Michael Hammer wrote a seminal article for the Harvard Business Review almost three decades ago titled “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate”. The central thesis of the article was that automation of inefficient processes can be an expensive and often futile proposition. The author hence advocated the investment of time and resources into reengineering processes to optimise them before considering automation. Whilst the basic premise of the article shall always remain true, the fact is that if there was ever a time to pepper sound theory with practical realities, it would be now, as we are developing strategies to run our businesses and economies in the post-COVID world. Intelligent Automation technologies today, are helping overcome lack of process standardisation and other process inefficiencies by deploying a digital workforce (software ‘robots’) that can operate 24/7 with high accuracy and efficiency.
Two fundamental changes in context are driving the shift from “reengineering processes before automation” to “rapid automation”. First, the scope of automation has expanded to include relatively quicker return-on-investment (ROI) technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Automation (IA). Second, the demands from businesses to come back from virtual shut-downs and become more resilient quickly and cost-effectively have never been greater. In other words, most businesses simply cannot afford the luxury of investing time and resources in process reengineering exercises, whilst working in dispersed and fragmented IT environments.
Expediting Automation
Conventionally, automation has been a time intensive, high-cost and challenging proposition. Some of the many challenges have included:
- Restricted ability to customise software applications in the absence of access to the source code of the software
- Technology limitations that render the integration of different systems challenging
- The reluctance of new-age and skilled developers to work on antiquated legacy systems
IA technologies (that augment RPA by leveraging advances in Artificial Intelligence) enable automation without interfering with or altering the source code of the underlying applications, and readily integrate various legacy and modern applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), CRM, calendar and e-mail. These automations are therefore marked by rapid return on investment, reduced operational risks, significantly enhanced efficiencies, improved response times and customer journey experiences.
Process reengineering vs. process enablement
IA leverages a software ‘robot’ (or a ‘digital worker’) – a program that interacts with the user interface of a computer system or application to automate tasks that humans perform on their computers. Since robots can operate 24/7, the turnaround time reductions of up to 60 percent to 80 percent are common. Given this, IA renders “paving the cow paths” an inexpensive and rapid solution.
Speed of automation is integral to the idea of IA. Mature IA practices (or practitioners) therefore strive for the right balance between making minor changes to an existing process to make it more automation friendly (“Process Enablement”), and the more time and cost intensive option of completely reengineering the process, leading in some cases to the “obliteration” of some steps.
Intelligent Automation drives rapid resilience outcomes for businesses
A traditional working environment without automation relies heavily on human ingenuity and collaboration. By performing process tasks more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly, the digital workers allow employees to focus on tasks that require higher human skills such as emotional intelligence, reasoning, judgment, and interaction with the customer. Facing a new reality and volatile future, automation assists with highly adaptive and agile business practices in many ways such as:
1. Workforce resilience
When physical access and proximity to our workplaces is no longer available, organisations need to define rules where they do not exist. An automated workforce streamlines workflows and limits human involvement to deliver efficient outcomes. In a crisis scenario, automating tasks ensures higher resilience and lower disruption to operations.
2. Supply chain resilience
In addition to improving cycle time, capacity and asset efficiency, IA helps increase customer and supplier satisfaction while producing cost savings between 30 and 50 percent. Robots can be applied across entire supply chains to automate manual tasks and help overcome common challenges associated with lagging performance metrics and information timeliness among end-consumers, customers, transporters and manufacturers.
IA also incorporates the Artificial Intelligence (AI) fabric that glues together the different automation, AI and analytics initiatives in an organisation. Specific examples where robots are successfully helping organisational supply chains include:
- Monitoring forecasts against actual demand
- Tracking and analysing price alerts
- Tracking incoming materials
- Reviewing order discrepancies
- Tender tracking and alerts
- Tracking stock pick-ups and deliveries
- Freight management
- Returns processing
3. Operational resilience
Continuing to provide business as usual services during social, geo-political, environmental, financial or any other disruptions, is the key test of any organisation’s operational resilience. Having a resilient operational strategy is a challenging proposition as the momentum associated with an organisation’s people, processes, technology, suppliers and customers does not enable rapid operational reconfiguration.
Due to their non-invasive nature and rapid turnaround ability, IA technologies can afford the operational flexibility to help organisations reconfigure and quickly adapt to the changed and often continually shifting context. Key ways in which robots help organisations improve operational resilience include:
- Incorporating flexibility in processes
- Optimising resource usage
- Providing insights and analytics
- Delivering and triggering automated responses
- Empowering the workforce to look beyond the “keep-the-lights-on” functions of the business and focus on the business itself
4. Regulatory compliance
Regulatory and compliance obligations are required to be met irrespective of the business cycle, economic environment and external disruptions. Such requirements enforce adherence to and reporting on matters like data protection, documentation of transactional information and legitimate competition among others. With evolving standards and regulations, the constant introduction and iterations of laws makes it hard for organisations to keep pace. IA is a natural fit in promoting effective compliance. For one, software robots leave a digital audit trail of all transactions, do not take short-cuts, and eliminate mistakes whilst processing voluminous routine tasks. Additionally, automation also promotes the re-stitching of process value chains by bringing back offshored processes to be performed by robots locally, thereby further assisting with, and in some cases alleviating the compliance obligations.
An automated environment is hence more resilient as it is more structured, efficient, flexible and less dependent on humans. Automation helps realise rapid and resilient outcomes for businesses without necessarily radically redefining inefficient processes.
Meet Sukalp
Sukalp Sharma is our Practice Director of Digital Experience for the Southern Hemisphere. With close to 20 years’ experience in transforming organisations by leveraging a range of digital and emerging technology solutions, Sukalp has a strong digital mindset and a penchant for effective execution through collaborative leadership. For more information, please contact Sukalp.Sharma@ghd.com.
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