In today’s business world, it isn’t a question of if a company uses automation, but how.
There are big payoffs for business leaders to implement automated technology into their operational workflows. In fact, a recent Forrester study on IBM’s Cloud Pak for Business Automation found that businesses could automate repetitive and clerical work valued at $3.2 million with up to 80% productivity increases after three years.
Now that business leaders have a foundational understanding of automation and its benefits, they need to make sure they’re using their automation tools to their full potential.
As a part of Alloy’s DEI committee, I set out to explore how the most popular automation tools can be used to achieve broader business initiatives related to a company’s mission, values and actions. Here’s what I found:
Eliminating Biased Language
A lot of companies have implemented AI, ML, and chatbots into their MarTech workflows to quickly pull research, identify keywords, and write content, but they aren’t taking the time to eliminate biased and exclusionary language.
Unlike B2C, B2B decisions are often made by a group and need to appeal to a broad audience in order to attract more customers. As marketing teams work to create brand messaging, optimize website copy and draft blogs, they need to ensure the use of unbiased and inclusive language that reflects and recognizes the diversity efforts that exist within the company.
Attracting a Qualified, Diverse Talent Pool
The goal of diverse and inclusive hiring practices should not be to meet a diversity quota, but instead to eliminate barriers to create equal opportunity for all candidates. Using automation tools, business leaders can highlight candidates based on their qualifications and experience while eliminating their name, age, gender, and racial identifiers where unconscious bias can creep in. From there, companies can rank which skills and experiences are most important or relevant to a role, turning a day-long job of sorting resumes into identifying top candidates in a matter of minutes.
Utilizing inclusive language and job descriptions will also attract a larger number of applications, leading to more qualified candidates.
Providing Equal Growth Opportunities
In the same way, automated MarTech tools can identify leads and measure their movement through the pipeline, businesses can use similar tools to track, identify and measure the growth of employees in a way that ensures reviews and promotions are conducted fairly.
High employee retention rates lead to better productivity, higher job satisfaction, increased employee engagement, and overall cost savings for the company. When all employees have an equal opportunity and are focused on their own growth and performance instead of comparing themselves to others, both the business and the employees are better set up for success.
Choosing the Right Partners for Your Tech Stack
One of the most important things to remember about using automation and AI in your MarTech stack is that it can only learn what it is taught – so if the team that programs and develops the tool doesn’t focus on eliminating bias, then the tool will have a limited effectiveness in relating to and understanding different populations.
Just as your customers research and select the right partner for them, it’s important that you do the same when looking for automation tools and partners. Alloy’s DEI committee directly supports its clients and teams to ensure that DEI efforts are strategically implemented in all business practices.
Check out Alloy’s MarTech Implementation Solution or contact us to learn more about our capabilities.