The Automation Advantage summary

So what needs to be done? First, you need to understand how, through automation, your organization intends to get a competitive edge; you need to be clear about how it’ll give you that edge.

This might even involve a complete overhaul of your business model.

Creating an automation roadmap will help you clearly identify how you can implement, track, and innovate your integration strategy. It should be developed on two levels simultaneously: one with a focus on business results, and the other on the journey to better automation maturity in your company. Let’s get into the business results roadmap now. We’ll cover the strategic model for a successful automation maturity process in a moment.

The authors structured the business results process into three main phases. The first is titled, Establish. For this phase, you should explore and pinpoint where there’s potential for automation across your business applications. The next phase is Scale. As the name implies, here’s where you develop, activate, and scale your solutions. Finally, in the third phase – Operate – you’re ready to widen your geographic coverage to better observe true value realization, and update your intelligent automation strategies based on your learnings.

Next, let’s dig into the practical implementation of intelligent automation in your business.

Right off the top, it needs to be said that if a business fails to adapt with the times, it could be swept aside. And many will fail to adapt. Change is hard, and in addition to that, there are several reasons for this inability to adapt. Some of them are self-imposed obstacles and others are due to external factors. But without going into too much detail about those, what the important takeaway here is, when faced with obstacles to technological adaptation, like skills deficits in your teams, resistance from leadership, or reliance on outdated tech infrastructure, the answer is to build an entirely new system with automation and AI at its heart.

Intelligence automation integrations should be a holistic endeavor. Everyone at every level of the company, from business and IT leadership to the operational staff, should be engaged and active contributors to the project. But in order to do this successfully, Ghosh, Pallail, and Prasad suggest the following model which can guide your decision-making processes as you go. These are the four S’s that’ll help you reach the highest automation maturity level: Simple, Seamless, Scaled, and Sustained.

Simple: This is the point where you’re performing a kind of diagnostic check. Take a close look at your IT and connected business infrastructures. Wherever you see deficits or room for improvement, retool your applications and architecture with the goal of simplifying your functional units or modularity. 

In today’s world, companies can’t afford to sit still. Such is the pace of technological change that anyone caught dawdling will be left in the dust by their competitors.

Whether that’s traditional booksellers waking up to Amazon’s digital store, or taxicab firms watching Uber’s success, those that choose not to innovate will lose out. The same is true of those looking the other way as automation and AI begins to take off.