Automation is the flavour of the season. It improves accuracy, cuts slack, saves HR costs, enables innovation, and accelerates time-to-market.

But is automating everything desirable? The short answer is no.

Here are the enterprise functions and processes on the crosshairs of enterprise automation teams.

1. Day-to-day Workflows

Many industries struggle with messy, manual and inefficient workflows that clog up the team’s time and energy. Routine day-to-day processes breed inefficiencies. Examples include confusing email chains and having to re-key information.

An automated workflow offers a seamless way to access and use information. Each employee knows their responsibility, and receive convenient reminders. Supervisors and top managers have real-time information to make necessary interventions without micromanaging. The enterprise becomes more predictable for customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Employees get their HR, payroll and other internal tasks done through self-service portals. Automated workflow system offers timely reminders of due and upcoming tasks. Apps offer timely assistance, sparing the need to refer to outdated or bulky instruction manuals.

The resultant efficiency gains make a big difference to enterprise profitability. The spillover benefits of better employee morale, customer delight and an air of positive give a fillip to the business.

A case in point is TravelPro’s new system that automated the daily task of importing website and email orders into the order processing system. Automation freed up customer service from routine order import duties. It also eliminated the need for staff to run processes at night. Such benefits realise in almost all enterprise workflows. Field service, where technicians and marketers work outside the corporate walls, especially benefit.

2. Business-Critical High Volume Routine Processes

Routine and repetitive processes or tasks are the prime targets for any competent automation team worth its byte. As a rule of thumb, automating any repeatable task involving three or more people delivers significant gains. But not all workflows are equal or deliver similar automation benefits.

Examine the workflow to identify the underlying inefficiencies. Give priority to workflows where automation makes the biggest impact. For instance, automation to reduce customer wait time improves customer delight. Automation of employee leave encashment processing improves internal efficiency. But it has little impact on the core business.

With limited resources, the obvious priority is to reduce customer wait time. Understand how each workflow step impacts the workflow as a whole. Bottlenecks change the dynamics of the workflow and need top priority.

3. Complex Industrial Workflows

Automation benefits mission-critical and sensitive workflows. Today’s complex workflows touch upon various systems and tools. Synchronizing such process is an arduous task, prone to errors, delays, and hold-ups.

Automation allows applying rules to grant and restrict permissions. It allows for applying security protocols to ensure process integrity. It also streamlines convoluted processes. The process study preceding automation unearths unnecessary steps, roundabouts, and other convoluted steps.

Most industrial workflows would gain from such benefits and are hence ripe targets for automation.

4. Time-Sensitive Activities

Automate critical issues where time-logs and audit trails are important. When something goes wrong in a manual process, it is difficult, if not impossible to trace the workflow and identify the cause of the failure. An automation solution offers audit trails as standard.

Automating a workflow creates a log that records the time items that pass through the workflow. It also captures the time any issues occur and the time of resolution of such issues. It pinpoints process bottlenecks, helping easy resolution to avoid hold-ups.

5. Customer Focused Services

Automation, for all its benefits, requires an investment of capital and effort. The C-suite is unlikely to support initiatives that do not deliver a significant or measurable return on investment.

Quantify the benefits automation will deliver. Next, calculate the total cost of the automation exercise. Commit to automation only if the benefits exceed the cost. But do not fall into the numbers trap. Customer satisfaction makes or breaks a business, but these scores rarely reflect in a balance sheet or profit and loss account. In today’s customer-centric age, it makes little sense to automate something if the end-customer does not benefit.

Consider the case of an automated system to replenish toilet paper. The system cuts labour costs. But it is dependent on uninterrupted power and prone to jams. The net result is counterproductive for the enterprise.

63% of enterprises apply intelligent automation to improve customer satisfaction. Banks and financial institutions have benefited the most. Some of the ways advanced algorithms improved customer satisfaction include

• applying automated algorithms for personalised services,
• ensuring 24/7 availability through self-service portals,
• improved response times with direct processing.     

6. Quality Control

Automation speeds up the building and testing of applications. Software leads rely on automation for testing. Automation enables testing infinite permutations and combinations in a few seconds.

Do not ignore the human element. Human input is still essential to verify the quality of a finalized app. Automated tests ensure the functionality works as desired. Human hands may still have to validate the user experience.

7. Automation does not Suit Soft Skill and Design

Intelligent automation has come a long way. But at times, it still makes sense to manually process the workflow items. Automation does not suit processes and workflows involving soft skills or creativity.

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence allow computers to replicate human behaviour. Self-learning neural networks mimic human behaviour and enable deep customization. Automating in such a context offers a new world of possibilities.

Even advanced machine learning innovations fail to appreciate artistic endeavours, cultural nuances, and subjective feelings. Extending the concept, automation is best left out of design. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, and best catered to by human brains.

In today’s cut-throat and fast-paced business environment, there is no room for slack or delays. Automation accelerates time to market and does away with inaccuracies. Processes are the heartbeat of organizations, and automation ensures the heart pumps without a hitch.