Automation is a Competitive Advantage, Not a Nice to Have

If we don't take automation seriously, our competitors will. This article explains how we do it at kommit, preventing us from wasting resources.

A recent report in the MIT Sloan Review showed the numbers obtained by AT&T’s “Project Raindrops.” This initiative, which started in 2020, saved the company $230 million. Outstanding. At AT&T, “Raindrop” is a metaphor referring to “an annoying policy, an outdated process, or a tool that’s no longer useful.” One or two raindrops are bearable; thousands inundate the company with inefficiencies [1].

The report resonated deeply with me because, at kommit, we use a similar metaphor referring to process automation. We favor small automation (drops) over huge and complex automation workflows. We strive for the compounding efficiency of many small automation cases. We call such an initiative the BAS— Business Automation Suite.

Whether AT&T with their Raindrops Project or at kommit with our BAS, the goal behind these initiatives is clear: tackle operational inefficiencies to stop losing money.

At kommit, our approach to automation is based on the following reasoning:

1. We are not a big corporation like AT&T, so embarking on large-scale projects poses a significant risk. We always prefer small automation projects.
2. Frequent victories are important to keep teams motivated. No one wants to work on never-ending initiatives.
3. Over time, many small automation cases will compound to huge savings.
4. Low-cost maintainability is crucial because we don’t want to spend what we save keeping the automation suite operating— this is achieved through quality.

We also made two strategic decisions:

1. We will open-source the code to contribute back to the community.
2. We will avoid automation suites like Make, IFTTT, etc. because they are costly and often require full permissions on our internal platforms and data. We don’t want to pay extra if we don’t have to, but most importantly, we want to keep control of our workflows and data.

The waste estimates

Let’s do some simple math to estimate how much waste a small automation removes. One of our automation cases is “Notify PTOs of the day,” which involves posting a message on a public channel daily informing who is on PTO and when the person is expected to return. Check this screenshot of how this automation case works at kommit:

Anytime I need to check if someone is on PTO for the day or for the next week, I click on the “ptos” channel. Before this automation case, I had to open another tab and navigate our internal system to find the same information. Let’s say it took 30 seconds longer. It's a minimal change, but let’s do some math:

An employee who checks for PTOs twice daily will save 1 minute per day, 5 minutes weekly, and 260 minutes yearly—that’s 4.3 hours. If this employee costs the company $40 per hour, there will be $173.65 less waste during that year. Let’s assume a company with 100 employees and these same numbers to simplify this exercise. The result would be ~$17,365 less waste yearly.

Although unpolished, the exercise above illustrates what companies can achieve when investing in automation.

The first steps towards an automation program

A useful automation program at a company must have complete support from the top. Scarce or timid efforts will fail because they typically don’t last and have minimal perceived benefits. Motivation will fade, and the resources spent on them will be lost.

After the top leaders entirely support the initiative, the next step is to define the principles that will guide it. Three one-page documents are required at this phase:

1. The first is a long-term company vision regarding automation and a high-level objective for the first year. The first is a short paragraph, and the second is a clear outcome that moves the needle towards the vision.
2. The second is a set of decisions to run the program. It explains the initiative's tradeoffs and boundaries.
3. The last is a list of candidate automation cases to implement during the first quarter. Each one should present the problem behind the automation.

Although these will be short documents, building them will require several working sessions to keep them on the spot and useful. They will be the guiding map for executing the automation initiative.

The closing

The sum of many small improvements makes a difference and becomes a terrific competitive advantage. It works in big corporations, as in the case of AT&T with the Raindrops Project, and in small & medium-sized enterprises, as is the case of kommit with our BAS initiative.

In the end, although it is appropriate to evaluate how much we are wasting on things that can be automated, it is more revealing to calculate what advantage our main competitors have over us if they have an automation program running and we don’t.

The question isn't whether to automate but how much competitive advantage we will sacrifice if we don't.

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1. Legg, Jeremy. "How AT&T Employees Turned Process Gripes Into $230 Million Saved." MIT Sloan Management Review, 27 May 2024.