No one ever needs to be typing numbers in if they already exist

Back in the second half of the 1800s, the United States was joined from one end to the other by railroad and the economy exploded. Compared to horse and cart, it was a game changer by orders of magnitude. That one new technology – the steam engine – in that place, had a massive impact.

Similarly, in business today, I feel that something I have come to call the hashtag#DataRailroad is coming. In my opinion, the technical equivalent of the pony express is constructing a board room Powerpoint presentation by taking screenshot of spreadsheets. Sound familiar to anyone?

Organisations that still do this have to operate very slowly and carefully to avoid the risk of something important going wrong, because its only human to err. We aren’t robots, after all.

I’ve seen some shocking things in my career.

Often a mad dash to get some numbers in for an emergency VIP meeting tomorrow morning, but it doesn’t add up right because everyone interpreted the request differently.

Perhaps everyone rounded their percentages to make their performance look better and somehow we have miraculously achieved 110% market share.

A department manager fearing for their job because they think they lost 10k in their budget because they printed it out and typed it back in again.

A flagship store being sold off because there was a small but critical typo on their annual performance forecast.

I think its a fair bet that any business that uses computers probably already has ways of connecting the data from the source to the destination. No one ever needs to be typing numbers in if they already exist digitally. Whether users prefer MS or Google or even something else, there is always a way to connect it all up to the hashtag#DataRailroad.

It’s coming soon. Choo choo!

What do clever mice 🐭 and the SAS 🗡️ have in common?

This came to me while watching the excellent SAS Rogue Heroes on BBC iPlayer earlier. Let me explain

When reviewing a task we have been asked to automate we find that people usually describe WHAT they are doing but not WHY. And the WHY is the important bit.

Typically, the incumbent worker will start by producing a long list of steps they repeat every time. It can often take hours, or in some cases, days 😵

Like a good soldier, they have been given orders and they follow these faithfully, without question 🫡 This means that there is no room for improvement, and when something changes, the process breaks ⛓️‍💥

Meanwhile, the SAS trainer told his new recruits to ask WHY they had been given their orders. ‘Ask questions’, he says. ‘Because when everything turns to 💩, as it usually does, when you know why, you’ll still know how to complete your mission’ (paraphrasing).

For example, the mouse on the left follows a winding and well-trodden path. It gets the cheese. It works. It might have always worked 🐁🧀🐁🧀
This what your average Robotic Process Automation vendor will do. It takes time to run through all those steps every time and even longer to map out and program them in the first place.

The mouse on the right knows it has to get the cheese, but it’s not bound by the long list of instructions. By understanding the goal, it almost always can ignore most of the steps the other mouse takes, getting to the cheese in a fraction of the time and being able to navigate its way around problems that might appear 😼🪤

At Autometrix, we don’t automate steps. We automate tasks.

So we know how to handle it when things aren’t exactly as described. We ask questions until we understand the process first. Compared to off-the-shelf software, our custom-built solutions are usually faster to implement and always much faster to run 🏃‍♂️💨

We dare you to try us.

(No animals, real or badly drawn were harmed in the production of this post)

ADHD Hack – Think Outside The Box 🎁

Before Christmas, I was visiting a light show at a stately home with a friend and all our kids. This involved followed a path around the home and looking at all the beautiful lights 🤩

The kids were enjoying it until the to flow of people stopped. There was some sort of traffic jam up ahead. Of course, my very ADHD daughter started complaining about a stone in her shoe and her legs hurt. A wonderful night was turning sour 🍋

This went on for a few more minutes and by now there were several hundred people standing there, doing nothing. Like good Brits, we stood there queuing, just waiting for the traffic to start moving again, while the line just got longer and longer 🥱

So I went to the front to see what it was, stepping over the barrier and walking across the grass, ignoring the signs telling me not to. And what I found were people stopping to take selfies. Taking turns at the start of a particularly attractive tunnel of shining stars. One person had had the idea and now everybody was doing it.

But there wasn’t time for everyone to do this, and we didn’t want to stand around for hours. We wanted to see the rest of the show 😠

So I walked back to our group and I said four words. And then something amazing happened 😲

I said, “Come on, let’s go!”

And immediately, hundreds of people followed me, stepping over the barrier. I felt like the pied piper 🪈

At Autometrix, we don’t like standing around.

Don’t stand for inefficiency.

DON’T BE THE HERD.

PS We stopped to buy treats on the way home 🍬 I was proud to tell my wife how our ADHD daughter saved the night for hundreds of people 😁

Your Business Runs Like a Well-Oiled Machine

🚀 Every task performed quickly, accurately, on time.
🔮 Your future is clear, with business strategies adapting to world events.
📦 Inventory, unit-perfect at every stage from planning to sale.
✅ Fresh orders are approved with a button press.
🕒 Everyone log on and leaves on time, unless they have something more important or fun to do.
🏢 People love working at your company, because it’s solid.
😌 Work is easy. Almost too easy. And it gets easier every day.
🏆 Being creative gives you a sense of achievement.
🍕 Your Friday team lunches are legendary.

If any of these aren’t true, why not?

We’ll save you money while making this happen at the same time.

We want it for you even more than you do, because we’re like that.

We’re so sure about ourselves that we’ll give your money back if you don’t love it.

What’s holding you back? You weirdo.