Office automation is a great way of using computer machinery and software to perform office works to digitally create, collect, store, manipulate and relay office information needed for accomplishing basic tasks of a business. It helps save money and time while protecting your important business information because it makes your work less tedious, trim hours off your workload, reduce repetitive keyboard strokes or mouse-clicks and make data entry easier with fewer tabs or mouse movements. However, opting automation in business has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Here are the advantages and disadvantages of office automation.
Advantages:
- Automating business processes will reduce reduces your participation in clerical tasks such as organizing data, creating reports etc and helps you to concentrate in important parts of your business.
- It allows to perform the tasks of many people.
- It allows people to work on higher-level tasks.
- It avoids space for duplicate data, helps in fast data retrieval, and at the same time that data can be accessed by many employees.
- Increase business competitiveness.
- Helps management make better decision-making and planning.
Disadvantages:
- It is expensive because you have to invest equipments.
- Previous or older staff or less-skilled people may take some time or face problems in adjusting to the new technology and may find difficult to use it efficiently.
- If anything is misfiled, it might be harder to find.
- Entails maintenance costs for equipment.
- You might need some additional training on how to operate.
- If automated system would not work properly due to some reasons, then you are unable to continue your business manually also.
Based on the above advantages and disadvantages, you should opt for office automation.