Leaders who want to succeed in the digital-led recovery must quickly reset their digital agendas to meet new customer needs, shore up their decision-support systems, and tune their models and tech stacks to operate at the highest effective speed. It’s essential to set the right targets at the outset and regularly measure progress against them.
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Building digital resilience and automation post COVID
- Covid driven move for automation and digital adoption
- Process for automating
- Tips for implementing digitisation and automation successfully
Last year has certainly not been like any other average year. With the world trapped in the chain of global lockdowns, the Covid-19 pandemic has certainly shaken every foundation to its roots, starting from minimal households to giant enterprises. The Covid-19 monstrosity has exploded the business continuity and economic stability. Under such circumstances, the ‘work-from-home’ has become the new normal. But adapting to this unusual routine is not favorable to everyone. The whole situation is quite frightening, specifically for personnel who have to contribute to the growth of the enterprise under the 6-foot barrier. The use of machines and computer systems to increase efficiency in business practices and keep employees safe could bolster the economy post-COVID. As a result, businesses should brace for a wave of robotic process automation in the near future.
Covid-19 Driven Move for Automation
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, thousands of businesses have been under existential dread and this very reason has forced them to opt for a remote-first strategy for smooth business operations, hence, prioritising business continuity and economic stability. This has resulted in an increase in the need for efficiency in business practices to keep employees safe and deliver products and services to customers in the most optimal manner. As a result businesses need automation both virtual and physical in order to adapt to these changing times and changing customer behavior patterns to ensure their survival and growth.
The initial period of the crisis was a great administrative and managerial disaster. Companies that did not have the automation in place for either internal operations or digital client operations suffered a huge blow. This did trigger a response where large organisations started adopting digital channels. Banks transitioning to remote sales and service teams, grocery stores shifting to online ordering, schools and universities offering digital classrooms and more. This has shown the world that there is an immediate need of enhancing the resources and improving the business compliances and processes. Therefore, robotic process automation services and automation techniques came into action and helped the organizations to perform effectively during crucial times.
Coronavirus catastrophe has precipitated enterprises’ transition towards automation and digital solutions. It has acted as a catalyst for boosting the capital investments in the automation industry. Recent data shows that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around weeks and months. Customer behaviours and interactions have changed significantly during these times and it is unlikely they will revert. These shifts will cause even small and medium sized businesses to adopt and offer digital channels to their customers for their products and services. This will eventually require new automation and digital solutions. Companies will need to ensure that their digital channels are on par with or better than those of their competition to succeed in this new environment and therefore we will see a new wave of automation enabled by technologies like RPA and AI.
Process of Automating
In these perplexing times enterprises, and personnel are all trying to keep things on track, and therefore, enterprises are shortlisting the departments and problematic cases that are in dire need of immediate automation. The process of adopting automation services requires several steps which can be categorized into phases.
Phase 1 involves the introduction of automation into an enterprise. This phase is quite crucial as it aims on concluding the type of automation services that would resolve the uprising business problems of an enterprise. This phase also refocuses digital and automation efforts towards changing customer expectations. This can be quite a strenuous task and hence can be broken down into the following steps:
- Chalk out a list of long-term business goals of the enterprise and how automation can help to achieve these goals.
- Highlight the departments or activities which require automation for effective working and rank them at various priorities.
- Create new customer journeys to reduce friction and accelerate shift to digital channels.
- Collect data from various sources that can be used to build new predictive models
Phase 2 focuses on building and deployment of automation and AI systems.
- Selectively modernise technology capabilities
- Launch new digital offerings or channels
- Use data to build AI and machine learning models
- Set up cloud based data platforms and automate software delivery pipelines
Phase 3 focuses on tracking and monitoring the performance of the digital channels and automation systems. Some of the key elements of this phase also include
- Monitor and optimise the performance of the complete automation stack
- Developing next generation datasets and models for better analytics and performance
- Upskill organisation for accelerated digital world
The expedition of automation implementation gives the enterprise a whole new outlook on their current strategies and future objectives.
Tips for implementing automation successfully
With the excessive increase of RPA, here are some of the tips for the successful implementation of RPA which helps to boost productivity, enables better control and compliance for the enterprises, and helps to exploit the gross output.
- Analyze the working system of the enterprise comprehensively for the effective deployment of digital channels and automation solutions.
- Communicate with the team regarding automation solutions to build trust.
- Set explicit goals and objectives, alongside the team, for the project to comprehend its benefits and scope.
- While opting for automation, focus on long term utilization and operations.
- Conduct a cost-benefit analysis and calculate ROI to evaluate the economic potential of the digital transformation or automation project
Achieving parity or better across digital channels to win the revenue race, rebuilding the most critical decision-support models, and doubling development velocity are goals that are all within reach.
We recently worked with a furniture retailer and build an automation solution for their manual sales process. Read more about it here.
Case study 2: Intelligent Document Processing
