Process Automation is very much a silent revolution that is creeping into different sectors and industries gradually but steadily. Businesses have widely embraced Process Discovery powered by automation across the world.
Unfortunately, sound automation implementation is not devoid of challenges and hindrances. Failure to synchronize their existing business process workflows with automation leaves enterprises increasingly dissatisfied.
Most companies struggle to fully utilize its potential, leading to promises and expectations surrounding ROI not being met. Research states that 30%-50% of automation implementations are not successful.
What are the challenges enterprises face in implementing automation at scale? How can enterprises overcome these hurdles in their automation journey?
Reasons Why Automation Implementations Fail
There are many reasons why a sound implementation of automation fails, a few of which have been underlined below:
Knowledge Gap: Despite businesses having SOPs, there’s a huge difference between what has been already established and how business processes are executed on the ground. This approach gives rise to business process variations, which are not mapped manually. The lack of deep process understanding will result in an ineffective RPA (Robotic Process Automation) strategy, causing unrealized ROI and other benefits.
No Blueprint or Roadmap: Usually, the automation journey begins with relatively low-scale processes, helping employees with ample knowledge gain. Hence, the focus remains on achievements set for the first year for limited business areas; not targeting the automation’s potential reach. Unfortunately, measuring scalability prospects during automation expansion to other key areas will be extremely difficult without a full-proof plan considering larger parameters.
Resistance & Inherent Biasness: Process managers and other respective members directly involved with the business processes opted for automation should be well-versed with the expected change.
Unfortunately, not many are equipped with the required expertise to oversee the automation implementation and help whenever needed. There’s a sense of insecurity underplay. Process automation software is often seen as a direct threat to their positions in the company.
Lack of Governance: Automated process implementation requires a continuous flow of communication between IT and business. Existing business process workflows, including software interfaces and data formats, are altering rapidly, attracting confusion and objections from concerned parties in the absence of a well-defined governance framework.
Manual Process Mapping Issues: In the absence of automated process documentation tools, manual mapping of operations and gathering data from process documents are subjected to multiple flaws and errors. Biased information being fed into automation decisions leads to incorrect insights, clouding the real complexity of the business processes. Moreover, the approach is extremely time-consuming and expensive.
Process Discovery Benefits
These challenges mentioned above are serious roadblocks that eventually catapult into automation implementation failure.
However, there’s a silver lining in the shape of process discovery software. Such automated tools can benefit enterprises in a great many ways, a few of which are:
- Discovering the right processes for automation
- Mining of granular ground data creates realistic process maps covering all process variations and exceptions
- Creating process transparency enables enterprises to drive efficiency, quality, and productivity.
That said, understanding how Process Discovery works might give a proper direction to ventures looking for a rapid and seamless digital transformation solution.
What is Process Discovery
Process Discovery uses machine learning to identify business processes, tallies all possible variations using proprietary machine learning algorithms, and makes recommendations for automation. It distinguishes between business processes that require automation attention, designs automated workflows, develops, and implements automation faster.
How does Automated Process Discovery Work?
Usually, automated application discovery tools incorporate bots into employees’ machines non-intrusively to collect real-time data without hampering their daily workflow.
These bots silently observe how the organization uses various applications to perform its tasks.
With the power of AI and ML technology, the granular data is analyzed, and recommendations are made for the best contenders for automation. Many parameters are considered, such as time taken, efforts needed, and cost charged. Then, the processes are gradually automated to make those processes effortless, time, and cost-effective.
One such business process automation software is EdgeVerve’s AssistEdge Discover tool.
A Comprehensive Overview of AssistEdge Discover
EdgeVerve’s AssistEdge Discover is one such example that guarantees an amplified ROI for enterprises investing in it.
AssistEdge Discover offers all the above-mentioned benefits of Process Discovery alongside a user-friendly interface and process design. It non-intrusively leverages user keystrokes and sophisticated neural network algorithms to create insightful business process maps, covering granular data and subtle nuances.
These business process maps provide a solid foundation facilitating inter-functional collaboration, effective change management, and continuous improvement minus human bias.
Only an effective automation blueprint can truly unlock the real value of automation; AssistEdge Discover ensures that for its clients.
Let’s understand how that translates into an increased ROI for enterprises.
How does AssistEdge Discover Amplify Process Automation ROI?
AssistEdge Discover is a holistic product suite that aids enterprises in their digital transformation journey. AssistEdge Discover ensures a seamless process transfer and helps enterprises manage their automation program from value definition to value creation and management.
For instance, EdgeVerve helped a 100-year-old global technology company streamline existing processes through process reengineering or process automation and understand user behavior on the ground. The client struggled to determine how its overall procurement processes, including ‘quote request,’ ‘letter of intent, ‘supplier onboarding,’ and ‘purchase order processing,’ are executed.
With AssistEdge Discover, the client was able to build an automation implementation roadmap based on ROI, and the below recommendations were presented:
- The business process maps generated through AssistEdge Discover depicted how the current business processes are executed on the ground
- There is scope for improvement in user behavioral aspects
- Automation opportunities were identified and shared with the enterprise
Understanding AssistEdge Discover ROI Framework
How can AssistEdge Discover help enterprises unlock the real value of automation? Let’s take a look.
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Strategizing and Establishing ROI
AssistEdge Discover captures user keystrokes and combines them with the power of neural network algorithms. It reduces human bias, errors, and other risks while generating empirical data; hence realistic process mapping covering all variations and exceptions is possible. The automation blueprint builds a business value proposition around each process to maximize the expected ROI from Automation.
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Accelerating Automation Value
Automated Process Discovery using AssistEdge Discover completes at a fraction of the time. This software negates the manual approach’s shortcomings and creates a business model that ensures faster automation project execution minus process inconsistencies.
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Navigating Automation Blueprint
AssistEdge Discover generates an automation blueprint covering realistic on-the-ground process maps incorporated into enterprises’ systems with immediate effect. Further, it creates the business process value proposition, validates it, and implements it fine-tuned with the existing business processes shortlisted for automation.
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Amplifying Automation Success
AssistEdge Discover uses AI-powered algorithms to unearth granular data, generate analytical reports, and provide valuable insights into the nuances of process executions happening on the ground. It amplifies automation success by providing insights around where intelligence can be used and what kind of intelligent technologies can be brought forth, be it OCR, sentiment analysis, or machine learning.
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Tracking Automation ROI
Creating baseline and continuously assessing process improvement and ROI is possible with AssistEdge Discover’s help. It helps enterprises track automation ROI and manage governance easily.
The Bottomline is…
Despite automation becoming a household name, many enterprises are still second-guessing themselves to fully commit their processes to automation, while a few others are unsure where to start. Most businesses commit the biggest blunder of outsourcing the task to consultants without verifying the latter’s experiences. Unfortunately, many consultants rely on manual process mapping soaked in errors and inconsistencies.
Thankfully, Process Discovery tools like AssistEdge Discover can truly unearth enterprises’ automated business process potential with real-time, empirical data, ensuring a faster digital transformation. It expertly bypasses bottlenecks, amplifies automated processes’ full potential, and increases ROI.