During the first quarter of 2025, the productivity of Canadian companies in the service sector declined by 0.5%, while the number of hours worked by employees increased.
This is not a good sign. As Canada faces an unprecedented trade attack from its southern neighbor, businesses need to be more efficient in order to produce more and better with less.
In this article, discover how automation can help reverse this trend in the service sector.
Technological lag and opportunities for service companies
Many Canadian companies are reluctant to adopt technological solutions within their organizations. According to a recent study by KPMG International and the University of Melbourne, Canada is identified as one of the countries with the lowest level of training and confidence in artificial intelligence. They argue that the more Canadians are trained in artificial intelligence, the more confident they will be and the more likely they will be to implement it in their organizations. However, AI is now one of the factors contributing to increased productivity in organizations.
Some companies and institutions have already understood this. This is particularly the case for Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), which uses automation to improve the quality of its programs and services to Canadians. All this while optimizing their internal operational processes. In particular, they use solutions that enable better automated decision-making to increase their operational efficiency and improve service delivery.
However, across Quebec, it is clear that few SMEs are reaping the benefits of automation. According to a CFIB study, 66% of Quebec SMEs are affected by a labor shortage, and only 4 out of 10 companies are turning to automation technologies to compensate.
In another study, PwC also suggests making a 180-degree shift toward automation to offset the declining productivity of Canadian businesses since the pandemic.
Automation as a concrete lever for doing more
Two European case studies illustrate the concrete benefits of automation in small service businesses. In Finland, a study tracked the implementation of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) in a dozen micro and small businesses. The most common uses were for automating administrative tasks: generating documents for audits, sending invitations via CRM, retrieving tax data, and even automatically creating invoices based on calendar events. The common goal of these projects was to reduce repetitive tasks and human error, while freeing up time for higher value-added activities.
In Germany, an industrial SME specializing in the manufacture of electrical systems automated the processing of its supplier orders, which were previously managed manually via Excel. The robot developed grouped orders, eliminated duplicates, and automatically generated structured purchase orders. This type of assisted automation (“attended RPA”), combining human intervention and automation, saved time, made data more reliable, and improved traceability.
These examples show that accessible tools such as Microsoft Power Automate can be quickly deployed in SMEs to automate simple but time-consuming tasks. The most frequently cited benefits include time savings, reduced errors, improved quality of internal processes, and employee satisfaction.
Automation can therefore be a real asset to your business if you want to increase productivity while freeing up time for your employees to focus on high-value tasks.
At TechNuCom, we have integrated automation for various clients. This is particularly the case for a call center where we have reduced the time spent processing and analyzing documents submitted by users by a factor of five.
Another example involves an insurance brokerage firm. We automated the weekly retrieval of account statements from around fifteen insurance companies. This data is now automatically integrated into their internal system. A task that used to require 20 hours of work per week by one employee is now fully handled by a bot, with a simple final check carried out by the employee.
In conclusion, process automation tools are technologies that should be seriously considered by companies looking to increase their productivity.
However, our team recommends starting with small projects to automate simple, repetitive tasks, so that the company as a whole can become familiar with these technologies and discover their benefits.
Then it will be easier to introduce process automation for more complex activities: accounts payable validation and processing, financial consolidation, inventory, etc.
Would you like support with this integration process?
Our team will be happy to discuss it with you.
