11 ms·

How do you find processes that can be automated? I've often thought that there must be a ton of this stuff in various industries where programmers aren't typica

How do you find processes that can be automated? I've often thought that there must be a ton of this stuff in various industries where programmers aren't typically embedded.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
You really need to find a domain expert who can at least get you started. I'm working on a problem that I would not have even known existed, if not for running across a couple of engineers who had a business in the field and saw an opening that only a small company would care about (market isn't big enough for the large players). I know similar situations have to be all around us. The problem, as you say, is finding out about them.
avgDev 7y ago
Any midsize company has tremendous amount of things that could be automated. For example, I work at manufacturing company, we produce parts for bigger companies. Bigger companies already have APIs, web portal, etc. We have people who often manually enter data. Any time, a piece of paper is passed around or when people enter data manually you can either automate or improve the process. People are prone to errors. Right now, I am rewriting a mission critical application, some trivial changes will save hours a week and improve the integrity of the information. It is not as exciting as writing algorithms but it is nice to see an application written by you used by 200+ people.
genidoi 7y ago
Go on forums where people who use a platform/API/SaaS post implicit feature requests Off the top of my mind: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/c/selling-on-amazon/third-party-software-services https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/c/selling-on-amazon/... https://community.ebay.com/t5/Tools-Apps/bd-p/tools-apps-db https://community.ebay.com/t5/Tools-Apps/bd-p/tools-apps-db
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  MWS is not fun. Trust me. Haha.
eyegor 7y ago
Honestly your best bet is to talk to people. I doubt cold calling/knocking on the door of a business will succeed, but people get enthusiastic when it comes to complaining about tedious/monotonous work. Especially at bars. Turn to someone nearby and say "I am looking for ideas to yadda yadda save people time and frustration. Is there any tedious process you deal with at work which you think doesn't need a person to deal with?" If you travel, this is especially common in airports. I've never asked someone this question and yet people rant at me all the time once I say "software developer".
starpilot 7y ago
Very common when you do tech work in a non-tech industry. Comes up a lot with coding-inclined mechanical engineers. Zed Shaw's words are really true: > Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession. People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines. https://learnpythonthehardway.org/python3/advice.html https://learnpythonthehardway.org/python3/advice.html
- phumbe 7y ago
  Great quote -- surprised I've never seen it before! In my limited experience, it's a mixed bag. Good: you get special treatment/opportunities because of a unique skill set and increased visibility on the end results of what you do. Bad: management doesn't really know what you do between software releases, you're paid the going rate for your industry while SWEs make far more, and in-house software quality standards might not be established/followed.
  - eyegor 7y ago
    Side ish bonus: you're basically prepared to run a one man show or move into niche consulting (much much higher rates). You also get to set the quality standards/procedures going forward, which can be satisfying. As a tangential bonus, I've accidentally converted my PhD research coworkers to strict git/markdown thanks mostly to typora (windows application). I showed one person what my work flow and version history look like for some internal documentation and now they do the same and convert to word/pdf as a last step. As far as I can tell, no one outside of the math/cs intersection has the patience for latex. Source: in that boat. Edit: In regards to market rates, that can be alleviated somewhat in follow up negotiations (6-12 months in or so). It's hard to convince someone what you're worth / what your value proposition is when they're not used to hiring software people. You need to demonstrate your business effect first, since they typically don't have a clear picture of it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
neverhigh 7y ago
At the moment many corporates are just automating the incoming invoice process. However, many processes are document (any kind of digital file) based to share information between departments, vendors or customers. Many processes could be automated. To identify a business case for automation worth coding such an application or offer an API we use three main KPI to identify processe worth automating it: - more than 10 documents per day on year average, e.g a bank will receive new annual reports only in some calendar months but in massive scale - average number of pages or lines of text per document, the longer the document the more mistakes will be made by humans, as they don't have the time to read everything in detail - average pay of the FTE who is able to understand and process the document manually should be higher than the average pay of all employees in the company, to make sure the documents encapsulate business value It's not a fixed set of KPI but helps us to sort out too narrow use cases. By we I refer to the team behind my startup Konfuzio: http://www.konfuzio.com/en/ http://www.konfuzio.com/en/
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  Thanks a lot for sharing such valuable insights! Small payback : on your English home page under "Operation of the software" > "Information security", there's one too many sentences: > We set the highest standards both when creating the software and when processing your data. Both when creating the software and when processing your data we set the highest standards. (First one is better imho).

How do you find processes that can be automated? I've often thought that there must be a ton of this stuff in various industries where programmers aren't typically embedded.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago

You really need to find a domain expert who can at least get you started. I'm working on a problem that I would not have even known existed, if not for running across a couple of engineers who had a business in the field and saw an opening that only a small company would care about (market isn't big enough for the large players). I know similar situations have to be all around us. The problem, as you say, is finding out about them.

avgDev 7y ago

Any midsize company has tremendous amount of things that could be automated. For example, I work at manufacturing company, we produce parts for bigger companies. Bigger companies already have APIs, web portal, etc. We have people who often manually enter data. Any time, a piece of paper is passed around or when people enter data manually you can either automate or improve the process. People are prone to errors. Right now, I am rewriting a mission critical application, some trivial changes will save hours a week and improve the integrity of the information. It is not as exciting as writing algorithms but it is nice to see an application written by you used by 200+ people.

genidoi 7y ago

Go on forums where people who use a platform/API/SaaS post implicit feature requests Off the top of my mind: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/c/selling-on-amazon/third-party-software-services https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/c/selling-on-amazon/... https://community.ebay.com/t5/Tools-Apps/bd-p/tools-apps-db https://community.ebay.com/t5/Tools-Apps/bd-p/tools-apps-db

james_s_tayler 7y ago
MWS is not fun. Trust me. Haha.

eyegor 7y ago

Honestly your best bet is to talk to people. I doubt cold calling/knocking on the door of a business will succeed, but people get enthusiastic when it comes to complaining about tedious/monotonous work. Especially at bars. Turn to someone nearby and say "I am looking for ideas to yadda yadda save people time and frustration. Is there any tedious process you deal with at work which you think doesn't need a person to deal with?" If you travel, this is especially common in airports. I've never asked someone this question and yet people rant at me all the time once I say "software developer".

starpilot 7y ago

Very common when you do tech work in a non-tech industry. Comes up a lot with coding-inclined mechanical engineers. Zed Shaw's words are really true: > Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession. People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines. https://learnpythonthehardway.org/python3/advice.html https://learnpythonthehardway.org/python3/advice.html

phumbe 7y ago
Great quote -- surprised I've never seen it before! In my limited experience, it's a mixed bag. Good: you get special treatment/opportunities because of a unique skill set and increased visibility on the end results of what you do. Bad: management doesn't really know what you do between software releases, you're paid the going rate for your industry while SWEs make far more, and in-house software quality standards might not be established/followed.
- eyegor 7y ago
  Side ish bonus: you're basically prepared to run a one man show or move into niche consulting (much much higher rates). You also get to set the quality standards/procedures going forward, which can be satisfying. As a tangential bonus, I've accidentally converted my PhD research coworkers to strict git/markdown thanks mostly to typora (windows application). I showed one person what my work flow and version history look like for some internal documentation and now they do the same and convert to word/pdf as a last step. As far as I can tell, no one outside of the math/cs intersection has the patience for latex. Source: in that boat. Edit: In regards to market rates, that can be alleviated somewhat in follow up negotiations (6-12 months in or so). It's hard to convince someone what you're worth / what your value proposition is when they're not used to hiring software people. You need to demonstrate your business effect first, since they typically don't have a clear picture of it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

neverhigh 7y ago

At the moment many corporates are just automating the incoming invoice process. However, many processes are document (any kind of digital file) based to share information between departments, vendors or customers. Many processes could be automated. To identify a business case for automation worth coding such an application or offer an API we use three main KPI to identify processe worth automating it: - more than 10 documents per day on year average, e.g a bank will receive new annual reports only in some calendar months but in massive scale - average number of pages or lines of text per document, the longer the document the more mistakes will be made by humans, as they don't have the time to read everything in detail - average pay of the FTE who is able to understand and process the document manually should be higher than the average pay of all employees in the company, to make sure the documents encapsulate business value It's not a fixed set of KPI but helps us to sort out too narrow use cases. By we I refer to the team behind my startup Konfuzio: http://www.konfuzio.com/en/ http://www.konfuzio.com/en/

K0SM0S 7y ago
Thanks a lot for sharing such valuable insights! Small payback : on your English home page under "Operation of the software" > "Information security", there's one too many sentences: > We set the highest standards both when creating the software and when processing your data. Both when creating the software and when processing your data we set the highest standards. (First one is better imho).