By: Ankur Kumar, Delivery Head - Intelligent RPA Practice, EU & Nordics, LTI

Intelligent Automation is the ‘next big thing’ and enterprises are trying to embrace in in a big way. However, every organization is at a different stage in their journey. According to latest research, many organizations believe that they won’t be able to realize the much expected RoI from their transformation programs! They finish their programs, but are not even able to break even, and only a handful could truly scale their bot implementations.

Even as we ponder the grim scenario reflected by these metrics, other enterprises have reported significant benefits like up to 50% improvement in operational metrics and up to 4X RoI. How did they manage to achieve that? Let’s look at some sure-fire ways to succeed in your automation journey:

Focus on long-term business objectives: Most organizations initiate their automation journeys with a very narrow and myopic view of cost and productivity, with zero or minimal emphasis on business and long-term goals. While this is not wrong, it limits the value you can derive from the program. The real potential of an automation program is be achieved by linking it to the broader business objectives i.e. enhanced customer experience, faster time-to-market, new operating models, etc. It is therefore very important to derive the success factors of the automation program from the long-term business objectives and outcomes. This also prevents losing focus halfway through the program.

Have a crystal-clear roadmap: It’s very important to have a clear roadmap in terms of ‘Maturity of the Automation journey’ and not just in terms of ‘Time’. It should be driven by the business objectives identified and influenced by an ongoing shift in market conditions and consumer behavior. This would prevent organizations from being caught in the eternal “what next” quagmire. Organizations should spend the right amount of time here, as it will serve as a guiding beacon for their automation journey.

Challenge the status quo: If the existing ways of working were good and future-ready, then there obviously wouldn’t be any need for any transformation programs. Organizations need to come up with radical ideas, change completely without hesitating if required, and approach solutions without any constraints. This is because once they start testing the solution, real-world challenges will automatically moderate them.

Busting myths and integrating: Over the years, there has been lot of hype around Intelligent Automation, which has led to certain myths and resistance. The fact is that Intelligent Automation is not merely about cost saving – its real potential lies in integrating without intrusion and bridging gaps between legacy and modern applications. The extent of an automation program’s success depends on how well it is fused with other complementary digital technologies such as Advanced OCR, AI, NLP and so on. Only then can organizations best capitalize on the benefits of Intelligent Automation to realize its true potential.

References:
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2016/05/global-transformation-study-2016.pdf
https://www2.everestgrp.com/reportaction/EGR-2019-38-V-3088/Marketing