Go beyond efficiency and unlock automation’s double-sided benefit

It’s no longer a secret. More businesses than ever have seen what happens when automation technologies are used for improving processes across critical areas of business, and adoption is on the rise.

In fact, Deloitte’s annual global survey revealed 73% of respondents had already embarked on a path to A.I. enabled process automation back in 2020, and that’s without considering the increased digital transformation we’ve seen take place since. This embrace is driven by both a need to overcome new challenges, as well as the desire to unlock the benefits that created automation hype long before the pandemic.

A very obvious gain is increased operational efficiency – and it’s true that many businesses still pursue process automation with this goal in mind. This is a very worthy motivation, especially when you consider the underlying drivers of this, which include cost savings, increased capacity/output, fast achievement of positive ROI, and more profitability.

But there is another benefit of process automation. One that takes you beyond the welcomed gain of efficiency itself:

This is the freedom of your people.

Time is perhaps our most precious commodity. And with intelligent software executing (or at the very least augmenting) large business process chains, humans free swathes of time to use in better ways, which is critical in light of staff skill shortages.

Improving processes becomes invaluable to your business when the decisions and actions you automate are those usually executed by highly-skilled or experienced people. Achieving this usually means automating more sophisticated processes by embedding a range of A.I. capabilities into automation workflows.

With such solutions launched into production, the renewed freedom of your people becomes a powerful, double-sided benefit:

• People focus more time and attention on vital areas that add value to your business. In other words, you get the most out of your experts’ time.
• People say goodbye to repetitive and mundane tasks, which increases job satisfaction, and creates a more engaging employee experience.

So, not only are your best people doing more of what they’re good at, they’re also having a better time doing it. For your business, this means a higher quality output, and increased retention of your top talent.

Choose processes with a people-first mindset

If you’re already on the journey to A.I. enabled process automation, keeping this double-sided benefit front of mind can help you decide which processes to enhance next.

Ask yourself,

“Which of our processes are people intensive and would benefit quickly from automation?”

The answer will likely indicate which areas would help you make the most out of your employees’ time, and drive retention of particular roles within your organization.

You can use this approach to shortlist in the very early stages, and carve some direction which can be useful when working with specialist A.I. and automation providers in expressing what you hope to achieve.

See how automation freed up our clients

Many of our clients have unlocked automation’s double sided benefit to start getting the most out of their experts and enhancing employee experiences. A great example is our Deep Learning solution built for a European Space Agency, which shrank experiment run times by 90.4%

From astrophysicists to service operators, explore a range of expert roles that are experiencing more freedom by browsing all of our success stories.