By: Tanuj Singh- Global Head, Marketing and Alliances, JK Tech
First, let us put a definition of hyperautomation in place.
Hyperautomation is an enabler to help organizations with maximizing productivity, minimizing expenses, and ultimately operating with increased efficiency, to succeed in today’s economy. Technology takes several years to develop, but it seems as if everything happened in a jiffy to bring about a digital transformation that has made lives faster, smoother, and more importantly simpler. The concept of machines doing more work than humans themselves is now being accepted for business operations as well.
Therefore, this small write-up will throw some light on the details, prospects, and benefits of hyper-automation.
Good time to start with this long introduction, isn’t it? I will try to make it as simple as it can get. As implied by its name, it takes automation a step further. It helps prioritize eliminating the dependence of the input of human assistance. Though conventional automation aids in the optimization of task processes, hyper-automation adds an extra layer of robotic intelligence that makes the process even faster, error-free and end-end automation. This is what makes it an inevitable trend in the race for digital transformation. Further, it can be thought of as a discipline that augments human capabilities instead of replacing them.
Why Do You Need Hyperautomation?
While one might think hyperautomation is just hype, let us tell you that the hype is real, especially if you are looking to help your organization get ahead in today’s fast-paced, extremely distributed, and limited-resource environment. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the workforce has now become highly remote, resulting in much lesser staff members in facilities. This has also resulted in a lot of industries being unable to move as fast as they desire or must.
Thus, some of the goals that are driving organizations towards hyperautomation today include:
- Having to keep up with demand
- Existence of outdated work processes that result in the inability to compete
- Lack of resources or knowledge, making it difficult for corporate IT to keep up with the demands of the business
- Having to meet regulatory compliance
- Trying to maintain consistency of production as well as higher quality products with lesser or no human error
While these are just a few of the reasons why there has been a surge in hyperautomation adoption across industries, according to Gartner, by the year 2025 more than 20% of all products and produce will be first touched by a human only at the time of purchase. This projection shows that organizations are today realizing the kind of value that hyperautomation can add to their business processes, thus they are looking to move towards implementing automation for streamlining their business.
What are the Benefits of Hyperautomation?
Extending core automation and RPA with advanced technology like AI and Machine Learning, hyperautomation can help organizations in:
- Accelerated digital transformation through harnessing the power of integrated automation with the faster building of automated applications
- Empowering workforce to work faster, with much fewer errors, helping them direct their time and energy to more strategic tasks
- Faster ROI and adoption that can help customers receive outcomes within 8-10 weeks of automation enablement via an Agile approach
- Increasing agility, and more accurate decision making by giving quicker insights
- Increasing the quality of products and presenting faster marketing time by leveraging higher intelligence, improvement inconsistency, and reduction in human error
- Making better business decisions by identifying areas that require improvement, and enhancing consumer satisfaction by capturing higher amounts of data and gaining insights into it
For organizations that have low automation levels and legacy operations, hyperautomation can be especially advantageous, as they would be able to witness real results via automation of digital processes and infrastructure. This would aid in increasing connectivity, agility as well as efficiency of business operations.
What Are Some Use Cases for Hyperautomation?
Since automation is already being used in some form or the other across industries, hyperautomation too can be used in various sectors to enhance their existing processes. Listed below are a few examples of use cases for hyperautomation:
- Supply Chain: One of the biggest overarching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was on the capacity of companies to acquire materials on time. Add to this reduced staffing, and the result was process delays and numerous challenges. Leveraging RPA, companies can perform inventory checks round-the-clock to ensure better access to their stock levels as well as product availability. RPA can also be used for billing, pricing, system maintenance, procurement, etc.
- BFSI: An industry segment that is constantly pressurized to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. Apart from this, there is also a growing demand for improving personalized experiences for customers. Implementing hyperautomation in banking, financial services, and insurance empowers all banking processes. It is significantly apt for regulatory reporting, marketing, sales & distribution, bank servicing, payment operations, lending operations, back-office operations, and enterprise support among others. It is also able to prevent suspicious actions as intelligent automation solutions empowered by Al algorithms can efficiently monitor the transactions and proactively identify fraudulent activities. As claims processing is the most critical process for insurance, it can considerably benefit from hyperautomation technologies.
- Health Care: Another industry that can benefit greatly from hyperautomation is healthcare, as it can use this approach for providing the patients with better experiences, with access to more accurate information regarding patient health. Furthermore, hyperautomation can also be used for ensuring regulatory compliance, which is not only pivotal to viability, but also for the success of any healthcare institution.
- Retail Digitization: When it comes to the retail industry, businesses operating in the arena will find innumerable benefits when they start leveraging hyperautomation. E-commerce is one such example that can use AI for streamlining their front-end processes such as ad placements and email marketing. In this context, hyperautomation technologies can help retailers by automating their numerous business areas such as order management, payments, transportation, warehousing & inventory, supplier management, risk management, procurement, and data monitoring among others.
Hyperautomation takes mechanization to the superior level and expands the extent of computerization, to a level not experienced earlier. Keep in mind, it is not just the automation of tedious and rule-basedbut the focus is currently more on information and intelligent work. Start to empower more dynamic chores and there are more tools and instruments at work here like RPA, Advanced Analytics, AI, iBPMS, Low Code Platform, Blockchain, and others, all coming together to solve a complex problem. Hyperautomation is making waves across industries.
