Hacker News Reader

Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

I have very interesting process when taking vacation. Automation does not mean robots from movie “I Robot”, some software can do the job too.

To take time off I must open shitty software, enter my vacation days, then print the sheet and sign it. My manager signs it too. Then I bring it to secretary, she signs too, confirms the date in shitty software. Secretary sends paper form to the HR lady, she checks, if it’s ok and forwards my sheet to accounting lady. I see here a huge potential for automation, throwing at least 1st secretary and HR lady out of the process. This ancient process is happening in Germany, but automation will come sooner or later even here.

Edit: typos

View on HN

All of that is automated at my company using SAP. Could be a nicer interface, but at least everything is online in the portal.

That's also why it's usually a multi-year project to introduce SAP systems at an existing company. The hard part is not installing the software (though I'm not saying it's always easy either). The hard part is getting all layers of the company to change away from their pre-existing, sometimes nonsensical processes.

(Disclosure: I work at SAP, though not on customer-facing software.)

That's already digitalized and automated in sane companies. Use something like bamboohr

The problem is not the tool. The problem is the people who, without broken processes, would not have jobs.

The purpose of the system is what it does.

The insurance industry in the UK is a great example of this.

Manual data entry for claims via the phone and a system called 'TAM'.

There are roles such as 'claims handlers' who's job is to repeat what is said over the phone into TAM.

Cut out the claims handler and present the claimant with a form, and their jobs are gone.

All things automation. Really a chainsaw is automation, and so is a compressor. Automation is a pen. They all remove work and increase efficiency.

There are lots of examples which don't really count though, such as self-checkout, which have exactly the same amount of work left, only who works it is a different person.

A chainsaw, compressor or pen are examples of mechanisation, not automation. They replace part of the human effort needed for a job, making the remaining human effort even more valuable.

Automation fully replaces human work for a given job. It's a difference in kind.

However, automation may replace only some jobs in a value chain, making the remaining ones even more productive and valuable.

A fully automated value chain is a difference in kind again.

The word "auto"(oneself), often used with meaning to do by itself.

Automation is a very broad term, which mechanization is a part, but not a requirement of.

Anything that moves work from human to other forces is automation, having a thing do things by itself. An automobile is the automating of our movement.

There is an interesting distinction used by some economists between "labor-saving"/"captial-augmenting" technology and "labor-augmenting" technology: the former encourages you to decrease headcount, while the latter nets you more units of work completed per unit of labor.

See here for a discussion: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/18079/labour-s...

HRIS software is used to automate these tasks. In the US, Gusto (YC W12) solves that problem. In Europe, there is PayFit which is very similar.

I fail to see the huge improvement once you automate all that. You'll have three fewer occasions per day to chat with real people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com