By Neeti Mehta Shukla, SVP Brand and Culture and
Co-founder, Automation Anywhere
It's no secret that the COVID-19 crisis, like other global crises
before it, has disrupted and altered business processes around the world. This
has propelled leaders to look at new or innovative initiatives to keep their
businesses running while navigating remote work and business resiliency to prepare
for any future disruption. In response, enterprises across industries have embraced technologies such as robotic
process automation (RPA) to keep their systems running in this new world.
While many are quickly realizing the benefits RPA can bring to an
organization, leaders must remember that this technology is not a catch-all
solution. Automation deployments must be rooted in empowerment - enabling
operational excellence and freeing workers from manual work - in order to
achieve business resiliency and long-term success.
Empowering automation begins with putting employees at the center of
the solution
As organizations rapidly increase their adoption of automation
solutions, they need to make sure they are working with - and not against -
employees and the business. Intelligent automation in its best form allows
humans to do their jobs exponentially better.
Take customer service for example: this job requires human emotion and
empathy daily to navigate customer problems and resolve issues. While automation
solutions can help organize incoming requests and facilitate human interaction,
intelligent automation lacks empathy. It may be able to feign it, but it cannot
actually process it. Therefore, the combination of bots and humans create the
optimal solution - bots handle the manual tasks and allow humans to work on tasks
only a human can do.
While software bots work on repetitive tasks, a human customer service
agent can now spend their time where it really matters - assisting customers and
troubleshooting complex issues that require a deeper level of empathy. Bots
work 24/7, alleviating precious time to do what humans do best - engage in
creative, fulfilling work, and content employees make an overall improved work
environment. In fact, 88% of employees confirm that they would be happier
completing administrative tasks with the help of an automated solution.
Empowering digital transformation initiatives creates business
resiliency and long term success
By pursuing automation initiatives and empowering employees, executives
can bring consumer experiences to the enterprise - digital assistants similar
to Siri or Alexa, but for the enterprise, are making it easy for anyone within
an organization to automate day-to-day business tasks, setting the framework
for long term success within the business.
However, too often, business leaders look at intelligent automation and
only see the immediate benefits they can bring to an organization such as
cutting costs and reducing errors. While these are considerations when weighing
automation solutions, it should not be the entire picture.
By looking at a solution and its effect on the workforce not only from
a productivity standpoint, but also an emotional one, leaders can ensure their
business evolves and succeeds. Questions to consider include how does the
automation solution make an organization's employees feel about their job? Are
they happier, worried or frustrated? Ultimately, bots are there to augment
employees for the better. If an intelligent automation solution is deployed and
employees do not respond favorably, chances are that more issues will arise
than be solved down the line. To effectively create longevity for businesses and
deploy solutions that truly provide business resiliency in the face of another
disruption, automation deployments need to amplify employee capabilities. These
solutions create massive gains for employees and break down siloes at every
level, creating a better-connected and resilient enterprise.
Automation is a force for seamless integration of work and life in our
new era of work
Now that the home and office are nearly one, automation can become a
valuable resource for employees. In a study conducted late last year by the International Monetary Fund, employees expressed
that they are eager to transition to a new automated age. On average, employee attitudes
toward automation's effect on the future of work are positive, with 41% believing
that automation will benefit the workplace. Keybank is witnessing the
power of RPA firsthand. To help drive efficiency for loans processing and
account reconciliation, Keybank enlisted the help of intelligent automation to
tackle manual and repetitive tasks. By giving employees the tools to take on
more meaningful work, Keybank completed nine years of work in just two weeks.
We are in the era
of realizing technologies' ultimate promise - a democratizing force that levels
the playing field and provides greater work-life balance than ever imaginable. The
time is now for business leaders to take a closer look at their automation
solutions and make sure they are empowering employees. From bots that can process
unstructured data pulled from documents to bots that can automate the creation
of other bots, there are countless possibilities for automation to benefit the
workforce. Automation solutions rooted in empowering employees not only bring productivity
gains and cut costs, but also leave the employee feeling fulfilled about their
work, creating a vested workforce and setting up the business for long-term
success.
##
About the Author
Neeti Mehta, SVP, Brand Strategy & Culture Architect and Co-founder, Automation Anywhere
Neeti is a co-founder and senior vice president of Automation Anywhere, leading global brand and culture initiatives across the company. She brings more than 20 years of business management, marketing, and entrepreneurial experience from a variety of industries including technology, business consulting, and advertising. Neeti is the company’s thought leader and vocal advocate of bot ethics as the RPA industry continues to grow at an unprecedented rate due to efficiencies and productivity achieved from intelligent automation.