In our latest StefTalks webinar, taking place on Wednesday 5 August at 10:00am (CEST), Mihai Cvasnievschi, Stefanini’s AI, IoT, Cloud & Mobile Solutions Architect, will outline how to make this human-centric hyper-automation a reality – as well as how this can transform businesses and empower employees.
The power of hyper-automation, which Gartner has recognized as this year’s most significant IT trend for businesses, can be harnessed to improve customer experience, augment the workforce, automate repetitive processes, and transform businesses into self-driven[MC1] organizations.
Gartner defines hyper-automation as the application of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to increasingly automate processes and augment humans.
The growing hype around this trend could lead to some organizations believing hyper-automation is able to solve nearly all business problems. In reality, most of the immediate benefits from hyper-automation will be process focused, lacking the contextual awareness and flexible learning that humans provide.
Our objective is to get our clients to flip technology-led processes and instead research and identify human needs first.
We think that significant business benefits can be realized through a human-centric hyper-automation strategy, allowing businesses to truly complement their human workforce, and improve the customer and employee experience, by focusing on people and then developing technology accordingly.
For all the speculation that automation and AI might destroy jobs, a human-centric hyper-automation strategy offers huge potential to instead elevate human effort in the workplace. Through humans and computers working together, a human-centric approach allows computers to automate more repetitive tasks while freeing up humans to focus on other complex processes for which they are best equipped, such as managing difficult interactions with customers.
Making hyper-automation a reality
Implementing a successful human-centric hyper-automation strategy requires data. It also needs models and knowledge, and an advanced framework. This foundation must be supported by the right technology, including the correct platforms for supporting intelligent APIs, machine learning and automation. Finally, there’s the need for talent, which means successfully attracting the right talent, finding the right roles and often leveraging partners and their ecosystems.
Ensuring everything is in place isn’t always straightforward.
At Stefanini, we find it most efficient to offer clients one of our Stefanini Dive [MC2] sessions. These collaborative deep dives into our clients’ business allow us to uncover their existing maturity and the most pressing areas to address in order to develop a human-centric hyper-automation strategy.
These sessions mean we can understand and identify the processes that would most benefit clients’ businesses and the steps they’d need to take to most effectively implement these, whether that’s machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) or virtual assistants, all available through our Sophie [MC3] AI platform.
Realizing results
Human-centric hyper-automation can truly transform all aspects of an organization, both in terms of the efficiency of its internal processes and the experience it offers to its customers.
It also has the power to achieve these various goals simultaneously.
A smart combination of data and AI-based tools, for instance, can enable businesses to quickly determine whether a customer contacting a help center could be served more efficiently via a chatbot, while freeing up the human workforce to deal with more complex issues, such as technical problems or complaints. This means a better experience, along with an increased likelihood of converting customers and building long-term loyalty.
When it comes to internal processes, using intelligent automations to enable employees to scan and process payment information can do more than simply speed up invoicing. It also enables human employees to add greater value – and enjoy greater job satisfaction – by freeing up time they can invest into more complex or creative challenges.
These are just a few examples. With increased sophistication, hyper-automation can do more than simply augment human employee efforts but can also be used to improve the decision-making process. This doesn’t diminish human effort. Instead, a human-centric hyper-automation strategy empowers people, freeing them from burden of repetitive tasks and enabling them to work more effectively than ever.
