Worried about the challenges you’re facing while managing your complex processes manually? Truth be told, you’re not alone in this predicament. Several companies across the world are facing the same issues (as yours) and so, are increasingly opting for smart (digital) technologies that introduce Intelligent Business Process Automation to resolve these problems.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Ever since the first computers and the birth of information technology, companies have struggled to find the best technological fit. But what if you could find this fit for yourself? Fact is that you can – by developing technological solutions in tandem with holistic business processes.
How are digitization and automation correlated?
As the term suggests, automation is the automatic execution of tasks without periodic interference. The benefit? – Optimized end-to-end business workflows (IT operations, infrastructure, data warehousing, etc) which, in turn, streamline processes critical to your routine operations and customers.
That said, the question is how will automation achieve this streamlining and optimization for your processes? Here’s how:
Digitizing hard copies of available data/ information is the very first step toward automation; because such data needs to be made capable of being assimilated into any sort of automation technology (before it can be automated). At Columbus, our experts leverage several digital technology-driven process automation (DPA) tools to convert (your) available data into digital format(s), making your processes more efficient, productive and profitable.
On the automation front, Columbus specializes in deploying the technology most suitable for you to run your repetitive tasks (involving this digitized data) systematically – without any human intervention. This reduces the workload on critical resources, achieves increased efficiency of your production capacity, optimizes your processes, minimizes production waste, and improves accuracy. The benefit? –Your employees are freed from getting caught up in completing mundane activities to instead, focus on value-add activities leading to you gaining a competitive edge.
Digitization + Automation - The ‘wow’ combination every organization needs
I had mentioned the term ‘Intelligent Business Process Automation’ in the introduction of this blog. Having set the context of – and mentioned the benefits of – digitization and automation, I find this part of the blog to be perfect to:
- Showcase the combined advantages of these two phenomena
- Talk about how this combination promotes intelligent business process automation (and how you can profit from the same)
About the combined advantage bit – Digitization makes business processes faster and more precise. Automation, meanwhile, stimulates insights-based innovation.
On how the digitization plus automation coupling promotes intelligent business process automation – As part of transforming themselves digitally, several companies are implementing a gamut of technologies and applications which – ironically – sometimes increases process complexity. Such hiccups prevent companies from achieving the efficiency and speed they want to introduce to their operations through digitization. However, modern digital process automation (DPA) tools focus on first automating systems and processes, and then optimizing the end-to-end flow of information/ data between business systems, applications, employees and customers. DPA ensures companies adopt a customer-centric approach to digital transformation by:
- Giving employees and customers access to real-time data/ information
- Optimizing the entire workflow (end to end) instead of stopping at automating simple, rules-based tasks within a workflow), thereby streamlining operations
It is interesting to note that this is in sharp contrast to traditional business process management practices that focus on only reducing costs. This, due to failed implementations of various continuous improvement (CI) strategies. In fact, way too often, the ambitions for a holistic CI strategy end up in focusing only on the production capacity, measuring OEE outputs and such.
In conclusion
Thus far, my effort has been to explain why companies which opt for both digitization and automation find themselves simplifying their most complex processes with minimal effort, thereby saving both time and cost. I’d like to close this blog by saying that ‘DPA automates not only business functions, but the complete data management procedure within a business to give both business users and customers access to real-time information, leading to intelligent information management.’
