Beat Staff Shortages

The ever-increasing shortage of skilled workers is a problem for a wide variety of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. IT professionals in particular are desperately sought after, as the ongoing digitalization brings with it more and more IT processes that need to be managed by an expert.

But it is not only IT staff that is becoming scarce, because no matter how many documents have been scanned and are available online, or how many processes such as making appointments, writing invoices and so on can now be done online - for most tasks, a person has to sit behind the PC and carry out these steps individually.

Or maybe not?

Solving Staff Shortages with Software

Not necessarily!

Using the right software, certain processes can be automated so that professionals spend less time on repetitive tasks that can be automated, such as responding to the same emails, sending links or even simple data transfer.

In this way, a person who has 8 to a maximum of 10 hours available on a normal working day can manage their time more efficiently and does not have to waste it on so-called routine tasks such as sending invoices, making appointments and so on.

The error rate can also be reduced at the same time as a small bonus, since e.g. data transmission with the help of software cannot have any clerical errors or the like.

So automation is not about replacing skilled workers with automated processes, but rather relieving them and enabling them to use their time more efficiently.

Measures Against The Shortage of Skilled Workers

In order for every professional to realize their full potential and make maximum use of their time, it is essential that staff are not held back from superfluous tasks.

There are two ways to solve the skills shortage with software:

One way would be to apply more and more cloud processes in the company and give employees the right tools to easily automate tasks.

However, care must be taken to ensure that these cloud processes or iPaaS (short for Integration Platform as a Service) are user-friendly so that you are not soon faced with the problem of needing an IT professional to manage these tools.

Make and Zapier are such automation software that offer you exactly that.

They have a user-friendly interface reminiscent of smartphone apps and are thus easy and quick to use, even without any particular background knowledge.

These softwares work with API interfaces that connect digital tools such as mails, cloud storage, CRM, accounting tools, email marketing and much more in one place. This allows data to be passed automatically from application to application, creating an automated flow of data and requiring much less work to manage certain processes.

Arrange a free automation consultation with us now

Automate Business Processes with Make

Here is an example of how such an automated process could look at Make, where an invoice received by email is transferred to the Lexoffice accounting software.

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As soon as an e-mail arrives in a defined mailbox, it is first checked for attachments. If the invoice was sent as a file attachment, e.g. as a PDF, it is transferred to OneDrive and uploaded from there to Lexoffice (upper path).

If the invoice is not available as an e-mail attachment, but only in text form, a PDF file is first generated from the e-mail.

Then the same steps follow as before: The invoice is transferred to OneDrive and at the end uploaded to Lexoffice, where it is available for posting (lower path).

If you now imagine that these steps would otherwise be carried out by a specialist dozens of times a day, you can quickly calculate how much time is saved by this automation.

This saved time is now available to this person for tasks that unfortunately cannot (yet) be automated with the help of software integration.

Here is a comparison of 5 automation tools to get you started, because Make and Zapier are just two tools of many!

Making Processes More Efficient Despite a Shortage of Skilled Workers

The second option is to build up knowledge internally on how certain processes can be automated, so that the technical staff can automate these processes themselves and make the day-to-day work more efficient, which gives you and your employees even more flexibility.

By showing your staff how to apply these automation processes, you don't need an IT professional on whom the company's processes depend and, in a way, you can also replace potential professionals with software.

Of course, there are also certain measures that can be taken to counteract the skills shortage in the short term, but these iPaaS are a long-term solution approach that can bring more efficiency and productivity to your company if the matter is approached properly.

Beware of Chaotic Automation

However, it is also important that certain processes are not only automated because one can, but because the whole thing makes sense and more efficiency is brought into the company.

To ensure that this is the case, the processes in the company must first be thoroughly examined and analyzed before you start optimizing and automating them. Here you can read how to determine whether a task can be automated.

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But don't worry, you don't have to spend hours dealing with every single process in your company or business, we can do that for you! Simply contact us and find out in a free consultation how we can shape your path to digitalization and automation together.