Businesses have been automating tasks and processes for decades, but with the advent of artificial intelligence, the scope for automation has never been broader.
Technologies such as intelligent automation and machine learning are essentially software bots specifically programmed to interact with core business applications as if they were part of your human workforce. They are able to perform routine and repetitive tasks across a range of business functions, streamlining key processes.
Intelligent automation can be a powerful, strategic tool in your business arsenal. Below we explore some of the ways it can benefit your organisation.
Increasing efficiency
There are numerous, extremely useful applications of intelligent automation across various departmental functions, whether sales, customer service, payroll processing, onboarding or a host of other functions.
However, many of these key functions rely on outdated or legacy processes, requiring unnecessary manual input. Intelligent automation, implemented correctly, offers a powerful way to automate these processes, meaning tasks can be completed far more quickly, while freeing up human workers.
Joining disconnected data
Businesses often suffer from the effects of overwhelming amounts of data from disconnected sources, with useful information often buried in various documents, spreadsheets and other systems.
Attempting to synthesize data between these disparate sources can be a huge drain on time, while increasing the chances of errors and inaccuracies occurring. Intelligent automation solutions can effortlessly interface across multiple systems and extract meaningful data, while also being able to process both structured and unstructured data.
Improving employee experience
Human workers spend a large proportion of time on repetitive, low value or administrative tasks that are nonetheless vital to the functioning of the business. Intelligent automation can take over these burdensome tasks, freeing employees up to focus on high-level, high-value tasks that utilise their skills.
This is essentially a win-win scenario – low-level tasks are completed with more efficiency and less error, and employees are more engaged with the work they are doing.
Levelling up customer service
Many companies find themselves simply unable to handle the volume of customer requests they receive. This often results in decreased customer satisfaction, long waiting times and unanswered calls and correspondence.
Intelligent automation can directly impact overall levels of customer satisfaction. It is a great option for handling back-office functions, or repetitive tasks that sap up the time of human workers, freeing them to deal with customer-facing interactions.
Boosting the bottom line
Streamlining processes with automation ultimately benefits your bottom line. Increased efficiency directly translates into getting more done, which means increased earnings, but this is not the only way intelligent automation boosts profits. Implementing automation also translates into cost savings on wages as additional workers are not required to perform these simple tasks that can instead be automated. Finally, automation is invaluable for maintaining consistently high quality, saving additional costs by drastically reducing human error.
Final thoughts
With so many ways to implement intelligent automation within your organisation, and across a wide variety of functions, it has never been easier to reap the business benefits of this technology. It offers a powerful way to boost productivity and staff engagement, improve your bottom line, and future proof your existing processes, all without requiring an extensive overhaul of your existing IT systems.