By Ankur Kothari, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Automation Anywhere
In this rapidly evolving world, technological breakthroughs are reshaping the landscape of business operations. At the forefront of this transformation lies intelligent automation (a powerful fusion of robotic process automation, document processing, process orchestration and artificial intelligence) is revolutionising business operations across various sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and customer service. For instance, in retail, generative AI-powered automation is assisting human efforts in tasks like inventory management and forecasting. Similarly, logistics companies are leveraging automation to track shipments in real-time, reducing liabilities, and improving delivery accuracy and speed.
A report by the World Economic Forum suggests that by 2025, technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and automation, will create more than 12 million more jobs, thus accelerating the deployment of technology and automation across industries. This has led businesses to realise the need to adapt to technologies like intelligent automation and generative AI to stay competitive and meet evolving market demands. Further, this urgency has driven organisations to streamline processes, enhance customer experiences, and boost productivity.
There could be no clearer indicator that as innovation in newer technologies like Generative AI accelerates, it will only solidify our move into the Automation Economy. In the Automation Economy, industries and organisations use automation as a core technology that underpins their entire business, to make the most of their investments in digital transformation and therefore yield the biggest benefits for the business.
To harness automation’s potential and drive value at scale, businesses can focus on four key areas:
- Rise in employee productivity: As enterprises in every industry deal with skill gaps and talent shortages now and in the future, improving employee productivity has become critical to optimise its business operations and help employees focus more on value-added and important work. Productivity and efficiency are crucial metrics that all industries aim to optimise to thrive. Thus, intelligent automation allows organisations to eliminate manual processes, increase productivity, scale as required, and reduce the need for maintaining heavily documented processes. This leads to a significant rise in employee productivity and satisfaction as it allows employees to focus on key business processes and strategies.
“Automation has been pivotal in transforming our financial shared services. It has streamlined our processes, cut down on errors, and boosted efficiency significantly. Thanks to the deployment of over 200+ bots, we have achieved a remarkable equivalence of 65 full-time employees (FTE) in savings. This has not only optimised our operations but also enabled us to make strategic decisions with enhanced agility. Moreover, automation underpins the core values of ABEX: Assurance, Controllership, and Excellence, ensuring that we uphold the highest standards in every facet of our work”. – Sudesh Jain, Head of Finance Shared Services – Adani Group.
- Improved customer satisfaction: Intelligent automation solutions help in personalising customer experiences by automating routine interactions, reducing response times, and ensuring consistency, ultimately improving customer satisfaction. To ensure consistent and efficient customer interactions, Generative AI chatbots help in providing quick and accurate responses while customising it to a customer’s account history and data provided by them. This leads to the overall customer satisfaction at large.
- Rapid business transformation through Gen AI: With resilience becoming a key focus for businesses, organisations see enterprise process automation as a core strategic component of their operational investments and not just a one-time solution to their tactical challenges. There has been an increasing shift in the mindset of business leaders when it comes to investing in automation and gen AI.
- Enabling innovation through upskilling: People are at the core of a business’s success, and AI can foster a culture of innovation and continual improvement with employees through upskilling. The deployment of AI-based automation assistants will enable employees to perform tasks with incredible speed and accuracy, reducing the margin for error and allowing them to focus on more strategic and creative tasks. Hence, enterprises must invest in training programs that teach employees the skills required for performing future jobs as the current workforce goes through this technological shift.
