The answer is yes, and for some jobs it's the biggest gain of all
An automation can run while the office is closed, because it doesn't need anyone sitting in front of it, it opens the screens of your business software, reads the documents and fills in the fields at three in the morning just the same, and you come in to find the work already done
There's a practical reason too, at night the software is free, nobody is typing into the same screens, nobody closes a program by mistake, and a long job that would get in everybody's way during the day can take its time
When it's worth letting it work at night
Night work makes sense when there's volume, when the same thing repeats many times over, when there are no decisions to take inside it, and when a mistake can be corrected the next day without any harm being done in the meantime
Gathering and preparation jobs fit well, downloading the documents from the portals, renaming them and filing them where they belong, reading the files that came in during the day, comparing two lists line by line and preparing the list of differences for whoever will look at it in the morning
The test is simple, if a person is going to check the result the next day anyway, the work may as well be ready by the time she gets in
When it's better kept inside working hours
If the process needs a human confirmation to move on, night becomes a problem instead of a gain, because the system reaches the point where it has to ask, finds nobody, stops, and the queue sits there until morning
Better then to keep it inside office hours, where whoever has to confirm answers straight away and the work keeps moving
The same goes for jobs where a mistake hurts immediately, if a wrong figure written at midnight throws off your stock levels or a shipment leaving in the morning, better to have it under your eyes while it happens
The difference between an automation that carries on by itself and one that asks for confirmation is set out in assisted or autonomous automation, and that's the choice that decides whether night hours are any use to you
The practical thing to know first
For something to run at night you need a machine that's on at night, and that's the detail that always turns up last
The office computer switched off at six runs nothing, the one left on works until somebody turns it off out of habit or works on it the next day and leaves windows open, while a dedicated machine stays on and nobody disturbs it, though it's one more machine to pay for
The full comparison is in where the automation runs, on the office computer or on a server, and it's a choice to make before you start, not once the work is finished