Automation at scale is a win-win for organisations and employees – but CIOs must use the right language

The coro­n­avirus cri­sis has forced organ­i­sa­tions to expe­dite their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys, and those who have com­mit­ted the most are reap­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant rewards. Accord­ing to Girish Pai, glob­al head of intel­li­gent process automa­tion (IPA) at multi­na­tion­al dig­i­tal solu­tions leader Cog­nizant, automat­ing busi­ness process­es at scale is now a com­pet­i­tive imper­a­tive.

Is there still a lan­guage prob­lem, though? Are chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers fail­ing to trans­late to stake­hold­ers the effi­cien­cy, effec­tive­ness and bet­ter expe­ri­ences now achiev­able with IPA? Pai believes so, but stress­es lag­gards risk ced­ing ground to mar­ket rivals. Con­verse­ly, tak­ing urgent action and gain­ing finan­cial com­mit­ment at this piv­otal time will see them leap ahead.

“The need to embrace dig­i­tal automa­tion has been a sec­u­lar trend, even before the pan­dem­ic, but it was syn­ony­mous with robot­ic process automa­tion, AI, and oth­er tech­nolo­gies,” he says, acknowl­edg­ing that there was an ele­ment of “dig­i­tal fatigue” felt by mem­bers of the c‑suite before the start of the Covid-19 chaos.

“What has fun­da­men­tal­ly shift­ed in the past 18 months is the busi­ness play­book and the def­i­n­i­tions of ‘dig­i­tal’ and ‘resilience’, with organ­i­sa­tions com­plete­ly rethink­ing how they want­ed to deliv­er ser­vices and expe­ri­ences. Addi­tion­al­ly, the dis­so­nance between man­u­al labour and the poten­tial of automa­tion was heard loud and clear. Togeth­er, these fac­tors mean the dri­ve for automa­tion – at scale – has accel­er­at­ed.”

Pai argues that advanced automa­tion tech­nolo­gies, such as IPA, can “bridge the dig­i­tal divide” and empow­er work­ers to add val­ue while inte­grat­ing cus­tomer jour­neys and process­es togeth­er. “Pro­gres­sive organ­i­sa­tions realise IPA will spark inno­va­tion and help put miles between them and the rest of the com­pe­ti­tion,” he says.

Rising demand: CIOs have to translate the benefits and manage change

CIOs have long known about the myr­i­ad ben­e­fits of intel­li­gent automa­tion, includ­ing faster process­es, reduced bot­tle­necks, and even sys­tems that take deci­sive, intel­li­gent action. But chief exec­u­tives, chief finan­cial offi­cers and oth­er busi­ness lead­ers with the purse strings have his­tor­i­cal­ly been reluc­tant to invest at the lev­el required for the largest returns. They are espe­cial­ly hes­i­tant if a pilot doesn’t deliv­er.

Indeed, before the coro­n­avirus cri­sis hit, an esti­mat­ed 80% of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects failed. And giv­en the haste with which many busi­ness­es have grasped at tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions since March 2020, it’s like­ly that this per­cent­age will increase.

Notably, for lead­ers who invest at scale in automa­tion and can lever­age the so-called ‘three As’ – automa­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and ana­lyt­ics – and inte­grate process­es, there are huge wins to be achieved. For instance, Ever­est Group’s recent research for Cog­nizant indi­cates 38% of ‘mature enter­pris­es’ – those that have suc­cess­ful­ly scaled intel­li­gent automa­tion – report gen­er­at­ing more than $50m in cost sav­ings, achieved through dri­ving effi­cien­cies alone. And oth­er stud­ies hint at the ris­ing demand for automa­tion at scale: anoth­er Cog­nizant report sug­gests automa­tion solu­tions are the top dri­ver for the future of work.

Lit­tle won­der the world­wide mar­ket for tech­nol­o­gy that enables hyper­automa­tion is fore­cast to reach $596.6bn in 2022, accord­ing to an April report from Gart­ner. How­ev­er, there remains a sense that the indus­try jar­gon around automa­tion is nei­ther under­stood nor trust­ed by the busi­ness lead­ers in the board­room.

Call of duty: better education needed to persuade the c‑suite

Admit­ted­ly there are sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to solve to take full advan­tage of automa­tion, and “the CIO as change man­ag­er” is a trend that has grown in 2021. Edu­ca­tion is crit­i­cal, and it is essen­tial to out­line the ben­e­fits to all impor­tant par­ties, includ­ing work­ers.

“As an indus­try, we have a call of duty to edu­cate peo­ple bet­ter,” says Gooty Agra­haram, Cognizant’s head of IPA in Europe, point­ing out his com­pa­ny has rolled out sev­er­al e‑learning cours­es to help clients under­stand automa­tion. “There is a lot of tech­ni­cal speak that is more input- rather than out­put-dri­ven. While many peo­ple talk about the effi­cien­cy gained by RPA, the nar­ra­tive has evolved, now that we have lay­ers of effec­tive­ness and more seam­less, con­tex­tu­al expe­ri­ences with IPA.”

He con­tin­ues: “A large major­i­ty of organ­i­sa­tions are still at what we call ‘base’ camp, and for busi­ness stake­hold­ers, lan­guage is the num­ber-one bar­ri­er to reach­ing stages one and two, where com­pa­nies can realise the true poten­tial of automa­tion.”

Agra­haram high­lights that IPA is upgrad­ing sup­ply chains by pro­vid­ing end-to-end vis­i­bil­i­ty and boost­ing inno­va­tion for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies by improv­ing trail man­age­ment for ear­ly adopters. As anoth­er exam­ple, IPA is rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing finan­cial depart­ments – so much so they should no longer be con­sid­ered “back office” enti­ties but, by analysing more and bet­ter data, moved to the heart of busi­ness­es to dri­ve strat­e­gy.

Final­ly, address­ing the weary argu­ment that robots will take away human jobs, Pai says: “From this point onwards, it’s going to be humans-plus-machines. Tech­nol­o­gy can actu­al­ly aug­ment human capa­bil­i­ties and make work more enjoy­able and more reward­ing. Automa­tion is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’, it’s here to stay. But CIOs need to not lose sight of the ‘why’ you are using this tech­nol­o­gy.”

He adds: “By keep­ing it sim­ple, you will take oth­ers on the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney and shift the com­pa­ny cul­ture. Ulti­mate­ly, the more peo­ple you have bought into what you are try­ing to achieve, the bet­ter the end out­comes.”

Girish Pai’s four steps to help CIOs maximise the potential of intelligent process automation

1. Anchor your­self to the ‘why’ – what out­comes are you try­ing to achieve? What is crit­i­cal for the busi­ness, and what prob­lem are you try­ing to solve? The most suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tions of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, for exam­ple, are very nar­row in scope.
2. Explain to the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers – cru­cial­ly in a lan­guage they under­stand and sup­port­ed by busi­ness cas­es – that automa­tion will become increas­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous and inte­gral to how every organ­i­sa­tion oper­ates. It’s impor­tant to stress that inte­grat­ing the tech­nol­o­gy in a man­ner that is not inva­sive or dis­rup­tive is pos­si­ble with IPA.
3. Scal­ing automa­tion requires new skills and organ­i­sa­tion mod­els, so there has to be a peo­ple-first approach. You sim­ply have to take peo­ple along – if they do not feel part of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney and haven’t bought into the vision, per­haps because of a lack of edu­ca­tion or train­ing, the project will like­ly fail.
4. Last­ly, and arguably most impor­tant­ly, is gov­er­nance. It’s not just about putting the tech in place that helps you reimag­ine the way you work. You have to rede­fine your con­trols, test and tweak oper­a­tions. Humans are far more intel­li­gent than AI, so you need to empow­er the human in the loop. Estab­lish the guardrails to ensure what you are build­ing is sus­tain­able, doesn’t cause resilien­cy issues, and takes you to the end goals.

To dis­cov­er more about IPA and how to auto­mate at scale vis­it www.cognizant.com/intelligent-process-automation

Pro­mot­ed by Cog­nizant