What does it mean for your SME business, when the RBA cuts official cash rates, to less than 1%?

For more than a decade after the global financial crisis, Australians watched with amazement as the world’s economic policymakers unleashed a strange barrage of unconventional policies designed to conquer low economic growth. But, sheltered by a China-fuelled commodity boom and blessed with a high starting point for interest rates, such exotic terms as negative interest rates and quantitative easing remained confined to foreign lands.

That all changed last week. With Australia’s official cash rate now tipped to fall to a simple rounding error from zero this summer, the world’s low-growth dilemma has finally washed up on Australian shores.

So how are you going to best prepare your SME and Mid-market business for the potential of the Australian economy entering a period of protracted low economic growth or worse?

By reducing your cost of doing business, to fund growth initiatives. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or otherwise known as Software Robots, can help you automate your business and reduce the cost of doing business, like never before. Sherpa Works is uniquely positioned to help SME and Mid-market businesses build an RPA bot workforce, that’s cheaper, faster and more accurate, than your employees, either locally in Australia or offshore (for example, in the Philippines or India).

Sherpa Works is a low-cost, low risk, no fuss way to get started. Many organisations are excited with the prospect of automating parts of their business with RPA bots but don’t know where to start. Sherpa Works can help you make a well-informed assessment of the potential of software robots in your business. Firstly, we will work with you to determine those parts of your business, which are the best candidates for RPA. Then, we can help you prioritise these. More importantly, help you structure the investment required and give you an indication of what return you will get back from your investment, in terms of cost-out or productivity gains. In other words, Sherpa Works can help you build the business case. Then, you can make a better assessment of the usefulness of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for your business.

You may be unsure what Robotic Process Automation is. Simply put, it’s a software application that mimics what your employees would otherwise do, when processing work. So, there’s no lengthy or costly integration required with your current business applications. The RPA bots simply open your business applications with your assigned user credentials and completes the work accordingly.

In addition, the overwhelming majority of software robots built are to help your staff be more productive, allowing them to focus on more growth or value adding related work. Your team can think of these bots, as their digital assistants, that performs the repetitive and rules based work that is usually tedious in nature, in the first place. However, in some instances, the automation opportunities are so abundant, that you may be required to reassign team members to other parts of your business. Naturally, Sherpa Works can provide practical, tested and proven advice on how to manage the transition, if required.

Moreover, with interest rates so low, it’s never been cheaper to invest in software robots, should you choose to finance them and hedge your bets at a time of increased uncertainty. Whatever you choose, it’s certainly going to be interesting to see how the economic situation unfolds. New data last week revealed house prices in Sydney and Melbourne have rebounded 1.7% in September, ahead of the Reserve’s widely anticipated move, stoking fears of a resurgent property bubble. The RBA has given an indication that it wants to return the economy to 4.5% unemployment, down from the current 5.3%. So, what’s the next move for Reserve Bank of Australia?

To unleash your team of tedious and repetitive work, please contact Sherpa Works (www.sherpaworks.com.au) to learn more about Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Sherpa Works are proudly specialists in the SME and Mid-market.

About the Author: David Barlow, Co-Founder and Director, Sherpa Works, is passionate about helping SMEs and Mid-market businesses automate their tedious and repetitive work, to take their business to next level of growth and beyond.

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