If you’re running a logistics company in 2022, you know it isn’t anymore about if you’re going to automate your processes or not — you have to do it. And in theory, automation will come with plenty of benefits for your efficiency and productivity. You’ll streamline your work, your employees won’t lose time doing tedious tasks, and at the bottom line, you’ll save money. However, to get there, you’ll have to learn how to stay away from the mistakes of logistics automation.
If you try to take shortcuts and rush into it, you’ll do yourself more harm than good, so you’ve got to be careful. It’s vital that you make a plan and stick to it, no matter if you want only to automate your warehouse or your whole supply chain.
To help you find the right path and stay on it, today we’ll go over six mistakes people make when trying to automate logistics operations.
1. Not Researching What Processes You Should Automate
Many companies these days jump onto the automation wagon to keep up with their competitors or to quickly solve some problems they’ve run into. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this, but only if you do it properly.
You have to figure out what processes you should automate for your investment to make sense. If you don’t think it through, you might end up automating a process that didn’t need automation in the first place. It’s a cardinal mistake, and if you make it, the chances are that you won’t see any improvements in your productivity. In other words, you’ll spend a lot of money, and it’ll all be in vain.
So, take the time to learn about automation and what you need. Evaluate your processes and make sure you’re making the investment where it’s needed the most.
2. Deciding On What You’ll Automate Based On Profit and Not On Improvement
It’s only logical that you want your investment to bring you as much profit as possible. If you think about it, that’s what automation is all about. You’re increasing your productivity, and in turn, you’re maximizing your earnings. However, it’s not that simple.
If you only look at the processes that bring you the most money and ignore the ones that need improvement, you’ll make a mistake. You might see some benefits in the short term, but in the long run, you’ll lose money.
Hence, you want to focus on automating processes to make your employees’ work easier. If you’re not sure where to start, look into CRM tools like the one from moverstech.com. You’ll simplify your day-to-day operations, and it’ll allow your workers to focus on more critical tasks.
Remember, you’re making a long-term investment, so create a future-oriented plan. Make sure that you’ll be able to add on to what you do now, and your investment will be profitable.
3. Automating Everything At Once
In a rush to stay ahead of the curve or catch up with your competitors, you might think it’s a good idea to spend as much as you can right away and automate all your processes at once. However, this is one of the biggest mistakes of logistics automation you can make.
Although your thoughts may be in the right place, you’ll overwhelm your company and your employees if you automate several processes at once. You’ll confuse people and push them into making errors. So, it’ll seem that you’re making progress, while in fact, you’ll be slowing down your growth.
To do it the right way, take it slow and focus on one workflow at a time. Not only will you give your employees some time to adjust and get used to the new way of doing things, but you’ll learn about automation along the way.
4. Investing In Collecting Data But Not In Analysis
There’s a lot of talk about big data these days, not without reason. The more data you collect, the more insights you can get into how your company works and how you can improve it. However, one mistake people make is investing big money in collecting data without thinking about how they’ll analyse it. And if you didn’t catch it by now, your data is only worth as much as the amount of meaningful info you can pull from it.
So, if you don’t have a way to analyse the data you collect, it’s essentially worthless. No matter how much of it you have, you won’t be able to learn anything from it. It’s not like a text document that you can scan searching for something valuable. You really won’t have anything.
So, if you decide to go down this path, you must divide your budget and invest in both collection and analysis.
5. Not Asking An Expert For Help
Although the goal of automation is to streamline and simplify your processes, it’s far from easy to implement. Of course, lots of these solutions are expensive, so companies sometimes try to save some money by skipping the expert consultations. It’s a huge mistake you should avoid, even if you’ve already automated a few processes in the past and you feel like you know what you’re doing.
Getting the expert on board will allow you to unlock the full potential of the upgrade you’re making. If you choose not to do it, you’ll miss out on the best approaches, and you might even make the process less effective than it was.
Take your time picking the software vendor, and ask them if they can help you implement it. If they don’t have anyone available, they’ll at least tell you who you can contact.
6. Not Re-evaluating Processes Afterwards
It’s not uncommon for companies to automate a process and never re-evaluate it again. However, if you want to improve your supply chain performance, you’ll need to evaluate and look for new ways to optimize your workflow at all times.
You can’t over-optimize and make your processes too efficient. There’s always room for improvement, and you should always be searching for it. Looking at it as a one-time goal that you can accomplish and forget about is one of the six biggest mistakes of logistics automation, so be sure not to do it.
