Vuram's Arjun Devadas
Hyperautomation is not a new term, but the pandemic has forced industry leaders to increasingly include it in their road map. According to a recent research report, the hyperautomation market is experiencing rapid growth and is expected to touch USD 22.84 billion by 2027.
For companies that have not started thinking about automation, and those that are looking to scale existing hyperautomation efforts, now is the time. By integrating a multitude of complementary technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), business-process management (BPM), process mining and machine learning, hyperautomation is more than merely automating an organization’s end-to-end processes under a unified, intelligent system. It is a mindset and a continual journey for an organization.
Hyperautomation is now more critical than ever
Hyperautomation can interpret big data and apply logistics insights into the business for creative solutions to resolve problems. One of the best examples is with marketing and customer service. By leveraging tools like robotic-process automation (RPA) and machine learning, businesses can pull out data from multiple sources—including social media channels—to generate reports for responding to customers. That data an inform process changes that boost the customer experience.
Hyperautomation has the potential to transform the workforce by replacing mundane workday tasks with innovative work, it enables collaborative intelligence, and it fosters the evolution of machines as teammates where employees can focus on more value-based tasks while retaining their strengths of empathetic behavior and decision-making. With hyperautomation and low-code, businesses have a host of tools for flexible operations, less dependency on IT, and stakeholders can have better access to data and seamlessly collaborate across the entire organization.
How to make it work?
Before taking the big leap, it is imperative for organizations to re-think and answer these questions: What do you want to achieve? Whether to reduce operational costs or enhance accuracy? What is your optimization strategy? Is it prioritizing the most important ones, removing the inefficiencies while constantly looking to boost and find new optimizing opportunities?
To up the hyperautomation game, companies must keep in mind the crucial factors like:
Hyperautomation center of excellence (CoE)
Establishing a CoE means organizations can successfully embed automation practices to meet their strategic objectives and ensure the accumulated knowledge and resources are dispersed across the business units for future deployment. The CoE is responsible for automation governance, idea generation, skill development, process assessment, and enterprise-wide support.
Selecting the right tool
Among the many automation tools in the market, organizations need to ensure their toolkits include a platform that provides teams with an end-to-end view of business processes being automated for promoting better visibility and collaboration. Low-code automation platforms with business process-modeling capabilities enable accurate mapping and designing of complex processes that are part of a larger objective. So, selecting the right tool that can help with the entire hyperautomation journey including BPM, business rules, RPA, analytics and AI.
Structured operating-governance model
Organizations need to develop a comprehensive governance framework to execute a step-by-step implementation of hyperautomation, manage organizational and regulatory change, update processes, manage service-demand fluctuations, and communicate with stakeholders.
Tips for successful implementation of hyperautomation
● Identify the right use case: When introducing low code to your organization, it is important to achieve quick wins. Think of a project that is impactful and measurable, yet would not boil the ocean.
● Identify internal champions both from IT and business: Seek a blend of individuals to evaluate the ideas and processes, adoption of low-code platforms, and orchestrating a better automation lifecycle.
● Agile adoption: Building a rapid MVP approach helps in testing what works and what does not.
● Right change management: Before implementing automation, it is essential to consider the organizational changes…how a task gets done. It is important to bring the right employees on board to understand the changes to processes for achieving the targets.
We’re still at the beginning of Industrial revolution 4.0…still at a nascent stage. More sophisticated technologies and automation capabilities are still evolving. Without a doubt, hyperautomation will be in the spotlight for the coming years. It’s time for companies to put on their automation hats and keep this at the core of their everyday thinking.
Arjun Devadas is senior vice president of professional services & operations with Vuram
