The Digital Process Automation New Wave
We are witnessing a crucial passage in the industry of Digital Process Automation.
Users are moving from the “Experimental” phase to the “Industrial” one.
Why is this happening right now, and what must organizations do to dominate this change successfully?
Over the last five years, many companies worldwide have initiated Digital Process Automation projects characterized by two evident aspects. First of all, these projects received small budgets compared to other investments in information technology. Secondly, these projects were “local”, meaning limited in scope and encompassing no more than a subset of processes within the same business function or department.
Process automation rarely crossed the boundaries of a business function during the first wave of experimentation. The appearance of many “islands of automation” clearly indicates that this limitation in scope had a manifest impact.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been the essential technology for these automation projects, with minimal cases where cognitive features (like Machine Learning or Natural Language Processing) have been added to the implementations.
This approach to process automation triggered the massive success of companies like UiPath, AutomationAnywhere, and Blue Prism, which will likely continue over the next five years. Cognitive features will be more commonly used than in the past, and other players are coming into the arena as technology providers, both as competitors or complementors to the portfolio of automation technologies.
Now companies are moving from the “Experimental” phase to the “Industrial” one and will roll out many more and larger automation projects.
This shift is happening right now for two key reasons:
- Competitive pressure has increased remarkably, and it is likely to get even fiercer. To the consequences of two years of the pandemic, add up the unusual phenomena of the “Great Resignation”, the significant increase in prices of raw materials and commodities, and now the recent surge of inflation in the most developed countries, and you have a harsh competitive landscape a company has to face.
- Digital Process Automation technologies have reached a level of maturity in terms of reliability and completeness of features to automate very complex and broad business processes successfully, with the vital add-on of Artificial Intelligence features to, finally, get to the sought-after paradigm of “Intelligent Process Automation”.
A significant consequence of this situation is that now many smaller companies are entering the fray of process automation because they are recording higher competitive pressure. Plus, they are imitating the more prominent organizations in adopting process automation technologies, also thanks to the availability of a plethora of competitors in the process automation space, which is driving TCOs down, not to mention the alternative of open source software, now a reality.
What must organizations do to get the most out of this change?
1. Establish the Governance. Any company seriously committed to automating processes must set the goals of a digital automation strategy and align and drive the entire organization to those goals.
2. Hire, train, or contract professional resources able to identify and prioritize automation opportunities, those professionals who can be identified as “business analysts”. These analysts are critical to the execution of any Digital Automation Strategy.
3. Set the organization ready. Roles and processes must be in place to discover automation opportunities and share experience and competencies within the organization.
Do you agree that the maturity of this industry has step-up significantly?
Are companies ready to surf the new wave?