Run a tighter ship - How intelligent automation saves money for your business

As you navigate the next phase of the crisis, you can harness intelligent automation to radically revise your cost structures.  

Businesses are automating to survive the pandemic and thrive in a post-crisis world

Even as organisations in Australia and beyond rebound back to life after the first phase of the pandemic, many remain under financial pressure – and the impetus to cut costs is huge.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 38% of Australian businesses reported a decrease in revenue during September 2020.

For this and many other reasons, automation adoption has grown faster this year than many of us could have predicted.

Globally, according to a Forrester Consulting/UiPath survey, there was more digital transformation in the first six months of 2020 than in the preceding five years.

In Australia, 78% of business decision makers believe automation plays an essential role in building competitive advantage. And among those that have already embraced automation, 91% have plans to extend automation further across their enterprises.

Cut costs quickly

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a great technology choice for companies looking to save money fast. UiPath reports that RPA can shrink processing costs by up to 80%. And within a year, most organisations experience a positive return on their RPA investment.

Automation provides many other benefits as well. These all work together to deliver cost savings and create more value for employees, customers and investors over time. We have touched on some of these below. 

More ways to save money and deliver value

Automation technologies can be used to:

1) Digitise and streamline processes:

This accelerates work, minimises human error and ensures consistent outputs, every time.

2) Free up human resources:

When digital workers and human employees work side-by-side, more work gets done in every department.  

3) Connect different business systems:

Information flows easily between people, teams and functions – helping to overcome operational bottlenecks.

4) Scale capacity up and down:

Your organisation can operate leaner and more flexibly, with less wastage. You can respond faster to new challenges and act on opportunities before the competition.

5) Log every action:

This process data can be analysed to continually optimise operations and drive strategic improvement. It also provides an audit trail to support compliance, helping to reduce the risk of costly fines.

Time to value is also critical

Modern automation approaches – like RPA, low-code DPA and chatbots – offer exceptional time to value. Using these technologies, you can design, deploy and update business automation solutions in a fragment of the time it takes with more traditional software programming.

The result? You realise cost savings faster.

Of course, your speed to market also hinges on your development team. The more experienced your automation specialists are, the faster they’ll be able to work. This helps to condense the development cycle even further.  

Quick wins and next steps  

While many companies want to automate to cut costs, manage disruption and keep pace with change, some are unsure where to begin their automation journeys.

At rapidMATION, we often recommend starting with a Proof of Value (PoV) project. Our 10-day PoV Pack gives you an opportunity to see what automation can do for your business, without having to commit to any software purchase upfront. We encourage you to experiment and explore, so you have the insights to build a solid business case for your automation investment.

The sooner you begin exploring automation’s potential, the faster you’ll be able to deliver value to your business. And once you have successfully used automation to solve the quick fixes, we can help you extend automation through your organisation.

Implementing a combination of automation technologies helps you to optimise more complex processes and push your cost efficiencies to a higher level. This approach is called intelligent automation – or hyperautomation – and it’s what we specialise in.

Lastly, don’t forget the power of the human factor!

Rather than seeing automation as a replacement for human labour, view it as a tool for augmenting the skills and experience of your human employees. With digital assistance, your people have more time and space to grow your business.

Ready to give intelligent automation a go? Let’s talk about your options.