According to a McKinsey & Company report, Intelligent Automation (IA) is transforming economies and delivering better workplace experiences across the globe. The report noted that 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of their activities that can be automated. In addition to this, certain tasks can only be tackled with AI and ML because they are beyond human capabilities.
While the concept of IA emerged several years ago, its adoption has experienced a significant surge recently. During the global pandemic when organizations had to make a swift transition to remote working and contactless operations, every industry hinged towards IA to ensure business continuity and growth. The findings from a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services indicate that IA has virtually permeated every function/department within an organization. Adoption of automation in business processes was inevitable, however, the pandemic has only accelerated it across the globe and in India.
How IA can shape the Indian Economy
According to an IMF estimate, India’s GDP is expected to reach $4.6 trillion at the current projected growth rate by 2024-25. But with a 16% shift towards automation across industries, there is a potential to add $365 billion more to the Indian economy, enabling it to reach the $5 trillion club by 2024-25. Additionally, a recent study by Microsoft and IDC Asia/Pacific found that AI and automation are likely to more than double the rate of innovation and employee productivity in India by 2021. Although only one-third of organizations in India have presently adopted AI and automation, most business leaders expect such technologies to increase their competitiveness by 2.3 times in 2021.
It is quite evident from such numbers that IA is providing Indian businesses with the growth impetus even amidst such unprecedented times. It is enabling them to rethink business processes, optimize employee productivity, reduce operations costs, enhance customer/employee experience, and take business outcomes to the next level.
IA delivers better business value
The adoption of IA is allowing Indian businesses to achieve a perfect balance between improved agility, increased compliance, and cost reduction. Business leaders acknowledge that the automation of routine and rules-based tasks enables the workforce to focus on high-value objectives, fuels innovation, and simplifies various approval mechanisms to fast-track the decision-making cycle.
IA utilizes the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to help create autonomous systems that constantly learn from experience, and rapidly adapt on a minute-to-minute basis. Implementation of IA in the IT system enables the IT team to move up the value chain and spend more time and effort on projects that help unlock additional business value. It can also have a huge impact on workforce productivity, empowering employees with greater self-service options and easy access to essential applications (for example leave input systems, payroll modules, etc.) via a voice-enabled digital assistant.
Automation is also being leveraged today to strengthen business decision making, with many organizations relying on AI/ML to trigger automated decisions or recommendations to a human for further action. IA also delivers organizations with the ability to perform an in-depth data analysis and decode patterns to reach the right business decisions in time.
IA has emerged as a major facilitator of business continuity and growth even during these unprecedented times. As a result, more and more organizations are keen to embrace this transformative technology.
Auto Components Manufacturer Automates its Invoice Processing
Recently, an Indian auto component manufacturer approached AgreeYa to automate their invoice processing function to match the organization’s growth requirements. Within 8 weeks, AgreeYa was able to deploy an RPA solution which reduced invoice generation time from 1 day to less than 2 hours, eliminated 99% of invoice processing errors, and reduced man-hours required for invoice processing by 81%. The solution delivered key inputs to strengthen business decision making and strengthened the organizations compliance stance. Read more…
How to Instill IA into your organization’s DNA
Despite all its glory, most organizations are not able to reap full benefits from their IA implementation. A recent report by Bain & Company found that almost half of automation projects fail to deliver the expected savings and when AI is added to the equation, the stats are even worse as only 12% of AI initiatives even make it into production. Consequently, organizations need to follow certain best practices to make their IA implementation successful.
- Align IA with overall business strategy: A piecemeal approach towards implementing IA is not ideal. Organizations should have a holistic strategy to redefine the parameters that are core to the business and look to embed IA across all business processes.
- Prepare the technology base: The success of any IA implementation typically depends on three major elements: advanced automation; a modern, secure, high-performing cloud infrastructure; and advanced analytics. To thrive and deliver transformational benefits IA needs to work coherently with these three elements.
- Select an industry-proven technology partner: Organizations can shorten the curve and deploy a robust IA easily by collaborating with the right technology partner. An experienced and industry-proven technology partner will already have embedded IA in their product stack to accelerate the deployment of IA.
- Create IA evangelists: Organizations should empower employees with the right training programs to make them understand and appreciate how IA can help improve process efficiencies. Unlike popular belief, automation is not here to replace the human workforce, it will optimize and improve their performance. Your employees should be able to see the big picture.
Contemporary India is progressing towards a better future and IA can steer the country to the next level. By imbibing the best advances in IA, AgreeYa is catalyzing the growth of Indian businesses and economy. Click here to learn more about our Intelligent Automation suite of services.