Becoming a digitally scaled business requires a shift to widespread digital processes, leaning on automation to transform operations. While technology is the enabler of process transformation, organizations are prioritizing intelligent automation projects around key strategic business initiatives, such as improving employee, customer and partner experiences.
To uncover where to automate processes to drive improvement, companies are going straight to the source of daily operations: line-of-business leaders. These individuals, combined with business users, have a deep understanding of their own workflows and valuable insight into current inefficient and ineffective processes.
Let’s explore six questions to help you surface opportunities for business automation and how an intelligent automation platform can help.
1. What is intelligent process automation?
Intelligent process automation or digital process automation (DPA) brings people, processes, applications and information together to support agile operations, accelerate digital transformation and provide improved digital experiences for customers and employees alike. Bringing those elements together with automation and intelligence at the core can help organizations save time, money and effort.
There are many benefits of process automation. For example, streamlining and automating business processes opens the door to better data-driven decision making. Plus, by reducing information and process gaps and eliminating manual steps, employee productivity goes up, enabling anytime access to anywhere work.
2. Is our automation stuck in a backlog?
According to Forrester, one-quarter of enterprises blame skills shortages on slow automation progress, with a lack of technology skills and experiences cited as the biggest challenge to adopting automation technologies.[1] This is compounded by overburdened IT resources, with automation needs often overshadowed by high volumes of internal configuration and customization requests.
As a result, business users are taking matters into their own hands, leaning on user-friendly process automation platforms to create automated, connected processes and data-centric workflows with little to no IT involvement. According to Gartner, by 2024 developers outside of formal IT departments (citizen developers) will account for at least 80 percent of the user base for low-code technology/tools, up from 60 percent in 2021.[2]
3. Are we data-driven or data-hidden?
How many systems do employees access daily to find critical information? Enterprise systems, such as Salesforce and SAP, often sit at the core of operations, but information remains more complex and distributed than ever, stuck in siloes and disconnected from business processes.
With a nimble, flexible process automation system, organizations can connect and integrate enterprise information, automating how it flows across business applications. This allows users to work in lead applications, such as Salesforce, while accessing relevant information across any enterprise system (ERP, ECM, etc.) when and how needed. Plus, by embedding process automation into content services platforms, organizations can better utilize existing enterprise information, connecting content to workflows for new information insights.
4. Are we supporting modern work?
The last thing you want is employees facing a mountain of mundane, repetitive tasks and information roadblocks, which could lead to low job satisfaction, frustration and burnout. Struggling to locate needed information adds to the existing burden, slowing workflows and negatively affecting the efficiency of business processes.
Automation technologies can foster innovation only if built to empower people and drive productivity across the enterprise ecosystem. With the introduction of robotic process automation (RPA), line-of-business leaders can reduce repetitive, error-prone and time-consuming tasks, making room for more engaging, impactful and valuable work. In addition, by automatically surfacing the right information for the employee at the appropriate process step, AI and machine learning can ensure information is served up in context of the activity.
5. Just how dynamic is our case management?
Case-based processes, such as service requests or incident response, are inherently dynamic and often ad hoc, made more challenging with the ever-increasing volume of data flowing in and out of the organization.
By automating case-based work, you can drive more flexible and intelligent case management, expediting approvals, and expanding visibility to stakeholders. Integration of case management, content services and other enterprise applications provides knowledge workers immediate access to the systems, content, and people they need to make informed decisions and expedite time to resolution.
6. Do we have repeatable use cases for process automation?
While generic integration of AI engines into process automation platforms provide value to organizations, success accelerates when implementations are aligned to industry-specific use cases where defined data sets can be analyzed and AI models standardized for repeatability, such as fraud detection in financial services or preventive equipment maintenance in manufacturing.
While every industry stands to reap the benefits of intelligent automation, Forrester found the top three verticals with the most interest in process intelligence are professional services (47 percent), banks, insurance companies and financial technology (30 percent) and industrial manufacturing (10 percent).[3]
Packaged digital process automation applications can support both industry and horizontal use cases, allowing business users to use preconfigured templates to digitize workflows and improve information sharing, transparency and insights. For example, an out-of-the-box grants management solution would allow government funding agencies and non-profits to better manage funds, measure performance and improve results.
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[1] Forrester, Predictions 2023: Automation and Robotics, October 2022
[2] Gartner®, Emerging Technologies: The Future of Low Code, Mark Driver, 12 July 2022
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
[3] Forrester, Process Intelligence Inquiry Spotlight, 2022, January 2023
