The Reason
First, I need to give an important context for this story. I have a degree in Production Engineering and, during graduation, I had the privilege of doing my internship at a multinational reference in the tech industry in the world.
During my internship, which lasted about 1 year and a half, I had contact with several databases. And, at the end of the day, my productive capacity came down to updating all this data.
That’s when I saw an opportunity to increase my productivity: automating all the updates that were part of my routine. Or at least speeding up the process.
After testing all the results, I was selected to mentor all the other interns on the team to teach in practice how to automate other processes.
Thus, I gained a lot of visibility and therefore recognition came to my favor.
The Award
Practically all automations were built in VBA, integrating our intranet. And, finally, the automations accelerated the operational process and, on top of that, reduced the human errors that could appear in the process.
Among all the benefits and results of this scenario, we were able to:
🔥 We were one of the first teams to start developing Business Intelligence involving Big Data;
🔥 Automate more than 90% of the team’s operational front, increasing production capacity;
🔥 Create a culture of continuous improvement, as all interns were able to optimize processes and create a strong learning routine;
🔥 We opened the door to other levels of automation, such as discovering and implementing real-time database updates.
Innovating your operation is a constant process. Implementing an innovative solution doesn’t end when it starts rolling: that’s where it starts.
After implementing the innovation, you have to experiment all the time. Create and test hypotheses from the data being collected.
That is why the culture of innovation is important.
The Conclusion
Introducing innovations is quite a challenge, mainly because innovating involves change and not all companies are prepared for change.
Innovation can impact the performance of your management, generating increased revenue and productivity, continuous process improvements and cost reduction. It is also possible to gain market differentiation by improving the customer experience.
The impact of innovation on successful companies is increasing, regardless of their size or field of activity. Innovating has become an important competitive advantage, after all, it is by innovating that you stay ahead of the competition and ensure continuous process improvement.