The impact of workplace automation can be dramatic. Small business owners can improve their bottom line, improve employee morale and increase competativeness by implementing automation projects.

The real question is how do you start?

Here are 5 steps to approach implementation of automation projects in your business.

1. Look for pain points

To find good candidates for automation in your business, look for the pain points in your business processes and systems. Look for bottlenecks, repetition, manual tasks, data that doesn’t flow or reports that are manual in nature. Analyze your systems, find those that don’t integrate, where data has to be re-entered. These pain points are opportunities to automate.

On one project we had employees manually re-entering shipping information because two systems didn’t communicate the data. We were able to spend a little software development time and automate the whole process saving hours each day and improving quality.

Ask the employees for their input. You will be surprised at the insight they have to where the candidates for automation are.

2. Start small

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Analyze your business and pick small, tactical implementations you can afford. Choose projects that give your organization easy wins to build implementation skill and momentum. Projects as simple as the automation of a simple excel report, or a web site plugin to eliminate redundant data entry are excellent candidates to start with.

As the organization improves their skill at automation projects you can plan to tackle future larger, more impactful situations.

3. Involve employees

Automation projects can worry employees. It can cause fear and doubt about their future. They need to know the plan beyond what they do now. They need to see the future purpose of their position and the types for work that they will migrate to.

No one likes change when it removes tasks they measure their value to the company with. Owners and project managers need to navigate automation implementations with open and consistent communication to re-assure employees.

When I  discuss automation changes with employees,  I  stress that we should be continually trying to elevate our tasks to the highest value possible. This means delegating menial, repetitive  automate-able tasks to the machines. Automating those tasks frees up the employee to provide  higher value to the business.

One additional way to help  employees is to  provide  strengths finders, how to fascinate or similar assessments.  Assessments like these help identify strengths and latent skills. This self-knowledge  can help motivate a transition to higher value proposition tasks and assignments that align with their profiles.

4. Iterate

Many types of automation changes, especially with software based processes, can be incrementally implemented. Iteration allows organizations to try, learn and improve their processes and systems in small engagements.

Incremental implementations lessen the  organization disruption and allow employees time to learn and adapt to new processes, tools and responsibilities. When the employees see the benefit of small iterations they are motivated to continue the automation improvements.

5. Track results

Keep track of the savings your organization gains from the changes you make. Calculate the ROI. Communicate the results to the employees. Discuss ways the process of automation can be improved. Feedback this newly gained information to the next interactions of improvements. This helps  gain momentum and provides input for future decisions.

Follow these five steps and your business efficiency can improve substantially over time.