Intelligent Automation (IA) was the biggest technological trend of the past year. IA is one of the goal-oriented solutions that enable organizations to optimize workflows and automate mundane and repetitive processes like simple product assembly or data entry. With timely adoption
of IA, enterprises can avoid revenue erosion and observe better business margins. In fact, recent reports state that the global IA market is expected to reach $13.75bn by 2023 from $6.25bn in 2017.IA has critical value in the market across industries. With IA, organizations can slash their operating costs while ensuring better consistency within the workflows. Additionally, it also highlights skill gaps in the workforce. But as with any technology, implementing IA comes with both challenges and advantages.
Obstacles faced when implementing IA
While IA was listed as a top strategic tech trend by Gartner, these are some challenges that might obstruct its successful implementation, such as
Fragmented processes:
Implementing IA is more than just trying to automate processes (already being done). Nowadays, organizations have thousands of workflows, most of which are segregated into silos by functional divisions or departments. However, many vital business processes cut across organizational boundaries. For instance, onboarding and hiring processes impact IT, payroll, and finance. But, many times, these workflows are not connected to the documents, or the data is scattered across the proverbial wall to the next person in the next department.
IA plays an essential role in re-engineering such siloed workflows by implementing cost-efficient and lean operations at significantly higher speeds and accuracy than conventional methods. Employees who battle multiple systems to complete a single process are freed of error-prone and repetitive work to concentrate on higher-value work.
Resistance to change:
Tech is just one facet of IA. The human factor is the most crucial facet. Employees will be resistant to the change in their traditional mode of work. Considering intelligent automation – ignoring the human is a myopic viewpoint and will not be helpful in the long run. A successful IA implementation needs a holistic approach to ensure adaptivity and resiliency by focusing on the employees first. Retraining employees on essential process skills like critical thinking, active listening, and problem-solving are standard solutions used by enterprises.
Absence of a clear vision:
Successful implementation means integrating strategy and vision. The trouble begins when organizations try to deploy intelligent automation gradually, being led by business units or IT, but in the absence of a general strategy. Such scenarios can be tackled with sponsorship and involvement from the C-suite and a federated model of intelligent automation governance involving a CoE to set guidelines and offer guidance to business units engaged in the implementation.
IT not being ready:
IA needs critical support from IT. Unlike conventional RPA, which business units can deploy with minimal IT support, IA needs more storage, compute, and infrastructure resources. And this solution will need unconditional collaboration, cooperation, and support from a fully prepared IT department that is cognizant of the cloud if not already working with it.
Suggested read: How Manufacturers Can Benefit From Hyper-Automation
Advantages of implementing IA
Decreased costs due to better accuracy:
Automating processes and systems using analytics and data can significantly boost production. Intelligent Automation helps organizations with rapid scaling without risk escalation, quality compromise, or pressuring the existing workforce. Enterprises enjoy the benefits of IA implementation through better ROI and increased production yields.
Better customer experience:
With IA, organizations can offer better quality and more reliable products to market in less time, provide answers to questions immediately or faster, and provide a more positive and richer experience. This eventually becomes a competitive edge.
Consistent processes and approaches lead to better accuracy:
IA is backed up by Artificial Intelligence that promotes better decision-making and ensures a consistent approach for repetitive processes.
Continued compliance and regulations:
Organizations across industries must comply with specific regulatory policies. Intelligent Automation uses its task automation capabilities to offer a consistent process for compliance.
Future of Intelligence Automation
As the world becomes more “smart”, organizations need to double down on their intelligence capabilities and automate all the processes that need to be automated.
Intelligent Automation is the future of work, and companies that hesitate to embrace it will find it challenging to remain relevant in their markets. Vatsa Solutions has helped many businesses with successful implementation in the automation industry. Reach out to our experts today to know more.
