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Fundamentals

Seventy percent of small to medium-sized businesses initiating automation projects fail to achieve their desired return on investment within the first two years. This statistic, often whispered in hushed tones among SMB owners, highlights a stark reality ● automation, the promised land of efficiency and growth, frequently turns into a costly mirage. The root cause is seldom technological inadequacy or lack of ambition; instead, it lies in a more fundamental, often overlooked area ● strategic alignment. Why does this misalignment derail automation efforts so consistently, and what practical steps can SMBs take to ensure their automation journey leads to tangible success rather than financial disappointment?

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Understanding Strategic Alignment

Strategic alignment, in its simplest form, represents the degree to which an organization’s resources, actions, and operations are directed toward achieving its overarching strategic goals. For an SMB, this means ensuring every department, every process, and every investment actively contributes to the business’s defined vision and objectives. Think of it as a compass for your business.

Without a clear direction, every step, no matter how energetic, may lead you further astray from your intended destination. In the context of automation, becomes the critical compass setting, ensuring that technology investments propel the business forward, not sideways or backward.

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Automation Without Alignment Is Aimless Motion

Imagine a manufacturing SMB investing heavily in robotic arms for its production line, lured by the promise of increased output and reduced labor costs. However, if this investment is not aligned with the company’s broader strategy ● perhaps a strategy focused on personalized customer service or high-quality, handcrafted goods ● the automation effort could backfire. The robots might churn out products faster, but if the company’s rests on bespoke craftsmanship, the automated output could diminish brand value and alienate its customer base. This scenario illustrates a common pitfall ● automation pursued for its own sake, without considering its strategic fit, often results in wasted resources and unrealized potential.

It’s akin to equipping a race car with a powerful engine but forgetting to check if the tires are suited for the track. Speed without control, power without direction, leads to spinouts, not victories.

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The SMB Advantage ● Agility and Focus

Small to medium-sized businesses possess a unique advantage in achieving strategic alignment compared to larger corporations ● agility. SMBs, often characterized by flatter organizational structures and closer communication channels, can adapt and adjust their strategies more swiftly. Decisions can be made and implemented faster, allowing for quicker course correction when stray from strategic objectives.

This inherent agility, when coupled with a laser focus on strategic alignment, transforms automation from a potential gamble into a calculated move. It allows SMBs to be nimble navigators in the complex automation landscape, adjusting their sails to capture the winds of technological change while staying firmly on course toward their strategic harbor.

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Practical Steps to Strategic Alignment for Automation

For SMBs eager to harness the power of automation without falling into the misalignment trap, several practical steps can be taken. These steps are not theoretical exercises but actionable strategies designed to embed strategic alignment into the very fabric of the automation process.

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Define Clear Strategic Objectives

The foundation of strategic alignment rests on clearly defined strategic objectives. Before even considering automation tools, an SMB must articulate its overarching business goals. Are you aiming to expand market share, improve customer satisfaction, reduce operational costs, or launch new product lines? These objectives serve as the North Star for all subsequent automation decisions.

Vague goals like “become more efficient” are insufficient. Instead, focus on specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives. For example, “reduce customer service response time by 50% within six months” is a SMART objective that provides a clear target for automation efforts. Without this clarity, automation becomes a solution searching for a problem, rather than a strategic tool solving a defined business challenge.

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Assess Current Processes and Identify Pain Points

Strategic automation is not about replacing human effort wholesale; it’s about strategically augmenting it. A critical step in achieving alignment involves a thorough assessment of current business processes to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and pain points. Where are your teams spending excessive time on repetitive tasks? Where are errors most frequent?

Where are customer experiences falling short? This diagnostic phase pinpoints the areas where automation can deliver the most strategic value. Think of it as a business health check. Just as a doctor identifies areas of concern before prescribing treatment, an SMB must diagnose its operational ailments before deploying automation remedies. This targeted approach ensures that automation efforts are focused on alleviating specific business pains, directly contributing to strategic improvement.

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Evaluate Automation Options Against Strategic Fit

Once strategic objectives are defined and pain points identified, the next step involves evaluating various automation technologies and solutions. This evaluation must go beyond simply comparing features and prices. The primary criterion should be strategic fit. Does a particular automation tool directly support your strategic objectives?

Does it address the identified pain points in a way that moves the business closer to its goals? For example, if your strategic objective is to enhance customer experience, investing in a chatbot for instant customer support aligns directly. However, implementing a complex CRM system with advanced features that your team doesn’t need or know how to use may be a strategic mismatch. Choose automation solutions that are not just technologically advanced but, more importantly, strategically relevant. Prioritize tools that act as strategic enablers, not just technological novelties.

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Develop an Implementation Roadmap Aligned with Strategy

Strategic alignment extends beyond technology selection to the implementation phase. An automation implementation roadmap should be meticulously aligned with the overall business strategy. This roadmap should outline the phased rollout of automation initiatives, prioritizing projects that deliver the most strategic impact first. Consider the sequence of implementation.

Automating customer onboarding processes might be strategically more critical than automating internal reporting if customer acquisition is a primary growth objective. The roadmap should also include clear timelines, resource allocation, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and ensure alignment is maintained throughout the implementation journey. A strategically aligned roadmap transforms automation implementation from a chaotic sprint into a well-paced marathon, ensuring sustained progress toward strategic goals.

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Regularly Review and Adjust for Strategic Drift

Strategic alignment is not a one-time achievement; it’s an ongoing process. The business landscape is dynamic, and strategic priorities can evolve. Therefore, regular reviews of automation initiatives are essential to prevent strategic drift. Are your automation efforts still aligned with your current strategic objectives?

Are they delivering the anticipated strategic benefits? Are there new strategic priorities that require adjustments to your automation roadmap? These review sessions should be opportunities to recalibrate, refine, and redirect automation efforts to maintain strategic alignment. Think of it as regularly checking your compass during a long voyage.

Even with a well-set course, external factors can cause deviations. Periodic reviews and adjustments ensure you stay true to your strategic direction, maximizing the long-term value of your automation investments.

Strategic alignment is the linchpin of successful SMB automation, transforming technological investments from potential liabilities into strategic assets.

By embracing these fundamental principles of strategic alignment, SMBs can significantly increase their chances of automation success. It’s about moving beyond the allure of technology for technology’s sake and focusing on automation as a strategic tool to achieve clearly defined business objectives. This strategic approach not only maximizes the return on automation investments but also positions SMBs for sustainable growth and competitive advantage in an increasingly automated world.

Step 1. Define Clear Strategic Objectives
Description Articulate specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) business goals.
Strategic Benefit Provides a clear direction for automation efforts, ensuring they contribute to overall business success.
Step 2. Assess Current Processes and Identify Pain Points
Description Thoroughly analyze existing workflows to pinpoint inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement.
Strategic Benefit Focuses automation on solving specific business problems, maximizing impact and ROI.
Step 3. Evaluate Automation Options Against Strategic Fit
Description Select automation tools and solutions based on their direct contribution to strategic objectives and pain point resolution.
Strategic Benefit Ensures technology investments are strategically relevant and act as enablers of business goals.
Step 4. Develop an Implementation Roadmap Aligned with Strategy
Description Create a phased implementation plan that prioritizes strategically impactful projects and includes timelines and KPIs.
Strategic Benefit Provides a structured approach to automation rollout, maintaining strategic focus throughout implementation.
Step 5. Regularly Review and Adjust for Strategic Drift
Description Establish a process for periodic review and recalibration of automation initiatives to ensure ongoing strategic alignment.
Strategic Benefit Maintains relevance and maximizes long-term value of automation investments in a dynamic business environment.

The journey of SMB automation, when guided by strategic alignment, transforms from a potential gamble into a calculated stride toward sustainable growth. It’s about more than just adopting new technologies; it’s about strategically weaving automation into the very fabric of your business’s future.

Intermediate

Industry analysts estimate that nearly 60% of automation projects within the SMB sector fail to scale beyond initial pilot phases. This concerning figure underscores a critical disconnect between the promise of automation and its practical realization in smaller business environments. While fundamental alignment ● ensuring automation supports stated business goals ● is necessary, it proves insufficient for sustained, scalable automation success. The chasm between pilot projects and enterprise-wide implementation is often bridged, or not, by a more sophisticated understanding of strategic alignment, one that moves beyond basic goal congruence and delves into the intricate dynamics of organizational architecture and operational symbiosis.

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Beyond Basic Alignment ● Organizational Symbiosis

Strategic alignment at an intermediate level transcends the simple matching of to business objectives. It necessitates fostering organizational symbiosis, a state where automation becomes deeply integrated into the operational ecosystem of the SMB, enhancing and harmonizing with existing human capabilities and workflows. This symbiotic relationship requires a nuanced understanding of how automation impacts various organizational layers, from frontline operations to strategic decision-making.

It is not merely about automating tasks; it is about orchestrating a new operational reality where humans and machines collaborate seamlessly, each leveraging their unique strengths to achieve synergistic outcomes. Think of it as moving from a solo instrument performance to a well-coordinated orchestra, where each section, human and automated, plays its part in a unified, resonant whole.

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The Pitfalls of Tactical Automation

Many SMBs stumble into the trap of tactical automation, implementing solutions to address immediate, localized problems without considering the broader strategic implications. For example, a sales team might adopt a CRM automation tool to streamline lead management, while the marketing team independently implements marketing automation software for email campaigns. While these tactical automations might yield short-term gains within their respective departments, they often operate in silos, creating data fragmentation, process inconsistencies, and ultimately, hindering overall strategic alignment.

This tactical approach, while seemingly efficient in the short run, can create a patchwork of disconnected automation islands, preventing the SMB from realizing the full strategic potential of integrated automation. It’s akin to building individual rooms without a blueprint for the entire house, resulting in a structure that lacks coherence and functionality.

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Strategic Alignment as a Competitive Differentiator

For SMBs operating in competitive markets, strategic alignment of automation initiatives emerges as a significant differentiator. Businesses that move beyond tactical automation and embrace a strategically aligned approach gain a competitive edge in several key areas. Firstly, they achieve enhanced operational efficiency across the organization, not just in isolated departments. Secondly, they unlock valuable data insights by integrating automation systems, providing a holistic view of business performance and customer behavior.

Thirdly, they foster greater agility and responsiveness to market changes, as automation becomes a strategically embedded capability, enabling faster adaptation and innovation. Strategic alignment transforms automation from a cost center into a strategic asset, empowering SMBs to outmaneuver competitors and capture market opportunities more effectively. It is the strategic leverage that allows smaller players to compete with larger enterprises, not by outspending them, but by outsmarting them through intelligent, aligned automation.

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Deepening Strategic Alignment ● Frameworks and Methodologies

Achieving intermediate-level strategic alignment requires SMBs to adopt more structured frameworks and methodologies. These are not rigid prescriptions but adaptable guidelines that help businesses systematically integrate automation with their strategic fabric.

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Value Stream Mapping for Automation Opportunities

Value stream mapping, a lean management technique, provides a powerful framework for identifying opportunities. This methodology involves visually mapping all the steps in a business process, from initiation to completion, highlighting value-added and non-value-added activities. By analyzing value stream maps, SMBs can pinpoint specific process segments where automation can eliminate waste, reduce cycle time, and enhance overall process efficiency, directly contributing to strategic objectives like operational excellence or improved customer delivery.

Value stream mapping transcends departmental silos, providing a holistic process view that ensures automation efforts are strategically targeted at optimizing end-to-end value delivery. It’s like creating a detailed operational blueprint that reveals the most strategically impactful points for automation intervention.

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Balanced Scorecard Approach to Automation KPIs

The framework, originally developed by Kaplan and Norton, offers a robust methodology for aligning automation initiatives with strategic goals and measuring their performance across multiple dimensions. Instead of focusing solely on financial metrics, the Balanced Scorecard encourages SMBs to define automation KPIs across four key perspectives ● financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. This holistic approach ensures that is evaluated not just in terms of cost savings or revenue increases, but also in terms of customer satisfaction, operational improvements, and organizational capability development.

By adopting a Balanced Scorecard approach, SMBs gain a more comprehensive and strategically aligned view of automation performance, ensuring that initiatives contribute to long-term sustainable success across all critical business dimensions. It’s like using a multi-faceted dashboard to monitor automation performance, ensuring it contributes to overall business health and strategic vitality.

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Organizational Change Management for Automation Integration

Strategic alignment is not solely a technological or process-oriented endeavor; it is fundamentally an initiative. Effective (OCM) is crucial for successfully integrating automation into the SMB ecosystem and ensuring strategic alignment. OCM involves proactively addressing the human side of automation, managing employee resistance to change, providing adequate training and support, and fostering a culture of automation adoption. Strategic OCM ensures that automation is not perceived as a disruptive force but as an enabling capability that empowers employees and enhances their roles.

By prioritizing OCM, SMBs can mitigate the risks of organizational friction, accelerate automation adoption, and ensure that human capital and automated systems work in strategic synergy. It’s about preparing the organizational ground for automation to flourish, ensuring that the human element is not just accommodated but actively engaged in the automation journey.

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Data-Driven Decision Making for Automation Refinement

Intermediate strategic alignment leverages to continuously refine and optimize automation initiatives. SMBs should establish robust data collection and analysis mechanisms to monitor automation performance, identify areas for improvement, and make informed adjustments to their automation strategies. This data-driven approach ensures that automation remains strategically aligned with evolving business needs and market dynamics.

By tracking key metrics, analyzing automation impact, and using data insights to guide future automation decisions, SMBs can create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement and strategic optimization. It’s like using data as a compass and a map, constantly guiding and refining the automation journey to ensure it stays strategically on course and maximizes its impact.

Intermediate strategic alignment is about building organizational symbiosis, where automation is not just implemented, but deeply integrated and harmonized with the SMB’s operational DNA.

Moving beyond fundamental alignment to this intermediate level empowers SMBs to unlock the true strategic potential of automation. It transforms automation from a series of tactical deployments into a strategically orchestrated capability, driving sustainable competitive advantage and enabling SMBs to thrive in an increasingly automated business landscape. This deeper level of alignment is the key to scaling automation initiatives beyond pilot projects and realizing enterprise-wide transformation.

  1. Value Stream Mapping ● Visualize processes to identify strategic automation points.
  2. Balanced Scorecard ● Define KPIs across financial, customer, process, and learning perspectives.
  3. Organizational Change Management ● Manage human aspects of automation for smooth integration.
  4. Data-Driven Decisions ● Use data to refine and optimize continuously.

Strategic automation at the intermediate stage is about crafting a symphony of human and machine capabilities, playing in concert to achieve strategic business objectives. It’s about building not just automated processes, but an automated organization, strategically aligned and poised for sustained success.

Advanced

A recent Harvard Business Review study indicates that fewer than 15% of initiatives demonstrably contribute to significant, long-term competitive advantage. This stark statistic exposes a critical limitation in prevailing SMB automation strategies. While fundamental and intermediate alignment approaches ● focusing on goal congruence and organizational symbiosis ● are essential, they often fall short of unlocking truly transformative automation potential.

Achieving advanced strategic alignment demands a paradigm shift, moving beyond operational optimization and embracing automation as a catalyst for strategic innovation and market disruption. This advanced perspective requires SMBs to view automation not merely as a tool for efficiency, but as a strategic lever for fundamentally reshaping their business models and redefining their competitive landscapes.

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Automation as Strategic Disruption ● Redefining Business Models

Advanced strategic alignment positions automation as a disruptive force, capable of fundamentally altering established business models and creating entirely new value propositions. This perspective transcends incremental process improvements and focuses on leveraging automation to reimagine core business functions, customer interactions, and revenue streams. Consider a traditional brick-and-mortar retail SMB. Basic automation might involve implementing a point-of-sale system.

Intermediate alignment could extend to e-commerce integration and CRM automation. However, advanced strategic alignment would explore leveraging AI-powered personalization and to create hyper-personalized shopping experiences, transforming the retail model from transactional to experiential, and potentially disrupting established market norms. This disruptive approach requires SMBs to think beyond automating existing processes and to envision entirely new ways of operating and competing, with automation as the central enabler of this strategic transformation. It is about using automation not just to play the game better, but to rewrite the rules of the game itself.

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Dynamic Strategic Alignment in Volatile Markets

In today’s increasingly volatile and unpredictable markets, advanced strategic alignment must be dynamic and adaptive. Static, long-term strategic plans are becoming less relevant in the face of rapid technological advancements and shifting market dynamics. Advanced alignment requires SMBs to build agile automation architectures and develop adaptive strategic frameworks that can respond effectively to unforeseen disruptions and emerging opportunities. This dynamic approach necessitates real-time data analytics, AI-driven scenario planning, and flexible automation platforms that can be rapidly reconfigured and redeployed as strategic priorities evolve.

SMBs that master gain a significant advantage in navigating market turbulence and capitalizing on fleeting opportunities, turning volatility into a source of competitive strength rather than a threat. It is about building not just a strategically aligned organization, but a strategically agile and resilient one, capable of thriving in constant flux.

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Ecosystem Automation and Collaborative Advantage

Advanced strategic alignment extends beyond the boundaries of the individual SMB to encompass the broader business ecosystem. This ecosystem-centric view recognizes that in today’s interconnected economy, competitive advantage is increasingly derived from collaborative networks and partnerships. Advanced automation strategies leverage APIs, cloud platforms, and distributed ledger technologies to create seamless data exchange, process integration, and value co-creation across the ecosystem. For example, an SMB manufacturer might strategically automate its supply chain not just internally, but also by integrating its systems with suppliers, distributors, and logistics providers, creating a digitally synchronized ecosystem that optimizes efficiency, responsiveness, and resilience across the entire value chain.

This approach unlocks collaborative advantage, enabling SMBs to leverage the collective capabilities of their networks to achieve strategic outcomes that would be unattainable in isolation. It is about building not just an automated business, but an automated ecosystem, strategically aligned and synergistically powerful.

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Ethical and Responsible Automation as Strategic Imperative

In an era of heightened social awareness and ethical scrutiny, advanced strategic alignment must incorporate ethical and principles as a strategic imperative. This goes beyond mere compliance and involves proactively embedding ethical considerations into the design, deployment, and governance of automation systems. This includes addressing potential biases in AI algorithms, ensuring data privacy and security, mitigating job displacement impacts, and promoting transparency and accountability in automated decision-making processes. SMBs that prioritize ethical and responsible automation build trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders, enhancing their brand reputation and long-term sustainability.

Ethical automation becomes a strategic differentiator, attracting socially conscious customers and talent, and fostering a positive societal impact. It is about building not just strategically effective automation, but strategically responsible and ethically grounded automation, aligning business success with broader societal values.

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Deep Data Integration for Predictive Strategic Insights

Advanced strategic alignment hinges on deep and the ability to extract predictive strategic insights from vast and diverse data sources. This transcends basic business intelligence and involves leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI to uncover hidden patterns, anticipate future trends, and make proactive strategic decisions. By integrating data from internal operations, customer interactions, market intelligence, and external ecosystem sources, SMBs can create a holistic data lake that fuels predictive analytics capabilities. These insights can inform strategic decisions across all business functions, from product development and market entry to risk management and competitive strategy.

Deep data integration and predictive analytics transform automation from a reactive operational tool into a proactive strategic intelligence engine, enabling SMBs to anticipate market shifts, preempt competitive moves, and seize emerging opportunities with foresight and precision. It is about building not just automated processes, but an automated intelligence system, strategically aligned and insightfully powerful.

Advanced strategic alignment is about transforming automation into a strategic disruption engine, redefining business models and creating entirely new competitive landscapes for SMBs.

Achieving this advanced level of strategic alignment is not merely about incremental improvement; it represents a quantum leap in SMB automation maturity. It empowers SMBs to not just adapt to the future of business, but to actively shape it, leveraging automation as a strategic instrument for innovation, disruption, and sustainable market leadership. This is the frontier of SMB automation, where strategic vision and technological prowess converge to create truly transformative business outcomes.

Dimension Strategic Disruption
Description Automation as a catalyst for business model reinvention and value proposition innovation.
Strategic Impact Creates new markets, redefines competition, and establishes first-mover advantage.
Dimension Dynamic Adaptation
Description Agile automation architectures and adaptive strategic frameworks for volatile markets.
Strategic Impact Enhances resilience, responsiveness, and ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities.
Dimension Ecosystem Automation
Description Collaborative automation across business ecosystems for synergistic value creation.
Strategic Impact Unlocks collaborative advantage, optimizes value chains, and enhances network resilience.
Dimension Ethical Responsibility
Description Embedding ethical principles into automation design, deployment, and governance.
Strategic Impact Builds trust, enhances brand reputation, and ensures long-term societal sustainability.
Dimension Predictive Intelligence
Description Deep data integration and advanced analytics for proactive strategic insights.
Strategic Impact Enables foresight, preemptive decision-making, and strategic agility in dynamic markets.

The journey to advanced strategic alignment is a continuous evolution, a relentless pursuit of innovation and strategic transformation. It’s about more than just automating processes; it’s about automating strategic advantage, positioning SMBs at the vanguard of a new era of business, driven by intelligence, agility, and ethical purpose.

References

  • Kaplan, Robert S., and David P. Norton. “The Balanced Scorecard ● Measures That Drive Performance.” Harvard Business Review, vol. 70, no. 1, 1992, pp. 71-79.
  • Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking ● Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Reflection

Perhaps the most controversial truth about SMB automation is that its failure is often not a technological deficiency, but a failure of imagination. SMB owners, frequently caught in the daily grind of operations, may struggle to envision automation beyond its immediate tactical applications. Strategic alignment, therefore, is not just a business process; it’s a call to elevate business thinking. It demands a shift from seeing automation as a cost-saving tool to recognizing it as a strategic instrument for market redefinition.

The real challenge for SMBs is not just implementing automation, but cultivating the strategic foresight to wield it as a disruptive force, transforming not only their businesses but potentially their entire industries. This requires a bold departure from conventional thinking, a willingness to embrace uncertainty, and a commitment to strategic experimentation. In the realm of SMB automation, the greatest risk may not be technological failure, but a failure to imagine the truly transformative possibilities that strategic alignment unlocks.

Strategic Alignment, SMB Automation, Business Model Disruption

Strategic alignment is the compass for SMB automation success, ensuring tech investments propel business goals, not derail them.

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Explore

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