Make Intelligent Automation Successful for Your Business: A Three-Step Blueprint for Business Excellence
In recent years, the business landscape has witnessed a monumental shift in how organisations approach automation. Robotic Process Automation (RPA), celebrated as the pinnacle of process optimisation, has evolved and expanded its capabilities. However, with progress comes its unique set of challenges. While many companies have enthusiastically embraced RPA for streamlining operations and reducing costs, others grapple with the intricacies of implementation. Licenses accumulate, and internal champions are appointed, yet a central challenge persists: how to help business users uncover valuable automation opportunities?
Leading surveys have indicated that the successful implementation of RPA rarely exceeds the 50% mark. The ongoing debate surrounding citizen development in RPA has been fervent, with advocates extolling the virtues of democratised automation and critics voicing valid concerns about control, governance, the time-consuming process of identifying use cases, and the temptation to automate flawed processes. The emergence of Intelligent Automation or Hyper Automation is seen as the logical evolution but that is only one aspect. The ability to resolve pain points in your business and deliver to your customers cheaper and quicker – now that is revolutionary. Harnessing potential advanced technologies such as RPA, Process Mining, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Large Language Models (LLM) is crucial but how do you right-size those for your business and avoid stumbling over implementation hurdles?
Our discussions with leaders consistently revolve around the central topic of effectively approaching and implementing intelligent automation – with three main areas to address:
Start With Understanding Where You Stand on Your Intelligent Automation Journey
The first crucial step towards success is gaining a clear understanding of your organisation's current position the journey. Are you just beginning, recovering from past setbacks, or scaling up from good foundations? Each phase calls for a tailored approach:
If you're starting your automation journey, is it strategic or tactical? We’ve all heard these terms thrown around in the past whenever digital transformation is mentioned. But think beyond. Is this a journey that involves multiple teams, use cases and rethinking service delivery for customers? Then you’re at the strategic start-line, with longer time horizons. Or do you need that pain-point, that issue, that opportunity grasped? Then automation is a great tactical tool that can get you moving quickly. Whichever the time horizon is, there are some fundamentals to always keep in mind.
1. Have a vision, what do you want to achieve?
2. Have a clear path to realising value
3. Find a partner to help you right-size the technology, with best of class tools at their disposal
4. And always remember – technology alone isn’t the answer
If your organisation has previous automation challenges, all is not lost! Now is the time to make changes for recovery and acceleration. This is about crafting the right Intelligent Automation operating model with experts. Evolve and empower your technology ecosystem that can help you redefine your purpose.
If you're already on the automation journey, it's time to dream big. Explore opportunities to expand and optimise your current automation processes. Can you surface further automation candidates using Process Mining? Then consider integrating advanced technologies like generative AI, LLM, and ML to supercharge efficiency and foster innovation.
Key: Understanding your place on this spectrum empowers you to customise your Intelligent Automation strategy to suit your specific circumstances.
Aim for Concrete Business Solutions
Intelligent Automation stands as a powerful solution for addressing tangible and immediate business challenges. In the first section we introduced the notion that automation can be key to success on a strategic and tactical level. Remember, they always complement one another – what works at a tactical level can be key to your ongoing strategy and all good strategy requires tactical implementation. Purpose is key to any positive change and this can come about from a variety of domains:
Driving Growth: If expansion, entry into new markets, or revenue growth is your goal, Intelligent Automation can be your ally. It streamlines operations, enhances customer experiences, and fuels your growth ambitions.
Enhancing Experiences: If customer satisfaction and loyalty are paramount, harness Intelligent Automation to craft human plus digital experiences, such as reducing response times and having personalised insights of your customers ready at all key customer touch points.
Boosting Productivity: Unleash your workforce's potential by automating repetitive tasks. This frees up employees to focus on higher-value activities. A win-win for staff retention and profitability.
Keeping Tabs on Supply Chain: We all want a greener, more sustainable environment and Intelligent Automation can be used to shine a light on your supply chain and ongoing impact. Processes that once required teams of people manually checking traceability paperwork, can now be automated and analysed instantly.
Empowering Your Workforce: Elevating your workforce means equipping them with automation tools that enhance their capabilities. This approach results in a more skilled and motivated workforce, poised for success.
Key: Precisely defining your objectives allows you to align your Intelligent Automation efforts with your financial and operational OKR/KPIs.
Craft a Blueprint for Ongoing Use Case Curation
So, you have that killer use case and there is no better way to prove the power of automation than to get on a do it! But remember at the beginning of the article we posed the question of starting point, in relation to the time horizon you are working to? If it is a pain-point or an opportunity your business needs resolve rapidly, then grab it with both hands quickly. Automation can be far quicker than relying on other technologies such as API building or implementing a new system.
If you are in the throes of your Intelligent Automation programme, therein lies the logical process of use case curation: discovery, optimisation, prioritisation, and, ultimately, automation. This is absolutely about making Intelligent Automation successful through a process-driven approach. To ensure success, follow this structured roadmap:
Work with business users to discover candidates: Begin by casting a wide net to uncover potential automation opportunities across your organisation. Engage in discussions with a range of teams to gain insights into their pain points and inefficiencies. Leverage business Process Mining tools to identify where automation can make the most significant impact.
Do Not Automate a Poor Process: Before diving into automation, optimise existing processes. This step often reveals hidden inefficiencies that Intelligent Automation can address more effectively. By refining processes before automation, you maximise the benefits of automation.
Prioritise: Understand that not all processes are equally suitable for automation. Prioritise use cases based on factors like impact, feasibility, and return on investment (ROI). This ensures that you allocate resources where they will have the most significant impact and achieve quicker wins.
Automate: Implement the chosen automation solutions, seamlessly integrating them with your functional and operational requirements. This phase brings your carefully curated use cases to life, delivering tangible results to your organisation.
Key: By integrating this use case curation process into both your functional requirements and overall operations, you ensure that Intelligent Automation becomes an integral part of your organisation's success. Remember it is a continuous process, not one-and-done! Revisit use cases and continually surface new automation candidates.
In Conclusion
Achieving success with Intelligent Automation in your business requires some thought and honesty. Understand your position on the Intelligent Automation journey, align your automation efforts with your business goals, and continually search the organisation for use cases that boost both customer experience and business productivity. Adhere to these principles and you'll unlock the boundless potential of Intelligent Automation, propelling your business towards sustainable growth, extraordinary customer experiences, heightened productivity, and an empowered workforce.
