Why should Hyperautomation be your #1 Strategic Priority to Scale Automation?

The ultimate goal of technology should be to unobtrusively augment human potential – to give us the support and freedom to rise above the mundane and focus on more creative and strategic pursuits. These people-centric technologies are the cornerstone of the modern workplace and key enablers of the new ways of working. Automation is one such area that helped humans realize this objective. But task based automation isn’t nearly enough! And so, the new trend that’s topping the charts this year in Gartner’s ‘Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020’ is Hyperautomation.

Gartner defines Hyperautomation as “the application of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to increasingly automate processes and augment humans. Hyperautomation extends across a range of tools that can be automated, but also refers to the sophistication of the automation (i.e., discover, analyze, design, automate, measure, monitor, reassess.)”

Think of it like an ecosystem of tools and technologies (such as RPA and AI) that are working together seamlessly (with humans) to create an intelligent, agile, and data driven organization. It is only when automation opportunities are continuously identified across the enterprise, enriched by intelligence (AI, ML, CV, OCR), aided by analytic tools and supported not only by RPA developers, but the business users, analysts, subject matter experts, that automation reaches its maximum potential. It’s then that automation dynamically scales across the enterprise with much more efficiency and speed. Hyperautomation is indeed the future and will be a key pillar for enterprises to scale their automation program.

At EdgeVerve we’ve always believed that automation in isolation, for specific tasks/functions alone, is suboptimal and that a more holistic approach is needed to scale automation and its benefits across the enterprise. That approach as defined by us in the recent past has been, Automation Singularity. To elaborate, Automation Singularity is a highly customer-centric and agile oriented state of constant improvement and optimization through the future workforce of humans and bots, opening up an expanded horizon of possibilities.” The road to Automation Singularity has fundamentally three stages — Deterministic Automation, Intelligent Automation and Human-empowered Automation. In this state, human specialists drive customer orientation using their creativity and empathy and are complemented by digital workers with extreme productivity and consistency. This unified human-digital workforce will represent a powerful blend of advanced capabilities that will drive growth for the enterprise.

Realizing the full potential of Automation

To derive the most out of their intelligent automation program, enterprises must create an environment conducive to rapid change. Automation cannot be successful if seen as an end state or a purely technology-driven initiative. The first port of call would be a Center of Excellence (CoE) managed by both business and IT leaders. The CoE should create an automation roadmap that sees the creation of a cohesive platform where automation, AI, and ML capabilities work in sync to drive exponential change. It should feature clear end-to-end customer journeys followed by an automation strategy that impacts the most crucial touchpoints in those journeys.

Additionally, since this shift needs both a top-down and bottom-up approach, enterprises should look to build a clear change management plan to ensure smooth progress, addressing areas such as employee reskilling, performance measurement, process redesign, and IT landscape management.

Paving the way for Automation Singularity

With 30M+ transactions processed every month for a single customer in North America and automating booking process for a shipping giant across 130+ countries, we have been enabling scalability for our customers with AssistEdge, an end-to-end automation platform. We’re invested to work closely with our clients to make them realize the vision of Automation Singularity with AssistEdge powered by the underlying three key disciplines – Discover, Automate and Orchestrate.

Organizing the journey into these disciplines brings specificity to assessment and implementation. Discover is primarily a business-process led activity concerned with redesigning customer journeys and identifying process automation opportunities. It helps align business priorities to specific areas that need work. Automate deals with identifying and implementing the right technology stack and will eventually influence every part of the employee-process relationship. Orchestrate aims to ensure that there is coordination in the allocation, prioritization, and management of tasks in an environment powered by a unified workforce of human specialists and digital workers. The data captured through this process is critical to driving process visibility and feedback for continuous optimization through human insights and algorithms.

As enterprises develop the capability to deploy future workers, i.e., human-digital twins working in sync, at scale, they will realize immense potential alongside several complexities that need to be navigated. It is our experience with multiple enterprises that has cemented our belief that Automation Singularity should not be regarded as just an end state or only from a technology perspective. This is a journey that will require collaboration, organic change, and a unified platform where Automation, AI and ML capabilities all work in sync with each other. Read more about Automation Singularity in a whitepaper published by us last year.