Why the simplicity of process intelligence drives automation results

Intelligent automation has made organizations “scary smart,” however the true worth has been unlocked in the manner that they provide simplicity. Automation has been instrumental in amplifying the impression of enterprise efforts.

Companies that embraced clever automation have been capable of do extra with much less, change into extra agile and adaptable to alter and maintain their floor in difficult recessionary occasions — thus quickly altering buyer preferences and intensified expertise wars. In truth, for 95% of enterprises, clever automation is a essential part of their digital transformation technique.

However, many firms which have adopted automation haven’t but unlocked their full potential. While many U.S. headquartered Fortune 250 firms have began their automation journeys, few have a really mature automation apply.

The foremost obstacles — a scarcity of automation-proficient expertise, an undefined automation mandate and an absence of accountability — change into extra distinguished and impede an organization’s development as automation initiatives scale. When applied accurately, automation packages can enhance experiences and decision-making and allow extra fulfilling work for workers. 

Going past the low-hanging fruits of automation

Most firms start through the use of handbook strategies to find out what processes to automate, which might be carried out by leveraging crowdsourcing methods like workshops, hackathons, botathons and ideation instruments. Companies then begin their automation journey with fundamental use instances like worker onboarding, payroll administration, account creation and account reconciliation in HR, finance and different enterprise capabilities.

These are straightforward first steps to implement. But handbook strategies of discovering processes have their limitations. Workshops and hackathons, for instance, can take weeks from ideation to execution, and these methods should not very scalable in giant organizations with a number of workplaces or enterprise capabilities. This is the place process intelligence instruments are available.

Process intelligence: The key to scaling up automation initiatives

Process intelligence is a data-driven method that helps establish processes and areas that may be automated to get high-yield results. It additionally eliminates bottlenecks by understanding process information throughout the firm and gives clear visibility of the group’s present state. It additionally gives the following advantages:

Provides insights into beforehand neglected enterprise elements

Process intelligence generates a prepared pipeline of use instances for automation implementation in key enterprise areas. For instance, in customer support, these methods may also help workers obtain goal KPIs equivalent to decreased wait occasions or improved accuracy of info offered by analyzing information on buyer interactions.

Delivers improved expertise

As enterprises prioritize buyer, associate and worker expertise, process intelligence may also help consultants slim their efforts to areas with the highest impression on stakeholder expertise. Using automation, greater than 81% of enterprise leaders reported enhanced buyer expertise by means of quicker responses, and almost 78% noticed a discount in the quantity of processes related to queries.

Makes enterprises extra agile

Automation permits firms to design and construct custom-made workflows for various clients, in flip addressing macroeconomic challenges to maintain tempo with the modifications in the enterprise atmosphere. For occasion, for a mortgage utility at a financial institution, process intelligence may also help customise workflows for various buyer profiles like new clients, current clients and excessive net-worth people (HNIs).

Enables data-driven decision-making

Automation assesses processes and knowledge in actual time, serving to firms measure the effectiveness of their automation initiatives. By analyzing information on process efficiency earlier than and after implementation, organizations can decide the impression of automation by means of key metrics equivalent to value, effectivity and buyer satisfaction, which helps right their course of motion. 

Leveraging process intelligence to drive automation

Companies throughout all industries are turning to process intelligence to efficiently scale their automation efforts. In truth, 20% of Fortune 250 firms that prioritized process intelligence are already seeing it repay.

However, Process Intelligence instruments should not excellent options. While they will leverage years of information and seize person interactions, the insights from these instruments lack enterprise context and background and shell out biased results. To increase these insights successfully, companies must take a 3-phased hybrid process discovery method.

Phase 1: Discovery

The first step is to leverage both process mining or job mining instruments to seize the operational process particulars to offer a preliminary evaluation. 

Process mining instruments assist sift by means of years of enterprise information and occasion logs saved in legacy purposes equivalent to ERP and CRM methods, which may successfully consider and visualize steps concerned in enterprise processes.

Task Mining, on the different hand, makes use of laptop imaginative and prescient and machine studying (ML) algorithms to seize and analyze person interplay information specializing in the keystroke stage particulars — what the steps are and the way they have to be executed. 

If a corporation is primarily involved with enhancing general enterprise processes, process mining could be the proper start line to achieve insights into the movement of exercise throughout departments and methods and establish bottlenecks. However, if the goal is to reinforce worker productiveness and expertise, they need to go for job mining as an alternative.

In some instances, organizations could select to pursue each process mining and job mining concurrently to achieve a extra complete understanding of the group’s enterprise processes — the determination is predicated on the group’s particular targets, challenges and priorities.

Enterprises can then consider associate platforms based mostly on their technological capabilities, potential to combine with the current enterprise tech stack and platform focus of their respective trade. After an intensive analysis and Proof of Concept (POC) of shortlisted companions, the platform greatest suited to their wants might be onboarded for process intelligence. Enterprises can then align a group of enterprise analysts skilled and licensed for utilizing the platform to hold out the discovery.

Both applied sciences present substantial particulars about the process, together with numerous visualizations and analytics to generate insights. But they fall quick with regards to offering enterprise context — the function of every step, the final result it must drive and so forth.

Phase 2: Prioritization 

Each firm ought to then establish its priorities and targets for automation, whether or not it’s lowering operational prices, releasing up worker time for high-value work, enhancing process effectivity, eliminating errors or enhancing stakeholder expertise. This might be achieved by means of workshops or ideathons with enterprise leaders and process homeowners and can result in extra complete insights to ultimately construct a framework for prioritization for automating processes. 

An outside-in evaluation of trade tendencies, peer benchmarking and greatest practices can even assist process homeowners refine their prioritization framework for automation of processes. Various exterior components equivalent to an ongoing recession, provide chain disruptions or expertise disaster may pressure enterprises to rethink their priorities and tweak their method accordingly.

For instance, throughout the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises throughout sectors prioritized lowering their operational prices and enhancing process efficiencies to take care of the uncertainty. As the atmosphere advanced and the world witnessed ‘The Great Resignation’ wave, enhancing worker expertise grew to become the main enterprise precedence to retain high expertise. 

Phase 3: Roadmap finalization

Once the processes have been recognized and prioritized for automation, IT groups, process homeowners and enterprise heads want to return collectively to construct a roadmap. This consists of understanding the applied sciences to be leveraged for automation: RPA, API, and low-code app growth. 

No singular method can resolve the enterprises’ wants in isolation. The 3-phased hybrid process discovery method might be key, as it’s scalable, delivers timebound results and provides enterprise context to the insights generated, making it extra strategic, sustainable and impactful.

Currently, automation adoption in most organizations rests inside the operations groups, which leverage such instruments to optimize processes — and therefore the workloads are concentrated with them. As instruments change into easier to undertake and implement, and organizations change into more proficient at utilizing them, process intelligence and process discovery might be democratized. Teams throughout capabilities will be capable of leverage process intelligence to reinforce inside processes independently, with decreased reliance on operations groups. This will construct self-reliance, resilience and autonomy inside a corporation to compete in a dynamic enterprise atmosphere. 

Nischay Mittal is associate and world head of automation/AI at Zinnov.