Innovation is pushing the boundaries of what businesses can accomplish regarding efficiency and operational excellence. From software powered by artificial intelligence to low-code enterprise platforms, there are so many paths toward digital transformation that it can be hard to know what’s best for your organization. However, one thing is sure: if you aren’t ahead of the intelligent automation curve, you could soon fall behind.

Indeed, the saturation of buzz around generative AI and the constant upcropping of startups hoping to capitalize on the hottest IT trends can instill skepticism in some IT leaders. After all, it’s inadvisable to reflexively adopt every new enterprise tool you see purely for fear of accruing a technical debt. However, those entirely resistant to automation needlessly limit their businesses’ potential in the long run.

IT leaders and innovation officers should look honestly at the state of their organization’s processes and employees. If any of the following situations apply, it should be taken as a hint that you are already overdue for intelligent automation.

Your Team is Tired of Manual Entry

Are your employees feeling fed up with repetition and monotony? A high volume of their tasks could likely be expedited through intelligent automation.

This isn’t to say that their role can be replaced entirely by technology but rather augmented in a way that increases both productivity and fulfillment. Employees often spend hours of their days on arduous work – typically involving documents – instead of stimulating, challenging, and rewarding projects.

Intelligent Document Processing — High Processing Rates

Intelligent document processing (IDP) leverages artificial intelligence with optical character recognition to quickly read and extract key data from documents, classify data, and ingest it into other applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or robotic process automation (RPA) platforms with staggering accuracy. IDP solutions can yield high straight-through processing rates, meaning documents like invoices can be processed without any manual intervention. Instead of spending hours on manual data entry, employees can instead monitor accuracy and intervene only when necessary.

Your IDP Never Gets Tired

IDP solutions are also immune to fatigue, reducing the likelihood of errors. Not only that, but AI-driven document skills can be plugged in easily into existing workflows and trained to yield better results by processing volumes of documents, increasing the value of IDP over time.

While these platforms don’t completely replace humans, they drastically improve document-centric processes, allowing employees’ time to be spent on more fulfilling work while also boosting an organization’s revenue by accelerating time-to-value in achieving business goals. If you’re detecting declining motivation or growing frustration from employees, consider adding intelligent document processing to your automation checklist.

You Experience High Customer Onboarding Abandonment — Needs Intelligent Automation

Consumers aren’t immune to repetition fatigue either. As they grow accustomed to the streamlined customer experience offered by many financial institutions and other entities, their tolerance for lengthy and tedious onboarding processes diminishes.

Research shows that the top three reasons behind onboarding abandonment are:

• Too many steps
• Lengthy identity proofing
• Excessive manual entry

Customers want to feel like a valued priority, and demanding excessive manual entry and invasive identity proofing contradicts that expectation.

Businesses can use intelligent identity proofing to ensure that their first point of contact with customers is a positive one. Instead of typing on a miniature keyboard and toggling between device screens, applications, and emails, identity proofing should be able to be completed from a single screen in under two minutes.

Streamlining onboarding with intelligent identity proofing allows people to automatically upload all pertinent information using their smartphone camera to capture and send trailing documents to populate form fields. This emphasizes that the customer’s experience is a priority and fortifies a reputable brand reputation, thus preventing abandonment, increasing customer acquisition and advocacy, and driving revenue. If your business faces frequent onboarding dropouts, intelligent identity proofing is the solution for you.

Only Your IT Department Can Use Your Tools

Consumers’ demand for speedy service is not exclusive to onboarding.

Many businesses, such as tax preparation companies, rely on agile internal processes to deliver value to customers in a timely manner. If legacy systems do not permit easy customization to fit unique circumstances, the back end can quickly become encumbered with support tickets and bureaucracy that delay the customer’s outcome.

Organizations should adopt low/no-code platforms with accessible interfaces that can be used outside the IT department. Rather than depending on employees with backgrounds in tech or computer science, businesses can empower the “citizen developer,” enabling a new standard of agility to help your business deliver value at the speed of thought.

You Have Bottlenecks in Your Processes — Automation Solves the Issue

Organizations experience workflow bottlenecks but lack the visibility they need to address pain points and make the appropriate changes accurately. Moreover, 70% of automation attempts fail because of unclear or misguided goals.

Process intelligence can scrutinize processes at a granular level every step of the way.

Process intelligence is the combination of task and process mining; task mining examines individual actions, such as keystrokes, while process mining is more concerned with steps in an entire workflow. Monitoring processes with these techniques yields data that helps businesses more accurately understand how to optimize their operations, whether it be through hiring, automating, or reallocating resources.

Sometimes, organizations attempt to automate the wrong stage of a workflow, which can have unintended consequences like shifting a bottleneck to later in a process where it becomes more visible to the consumer. This uncertainty can hinder digital transformation success. If your organization is considering intelligent automation and wants to ward off failure, process intelligence is key to ensuring that your automation initiatives succeed.

You Struggle with Scalability

Volatile economic and market factors shift businesses’ needs over time, but adapting processes to a shift in the status quo should not be difficult.

Intelligent automation solutions offer the scalability that enterprises need to adjust their operations however needed proactively. Whether it’s a change in the quantity of documents being processed, the number of employees delegated to a task, or onsite or remote, intelligent automation will give organizations visibility and flexibility when faced with growing or diminishing demand for their services.

The economy is cyclical, markets are fluid, and businesses should never expect to operate at the same volume and tempo for very long. Nonetheless, decision-makers should always be prepared to make the appropriate changes necessary to protect the long-term health of their employees and their organization. Intelligent automation ensures they can make these changes as quickly as their business landscape evolves.

Everything is On-Premise

Not everything has to be in the cloud, but organizations that embrace cloud-native platforms can reap the rewards of newfound efficiency and flexibility. The use of the cloud is a significant aspect of scalability that can — to an extent — future-proof business from unforeseen events.

Cloud-native platforms empower easier management of systems and solutions, drive collaboration, and ultimately result in a superior customer experience.

The cloud increases the potential for desirable business and customer outcomes, and a well-designed security strategy can reduce the risk of information security discrepancies relative to on-premises tech stacks.

If your business has the infrastructure necessary to use cloud-native solutions, consider adopting intelligent automation platforms that are built around cloud technology.

Intelligent Automation in Your Business

Automation can be a contentious topic, especially with the rise in conversation around artificial intelligence and its implications. However, when adopted with the right business goals and implementation strategies in mind — it can transform organizations that benefit employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

If your organization struggles with efficiency, front-facing experience, scalability, or any other facet of operational excellence, it’s time to put your information to work and start automating intelligently.

Featured Image Credit: Monster; Pexels; Thank you!