5 big business advantages of HR automation

With companies striving for greater efficiency and productivity, many are turning to automation in HR in pursuit of their goals. By automating tasks like data entry, record-keeping, and employee management, HR processes can reduce the risk of errors and eliminate the inefficiencies of paper-based systems easily, allowing firms to emphasize higher-value tasks that drive business growth, such as employee development and retention. The growing adoption of automation in HR highlights its potential to revolutionize the way businesses approach HR processes, unlocking new opportunities for growth and success.

Hence, by applying automation, organizations can effortlessly streamline their HR operations, handling routine tasks, such as screening resumes, scheduling interviews, managing payroll, and benefits enrollment, freeing HR professionals to emphasize more on complex issues. Thus, companies have begun to invest and explore automation options to enhance the efficiency and value of their HR departments. According to a recent survey by Gartner, HR technology has emerged as the top investment priority for nearly 50% of HR leaders.

The traditional HR model is a formidable hiccup for companies as it battles scalability and adaptability. Manual processes create a trail of pending paperwork and incomplete requests, a constant thorn for organizations, leading to delays and instilling employee dissatisfaction. But that’s not all. When the need arises to adapt to the changing organizational requirements, these manual approaches fail to keep up. Moreover, with new policies, benefits, and training programs waiting to get implemented, the processes can be hard to crack, leading to compliance risks and lower employee engagement. Hence, these factors jeopardize the organization’s ability to retain and attract top-notch talent. A report by Grand View Research implies that the global HR management market was valued at USD 19.38 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to surge at a CAGR of 12.8% from 2022 to 2030.

Therefore, organizations should consider automating their HR processes to improve accuracy and agility by streamlining administrative tasks, enabling organizations to adapt to changing business requirements and become more efficient, productive, and successful.

The concept of HR automation and its importance for businesses

HR firms can use diverse technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI), to streamline operations, reduce manual tasks, and improve efficiency. Subsequently, HR automation solutions help businesses save time, reduce costs, and improve accuracy, freeing HR professionals to emphasize more on strategic initiatives.

Automation is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses as they seek to stay competitive and improve their bottom line. It helps organizations to minimize errors and reduce the time and effort required to perform routine tasks. This can improve productivity and cost savings, enabling organizations to comply with ever-changing regulations, reduce paperwork, and improve data security. Moreover, automation can enhance employee engagement and communication by streamlining communication channels and giving employees easy access to information about their benefits and performance.

Challenges of automating HR management workflows

Automating HR workflows can bring significant benefits for businesses, but it is not without challenges. One such challenge is ensuring data accuracy and quality. Inaccurate data can impede decision-making processes and hamper the efficiency of HR workflows, making it essential for organizations to invest in data quality checks and controls to ensure that the data entered into the system is accurate and up to date.

Another challenge is integrating various HR systems and platforms used by organizations. Integrating these systems can be complicated and time-consuming, requiring careful planning and execution. Therefore, organizations must clearly understand their HR processes and workflows and invest in robust integration solutions to overcome this challenge.

Customizing HR automation systems to align with unique business requirements can also be challenging. Organizations must identify their specific HR requirements, prioritize their needs, and work closely with vendors or partners to customize the system. By overcoming these challenges with careful planning, execution, and collaboration, businesses can successfully implement HR automation to drive growth and success.

Key HR processes for automation

Recruitment and onboarding: Automating the recruitment and onboarding process can streamline the hiring process, reduce paperwork, and improve communication with candidates. This can include automating job postings, resume screening, interview scheduling, and onboarding paperwork. A recent survey by Gartner reveals that 45% of HR leaders plan to increase investments in recruitment and staffing processes.

Performance management: Performance management automation can standardize the evaluation process, increase transparency, and ensure consistency in performance reviews. This includes automating goal setting, feedback gathering, and scheduling performance reviews.

Leave management: By automating the leave management process, businesses can minimize mistakes, ensure adherence to regulations and policies, and optimize their operations to maximize productivity. This can include automating leave requests, approvals, and tracking employee leave balances.

Training and development: Automating training and development can ensure that employees have access to the necessary resources and training to develop their skills and careers. This can include automating training requests, course scheduling, and tracking employee progress.

Payroll and benefits: Automating payroll and benefits can reduce errors, increase efficiency, and ensure compliance. This can include automating time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, and benefits administration.

Top six features every HR automation solution must have

Hence, a comprehensive HR automation software should have tools to handle the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment to offboarding, and provide valuable insights and analytics to support data-driven HR decision-making.

Five advantages of HR automation

Streamlined hiring process

HR automation can streamline hiring by automating tasks such as posting job listings, screening resumes, and scheduling interviews. It also allows automated communication with candidates and provides valuable data insights for optimizing the hiring process. Primarily, HR automation saves time and resources, improves candidate experience, and helps organizations make data-driven hiring decisions.

Increased employee engagement

Automation in HR can increase employee engagement by providing personalized and timely communication, feedback opportunities, and career development resources. Automation tools can send messages tailored to employee needs and interests, keeping them informed and connected to the company. In addition, feedback collected through automation helps the company identify areas for improvement and create a positive work environment.

Providing employees with access to career development resources demonstrates that the company values their growth and development, which can increase job satisfaction and productivity. In summary, HR automation can create an encouraging work environment that drives employee engagement and commitment.

Improved compliance and risk management

Implementing automation enables businesses to comply with labor laws and regulations while reducing the risk of errors and litigation. Automated updates and alerts can keep businesses up to date with changes in laws and regulations, while automated processes help prevent mistakes in payroll and employee record-keeping. HR automation can also improve the accuracy and completeness of employee records, ensuring compliance with legal requirements.

Finally, it ensures the security and privacy of employee data, protecting against data breaches and cyber threats that can lead to legal issues and litigation. As a result, HR automation can assist businesses to focus on their core operations while minimizing legal risks and costs.

Enhanced data analytics and reporting

Automation in HR management can provide businesses with real-time and accurate data analytics and reporting, which can inform strategic decision-making and improve overall performance. For example, automation tools can collect data on employee performance, productivity, and engagement and analyze it to identify trends and patterns. The resulting reports assist businesses to make informed decisions about staffing, training, and other HR-related activities, improving overall performance and reducing costs. It can also use predictive analytics to anticipate future trends and outcomes, helping businesses stay ahead of the competition.

Cost savings and ROI

Automation in HR processes saves businesses time and money while generating a positive return on investment. Businesses can streamline operations and reduce administrative costs by automating HR-related processes like onboarding, payroll, benefits administration, and record-keeping. This increased efficiency can also improve accuracy, reduce errors, and minimize legal risks and costs associated with compliance.

Additionally, HR automation improves productivity by reducing the time required to complete an organization’s administrative tasks. This can lead to better outcomes and the business’s success. By leveraging automation tools, companies can optimize their business operations, reduce costs, and improve their bottom line, positioning themselves for long-term success in an increasingly competitive market.

HR automation made easy with AssistEdge

AssistEdge is an intelligent automation platform designed to simplify HR automation for businesses. It helps streamline HR-related processes such as onboarding, benefits administration, payroll processing, and compliance by automating repetitive tasks. In addition, the platform’s user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop features make it easy for businesses to customize workflows that meet their specific needs.

By utilizing AssistEdge, businesses can improve accuracy, reduce errors, and minimize legal risks associated with manual data entry and paperwork. The platform’s automation capabilities also free up HR teams to focus on more strategic tasks, which can contribute to better outcomes and overall business success.

It enables businesses to optimize their HR operations and reduce costs, improving accuracy and compliance. Besides, its advanced automation capabilities and customizable workflows provide an easy and accessible way for businesses to leverage the benefits of HR automation.

Final thoughts

In short, HR automation offers significant business advantages, like increased efficiency and productivity, improved accuracy and compliance, reduced costs, personalized communication and feedback, and better data analytics and reporting. These benefits help businesses save time and money, improve outcomes, and position themselves for long-term success. Hence, it is time for companies to opt for smart moves to improve their business operations and stay competitive in today’s market by simply adopting HR automation from AssistEdge, EdgeVerve’s, cohesive automation platform.

7 strategic ways to automate business processes

Automation in business processes aims to simplify and optimize repetitive and time-consuming tasks by leveraging technology to complement or augment human labor. By automating business processes, companies can save time, reduce errors, and increase efficiency, leading to cost savings and improved productivity. It can also help businesses scale their operations more effectively without incurring high costs. Additionally, business process automation can provide businesses with real-time data and insights, which can be used to make more informed decisions and improve overall performance.

Ultimately, automation in business processes intends to enhance competitiveness and drive growth by enabling businesses to focus on more strategic and innovative activities. According to a report by ‘The Business Research Company,’ the global business process automation market grew to $14.02 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of 13.1%. However, the market is expected to grow at the same CAGR and reach $22.94 billion in 2027, indicating significant growth prospects for the industry.

Four phases of business process automation

Benefits of implementing business process automation

For instance, AssistEdge RPA, a connected automation platform by EdgeVerve, accelerates enterprise-wide automation and provides a host of benefits. Here’s one such success story.

Royal Philips, a global leader in healthcare technology, implemented RPA to eliminate, simplify, standardize, and automate their finance operations processes. Over three years, RPA allowed them to automate one million work hours in finance operations, improving efficiency, consistency, and overall performance. Additionally, it facilitated end-to-end automation across the finance operations domain by centralizing BPM operations.

For more information, download the case study.

Six strategic ways to automate business processes

Identify, automate, and analyze the right business processes

Identifying and analyzing business processes is a crucial step in automating business processes. It involves specifying the manual processes within the organization and analyzing them to identify areas for automation. This step helps to understand how different business processes are interconnected and how they can be optimized. Besides, it helps identify potential bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement that can be targeted for automation.

Once the existing business processes have been analyzed, organizations can identify areas for optimization. This may involve simplifying complex processes, removing unnecessary steps, or re-sequencing process steps for maximum efficiency. By analyzing each process, organizations can prioritize which operations should be automated based on factors such as ROI, time to automate, complexity, and business impact.

In short, to maximize ROI through automation, organizations can use process discovery tools like AssistEdge Discover to:

AssistEdge Discover, an AI-powered process discovery tool, uses machine learning algorithms to capture data from desktop applications and web browsers and provides insights into process variations and bottlenecks. By using this discovery solution, organizations can accelerate their process discovery and analysis and make informed decisions on process optimization and automation.

Document your processes

Documenting business processes is essential for successful automation because it clearly explains the steps involved in a particular function. In addition, automating an approach requires a deep understanding of how it currently operates, which can only be achieved through documentation or by creating standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Hence, SOPs are crucial for clear process documentation, enabling the automation of business processes. However, small businesses often overlook their importance. Leaders should prioritize SOP creation as a quarterly goal and establish a dedicated time for employees to define and document the procedures.

Choose the right automation tool

Choosing the right RPA tools for a business can be challenging due to budget and business needs. Hence, consulting with experts and evaluating solutions based on their features and capabilities is essential. For automation of routine tasks, the AssistEdge RPA platform by EdgeVerve is an excellent choice. It offers easy-to-use features like intelligent automation, bot development, and process discovery, making it an efficient solution for automating processes like data entry, invoice processing, and customer service.

Start with simple automation

Simple automation can be completed quickly and has a significant impact on productivity. They allow businesses to gain experience and confidence in automation without feeling overwhelmed by complex tasks. Examples of simple automation include email filtering and organization, data entry and extraction, appointment scheduling, and social media posting.

Businesses can experience quick wins and build momentum by initiating simple automation, encouraging further automation efforts. This approach can also help enterprises gain the confidence to tackle more complex tasks.

Continuously monitor and optimize

Failure to monitor and optimize these processes can result in inefficiencies, errors, and potential non-compliance with regulations. To prevent these issues, businesses should regularly track KPIs, conduct audits, gather feedback, utilize analytics, and continuously improve their automated processes.

Measuring the effectiveness of automated processes and making improvements can be achieved through carefully monitoring KPIs, conducting regular audits to ensure accuracy and reliability, gathering employee feedback, utilizing analytics to identify patterns and trends, and continuously refining and optimizing processes. By following these practices, businesses can ensure that their automated processes remain efficient and effective, helping to increase productivity, save time, and reduce costs.

Plan for scalability and flexibility

Scalability and flexibility are crucial when automating processes. Therefore, businesses must plan for potential growth and changes by creating a solid foundation for quick modifications. They should choose flexible tools and platforms, keep processes modular, and regularly optimize them. This helps increase productivity, reduce costs, and remain adaptable to changing business needs.

Final thoughts

Business process automation tools can automate business processes and significantly improve productivity and efficiency. Thus, with the right automation tools, like AssistEdge, organizations can reduce manual labor, minimize errors, and free up human resources to focus on more value-added tasks. Additionally, as businesses adapt to the changing business landscape, automation will be increasingly crucial for meeting customer needs and staying ahead of the competitive business game.

Driving Better Supply Chain Execution Through Digital Networks

Context

The twentieth century saw the expansion of supply chains beyond national boundaries. The feverish pace of globalization that started in the eighties created new manufacturing economies primarily powered by low labor costs feeding insatiable consumption in the developed markets. Just-in-time philosophy which up until then used to drive manufacturing production lines (without interruption), expanded beyond factory walls into the broader supply chains. Standards and methods for identification of products, pallets, information exchange, etc., along with significant automation of warehouses helped move goods with less friction and made Quick Response a reality. The coming of age of the internet and smartphones in the 21st century further fueled unprecedented growth with direct access to consumers leading to the longest bull market in history. Efficiency was the only measure that mattered when it came to separating supply chain winners from the rest.

Move over, efficiency

All of that came to a standstill in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. It was a perfect storm that saw a concurrent disruption of supply, demand, and logistics on a global scale. The rest is history. For most manufacturers, supply chain resilience has become the new mantra worth the additional cost that it entails. So, what does resilience mean? Simply put, resilience is the sum total of visibility (which is required for better planning), agility (in creating supply diversification and, perhaps, redundancy), and intelligence (to anticipate and respond in near real-time) to events across the broader ecosystem.

Much work has already happened in driving better visibility to demand. Knowing yesterday’s sales today at a store-item level is a reality that has delivered significantly improved short-term forecast accuracies. Nonetheless, with both new product introductions and e-commerce sales growing at a faster clip than ever before, demand signal fragmentation too has increased, thereby paring back gains made with better visibility. With inventory deployment decisions going in lockstep with demand forecasts, concurrent stockouts, and excess inventory situations have continued to hobble planners. How do we then address this dichotomy?

Role of the ERPs

Enterprises have long had multifarious supply chain partnerships typically organized in their respective resource planning systems (ERP). These systems, while integrating functions within the enterprise, have little to offer when it comes to driving external collaboration. While transactions are inherently dual-party, ERPs have, by design, perpetuated sell-side and buy-side functional silos, thereby preventing true end-to-end visibility even within an enterprise. Insomuch, that they represent islands of data on which enterprises live and operate both within and outside. The need of the hour is a fabric that digitally connects ERPs across a relevant ecosystem to bring simultaneous visibility and operability for the benefit of all participants. This is what a digital network is all about.

What is a Digital Network?

A digital network is an over-the-top (OTT) architecture that enables many-to-many connectivity among its participants. It is founded on a common data model that harmonizes participant information so much so to enable interoperability of respective underlying ERPs. Of course, a digital network must ensure that any visibility is self-regulated at the discretion of the parties concerned. With this, parties can potentially start focusing on bridging planning gaps (read forecast errors) with responsive execution.

Execution in a Networked World

For parties connected with each other on a digital network, the ways they can collaborate is only limited by their imagination. Let us look at a few examples of what a digital network like TradeEdge Network can mean to you:

Conclusion

Digitization of value networks is happening faster than we know. Enterprises recognize that the benefits from creating or participating in such networks far outweigh any risks to information or data security. Digital networks like TradeEdge are inherently architected and designed for privacy, integrity, and performance. As these networks continue to evolve, so do the use cases that participants discover. The above is but a small sampling to demonstrate #Possibilities Unlimited!

Connect with our AVP & Global Platform Head, TradeEdge, Suresh P Bharadwaj, for further discussion.

The Connected Workforce: Augmenting Employees with AI & Automation

In a world where data is fundamentally changing the way we work, enterprises are beset by a bevy of new challenges. These include siloed technology implementations, poor transparency between business verticals and horizontals, and a workforce that is consumed by routine tasks and has little time for innovation or productivity optimization.

In response, organizations are transforming into Connected Enterprises, where seamless data integrations help stakeholders access the right data on an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis. Enterprises are also slowly coming to the realization that intelligent automation of high-volume, repeatable tasks is an essential component of staying competitive and improving stakeholder experiences. AI-driven systems are increasingly being adapted to roles traditionally held by human workers. In fact, experts at McKinsey estimate that AI has the potential to add upwards of $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030.1

Will AI & Automation make humans redundant?

Over the past decade, pundits have made varying predictions concerning the future of the workforce, with some painting a bleak picture where AI entirely replaces the human employee. In most cases, these fears are unfounded – sure, AI and Automation are expected to eliminate 85 million jobs by 2025, but in that time, they’re also going to create 97 million new jobs.2 While AI can process more data faster, and often more reliably than humans, they lack core decision-making skills that are based on intuition, cultural and social sensitivity, and emotional intelligence. Because of these gaps in AI capability, we see AI as a tool that will augment the workforce and help every individual achieve better outcomes, faster.

The rise of the hybrid workforce

The obvious logic points to a merging of AI and human competencies to create a hybrid workforce – one where AI amplifies human potential instead of snuffing it out. For example, manufacturing firms are using AI and automation to predictively identify potential equipment failures so that maintenance crews can proactively address production line faults before they manifest.

Similarly, insurance companies have leveraged intelligent RPA to assess claims data so that insurance officers can rapidly make decisions on which claims to approve and which to reject. In healthcare, doctors are using state-of-the-art AI to compare ongoing cancer cases with historical medical databases – the AI is able to offer both diagnostic and treatment recommendations, reducing the potential for human error and saving lives in the process.

Taking a three-pronged approach to Amplifying Human Potential

The challenge for enterprises will be strategically determining how to use digital platforms to augment their human workforce in the context of their business needs. Ideally, businesses should adopt a multi-pronged approach, structured into three phases.

Understand the role automation plays

The first step is understanding how machines can augment your employees. For example, workflow automation in the helpdesk can vastly reduce administrative error rates. Similarly, automated data extraction and delivery tools can help support personnel quickly profile customers, identify their concerns and find contextually relevant solutions, slashing response times, boosting agent productivity, and improving overall CSAT.

A case in point is Openreach, a British telecommunications major that used automation to reduce its average handling time for customer requests by over 66%. As a direct result, their agents were able to spend more time cross-selling and upselling, enhancing both revenue and the employee experience.

Discovery-led digitization is key

Ideally, enterprises looking to augment their workforce should focus on assessing the current and future operational potential to uncover new automation possibilities and create a cohesive picture of how people, processes, and products intersect.

Platforms like AssistEdge Discover offer enterprise leaders an empirical way to figure out which processes can be automated and which tasks need consistent human intervention. By mining software usage data within the workforce, the platform uses AI to create a map of functions with the highest automation potential, giving leaders a quick and easy roadmap to follow.

Make effective automation ubiquitous

While using a platform like AssistEdge helps organizations better understand the scale and scope of automation they can realistically achieve, every roadmap needs an implementation strategy. Ideally, enterprises should focus on taking a low-code approach that makes it easier for each business unit to independently automate their processes without heavy reliance on IT departments. While the first tentative steps toward amplifying human potential will lie in automating repetitive, high-volume tasks, enterprises should create a roadmap that scales to automating entire processes and, eventually, their entire operational works. The end goal here is to bake cognitive automation into every operational front, freeing up your workforce for higher-order tasks that require empathy and creative problem-solving.

What kind of real-world results can enterprises expect?

Our partnership with Openreach, a leading telecom company in the UK and a wholly owned subsidiary of the BT Group, offers an excellent view of how the right confluence of AI and Automation can amplify human workforce potential.

During the pandemic, Openreach wanted to prioritize repair and provisions to ensure its customers stay connected. To serve a customer, Openreach’s 3500+ agents had to follow complex processes and use almost 150+ applications, which led to high average handling time and multiple errors and made their customers unhappy.

Using AssistEdge, our connected automation platform, Openreach was able to automate and streamline over 200+ complex processes, enabling the front-end and back-end operations team to service clients quickly and contextually.

The powerful combination of RPA+ML helped create a framework for addressing future use cases with similar business challenges, improving the quality and consistency of customer service. It also improved compliance by ensuring that the SLA of 24hrs was met for all orders. AssistEdge helped amplify human potential by reducing the AHT from 30 mins to 9 mins per/request, saving ~60K hours annually, which meant agents could be re-assigned for high-value tasks such as cross-selling and upselling.

AI & Automation will widen the competitive gap

Estimates show that companies that fail to perfect the coordination of AI and humans in their workforce will see a 20% average decrease in cash flow by the end of the decade.3 These numbers are a clear indication that warning bells have begun to ring for enterprises that are slow to leap on the bandwagon. On the flipside, companies that improve employee engagement with higher levels of automation and AI-driven insights are likely to experience greater customer satisfaction, faster innovation, and dramatically accelerated speed-to-market.

Amplifying human potential thus helps create a far superior, intelligent, and empowered workforce that has greater collaboration, high productivity, innovation, and agility. With the connected enterprise ushering in a new way of doing things and enabling humanity, AI, and automation to work in unison, enterprises can unleash unlimited possibilities and create a better world.

Connect with our Vice President & Global Platform Head, N. Shashidhar, for further discussion.