Automation plays a major role for businesses to stay competitive and create long-term success. With digital transformation solutions redefining overall business operations, interactions and service delivery processes, automation is the heart of digital transformation. There are many reasons to adopt automation as a solution. Here are 5 key business processes that can be improved with automation
Costly Legacy Systems
Legacy systems are the biggest roadblock for big organizations to meet the modern market's needs. Legacy systems are built on old technologies and often Frankensteined together with customizations that fix an immediate problem without considering long term consequences. Finding a resource person who can manage these systems is difficult. This was the case for 90% of IT decision-makers according to study by Hitachi Consulting. Moreover, most organizations are concerned about security issues involved with legacy migration.
Moreover, most programming languages used in legacy systems are extinct. Maintenance of outdated systems is very costly and difficult. Meeting the demands of today’s dynamic environment is practically impossible with outdated business systems.
Complex Data Management and Security
Businesses are more data driven than ever and handling vast amounts of data has been a big concern. In particular, the need to manage data retrieval and storage is growing exponentially, but still must be managed securely. In this data race, the only solution is automation. There are many ways businesses can automate processes in the Data Journey (collection, integration, centralization, analyzation, visualization), all while providing security.
Inefficient Service Delivery Processes
Companies find themselves overlooking the importance of updating workplace services and instead focusing on client/consumer service delivery. Despite the availability of automation applications, companies are waste time and money by continuing to use manual processes to deliver internal services.
One example is within the Human Resources (HR) department — to be more specific, the onboarding process. If the onboarding process is manual, it can be very time consuming. From document collection and review, scheduling interviews and collecting documentation, the onboarding process can take weeks. With automation, the onboarding process can be reduced to one or two days.
HR is also inundated with repetitive questions such as paid-time-off (PTO) balance, holiday information, benefits and so on. HR departments waste close to 70% of their time attending to these repetitive tasks when they could be easily automated with solutions like chatbots, knowledgebase, centralized portals, etc.
Outdated GRC Models
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) is a multi-faceted and interdependent application that manages regulatory requirements across the enterprise. GRC applications evaluate assets, manage policies, identify risks and conduct audits. Legacy GRC models are often made up of siloed processes working independently.
The top 250 legacy GRC losses aggregates to $468 billion
which accounts for 85% of all losses.“
The shortcomings of legacy GRC models is that they cannot automatically identify substantial deficiencies, frauds, regulatory breaches or risky activities that result in major impacts to business. Huge losses undoubtedly emphasize the vulnerability of legacy GRC models that are only successful in capturing minor risks that represent a small portion of losses. Traditional GRC models are ill-equipped to predict events that lead to huge operational losses.
Organizations find it hard to provide a broad understanding of all GRC activities in a single dashboard with real-time monitoring to predict and handle risks.
Ineffective Strategic Portfolio Management (Formerly IT Business Management)
IT teams struggle to understand and assess business needs, therefore failing to plan and organize business investments. This is because there is no centralized approach to manage demands from various business units. Requests get lost and there is a lack of visibility into the queue. IT won’t be able to prove return on investment (ROI) or make informed business decisions without an organized approach to Strategic Portfolio Management (formerly IT Business Management). Automation can streamline SPM (formerly ITBM) operations and allow complete visibility. to ensure business project deliver on their goals and investments aren't wasted.
