locate a document manually––20% to 40% of their time––and spend 50% of their time searching for information.

These numbers can affirm that doing business manually is indeed more expensive. But, let’s stop at the ballpark estimates and let’s discuss what the actual price tag of doing your business manually costs or what its downsides for your business may be.

The Downsides of Doing Business Manually
1. Reduced Productivity.

A survey from IDC states that businesses with 1,000 knowledgeable workers lose $10 million a year from poor productivity tools in search alone. Cognizant says that 22% of an employee’s time is spent on repetitive tasks. From the same document of IDC, 40% of a knowledge worker’s time is spent looking for and organizing information.

Repetitive manual tasks can actually slow down your employee’s performance. Your employees have to copy data from one system and paste it into another to approve an application or answer a customer question. Imagine multiplying this repetitive activity by the number of times they do this in any given day or week, it quickly piles up and eventually results in lots of wasted time.

2. Data entry errors.

Contrary to popular belief, manual data entry is more prone to errors and can be costly in the long run. The more manual tasks you have, the more you need to reinvent your entire process.

Let’s take the logistics sector as an example, you may have this scenario:

Customer emails a shipment request.

Customer service representatives (CSR) monitor email, print and file the shipment request when received.

CSR logs into your scheduling systems and manually enters the shipment details.

CSR logs into the shipper’s portal and manually re-enters the pickup date, location and time.

Making mistakes is only natural, in fact, out of every 100 steps, a human is likely to make 10 errors, even when carrying out somewhat redundant work. However, if it becomes a common occurrence in your business, it could cost you plenty. All of this manual repetition causes errors that eventually lead to delays and unhappy customers. And we all don’t want unhappy customers.

3. Increased labor costs.

Manual and paper-based processes during a typical onboarding process can cost up to 20 times more than computer-assisted, electronic document processing.

You have to factor in training, payroll, facilities, equipment, and benefits. You’re essentially paying a lot for people to copy and paste data. According to a study, labor represents a median of 60% of the total costs of invoice processing. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as rework and data re-entry caused by manual errors can slow your whole operation down, leading you to hire more people just to keep your operations moving.

4. Inconsistent workflows and lack of visibility.

Every employee has their own workflow. Reconciling these workflow variations across dozens or hundreds of employees can be costly.

Manual variations and errors within critical tasks such as claims processing, mortgage lending, accounts receivables, and shipment tracking can directly impact your profitability.

When your workflows are inconsistent, there is no visibility as to what is happening around your business and its operations. There is no clear and complete understanding between your teams or departments as to how the process works and who the people involved are.

Furthermore, if there is no consistency, all stakeholders are out of the loop, eventually decreasing transparency and leading to lack of accountability.

5. Lack of business elasticity and innovation.

Manual tasks can slow you down if you’re trying to rapidly scale up. When repetitive tasks depend on human workers to complete them, scaling up during seasonal or peak times is extremely difficult to manage from a resource and cost perspective.

You must find, hire, and train new employees – taking time to guide them throughout the learning curve. You may lose growth opportunities due to a lack of trained staff or the inability to quickly adapt to changing demands.

This eventually renders your business unable to innovate. Mundane administrative work takes time away from your employees and knowledgeable workers, more valuable business building, customer oriented and strategic activities.

Taking Advantage of a New Ecosystem

Reports have stated that  70% of business owners said they haven’t taken advantage of new technology. This means that they’ve been stuck with the same solution for a long time, unable to move forward.

If you’re a part of the 70% of business owners who have been stuck with the same process since time memorial – it’s time for you to take advantage of Saphyte’s Ecosystem.

What is Saphyte?

Saphyte is a digital ecosystem, designed and engineered to be highly scalable and flexible, adapting to the unique needs of its users as they grow. This allows them to continue making powerful, impactful connections with customers around the world.

A cloud-based, centralized platform designed to support sales and marketing operations seamlessly and streamline through automation and intuitive tools. Through this leading-edge technology, businesses can now take a holistic approach to innovative and proactive marketing and sales strategies, that can future-proof their business.

Saphyte has plenty of features that can easily automate your administrative and repetitive tasks. Allowing you to spend on sales generating activities that add value to your business.

Saphyte can also be customized to suit your business’s unique needs when it comes to workflow automation, marketing, and sales. This allows your business to be more scalable and flexible without breaking the bank.

If you’re ready to take the next step in making your business more flexible, scalable, and innovative, you can book a demo or you can chat with our ecosystem experts.

Call us today and let’s take your business to another level.

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May 17, 2022