The single greatest benefit of automation

I have been asked yesterday to name the single greatest benefit of either marketing, sales or customer support automation. Although the question sounds fairly simple, I really struggled to find an answer that I would be completely happy with.

As a person that is daily involved with marketing automation, I could speak for 90 minutes straight about automation. I could tell you about case studies, i could show fancy slides or demo real-life implementations.
If I would have been allowed to name 5 or 10 benefits it would have been much easier for me. But to name quickly just one benefit, well... it proved to be difficult. So, the next day, i took some time to think about a "definitive answer".

Sure, automation brings speed, accuracy, data safety, consistency and much more. But the single greatest benefit I believe it is TRACEABILITY. And this doesn't come from researches or analyst reports, but from practicing what I preach.

Please allow me to explain!

In theory there is some sort of report that you can access for just about anything: your website's traffic tool, your emailing tool, your weekly sales status or statistics from your customer support department. In real life though, this data is actually accessed way too scarcely.

Evaluating in terms of real business results the investment into paid ads (not merely clicks or opens) does lead to better media decisions in the future.

Seeing near real-time objective figures about team's performance does help identify where a manager's focus should be and where things should be corrected or who is objectively entitled to that big yearly bonus.

Having an unified dashboard that is emailed to your address every morning IS a game changer. Seeing ALL the relevant data about your company grouped together, right in front of your eyes, every day, does make a difference in understanding where you are and where you're heading.

And seeing what are the buyers' experience after purchasing your product can help correct issues in the earliest stages.

So, there you have it: in my opinion, the greatest benefit of automation is TRACEABILITY.

How about you? What is your opinion?