Technology can have a very real impact on your company’s ability to churn out a quality product, but it can also get in the way of doing so. The difference between the two is understanding what technology you need to ensure that your business is churning out quality goods and services. This month, we thought we would take a look at quality control automation strategies for three separate parts of a business

What is Quality Control Automation?

As the name suggests, quality control automation is technology that uses AI, machine learning, or some other predefined specification to help a business weed out substandard products from their production line before they have a chance to get to customers. The obvious reason for this technology strategy is to curtail costs of quality assurance while also maintaining a positive organizational reputation from vendors and customers. Let’s take at how automated tools can help the quality of your business’ products and services in three different parts of your business.

Sales

Getting your business to the place where you can return solid sales leads, put together customized sales pitches fast, and close down more sales is the goal for every business. With automated tools, your sales team can be in a better position to see better-quality prospects, and therefore, close more sales opportunities. The number one benefit of automating anything is that you save time (and ultimately money). Your employees can focus on revenue-generating jobs rather than the redundant (albeit important) tasks that impede most employees' work experiences. 

Sales automation can improve the efficiency and performance of a sales team, provide data consistency, allow for fewer costs by saving a bunch of time, and overall make the sales process better. Salesmen that are able to sell products and services better are typically happier salespeople. Sales is a difficult job, but if you have the technology in place that can support your sales team, you will get more out of their efforts and build better revenue streams. 

Production

For quality assurance, human checks and balances are essential, but today, you can do a lot with automation. First of all, it not only allows you to set standards of criteria for every aspect of your business’ offering, it also allows you to track the progress of your production in real time. So while most people would consider automation on the production side of your business to boost production, it’s just as valuable for the data capture. In fact, automated systems can produce and report up to an average of 10 times the amount that a human workforce can in an office setting; think about how that translates into manufacturing. 

Automation is traditionally considered as a cost-cutting strategy—and of course it does—but in quality control, it is as important to detect production errors as it is to boost overall production. Customers expect quality and if your business is producing a lot of goods and a large portion of them don’t meet specifications until after they are produced, they are no good. With information system automation, you will get that information early and often, ensuring that the products your business produces meet spec and therefore are viable for the market. 

Support

No matter how smart your business is, you are going to have products and services that cause customers to need support. The problems with support teams are that they cost a lot of money and there is very little they can do to generate more revenue. This puts pressure on the sales and production sides of the business. Today, technology exists that allows businesses to give their customers the comprehensive support they demand at a fraction of the cost using artificial intelligence-run support programs. 

Chatbots and other interfaces have been developed to actively learn about your business while dealing with customer concerns and requests. This smart and intuitive technology provides the cost savings your business is looking for, while also intelligently providing a whole myriad of support options. The technology is extremely useful, but you will want to have a human available to smooth out things for the people that simply can’t stand dealing with automated responses. There are more than you think, but AI support automation will be able to intuitively handle most of your business’ support needs. 

Technology can help your business do much more with less. Give Apex Technology a call at (704) 895-0010 today to have a conversation about how it can help your business get smarter.