Why most automation projects do not move the P&L.

An automation can work exactly as intended and still leave you wondering what you got for the money. Orders are processed faster, reports arrive on time, but the business is still making the same margin and everyone feels just as busy.

One question I’d ask is what happened to the time you saved. Did it free someone up to sell, remove a cost or help you take on more work? That connection needs to be part of the plan.

Software speeds up the process you already have.

Take a sales enquiry. You can capture it automatically and put it in a CRM, but someone still needs to own the follow-up. If nobody knows whose job that is, the enquiry can sit there just as it did in an inbox.

The same applies to orders, purchasing and invoices. Before automating a step, work out what should happen next, who needs to act and how you will know it has been done. Otherwise, you may simply move the queue somewhere else.

What ‘moves the P&L’ actually looks like.

In a business like Sip, I would look closely at three areas:

• Pricing: are agreed prices and margins being applied consistently?
• Cash: do invoices go out promptly, and does someone follow up when payment is late?
• Stock and capacity: can you see what you have, what customers need and what you should buy next?

Technology can help you keep on top of all three. The business still needs to decide its pricing rules, payment terms and purchasing approach, and give someone responsibility for the exceptions.

How we approach it.

I start with the business problem and work through it with the people doing the job. We agree what a useful result would look like, choose the changes worth making and put them into practice. That might mean connecting existing systems, changing a workflow or introducing a tool.

If you already have automation but aren’t seeing the benefit, I can help review it. We’ll look at what it does, what happens around it and where the commercial benefit is getting lost.