Automation has become the core subject in all discussions, both inside and outside of meeting rooms.
As per a McKinsey report, certain occupations are entirely automatable; however, 30% of tasks of all occupations can be automated for at-least 60% of occupations across businesses.
Organisations are slowly but certainly realizing the significance of automating various business activities. Consequently, we are witnessing a never seen before focus on digitizing processes and functions, thanks to COVID-19.
Hyperautomation can be implemented in various business functions and aim at attaining the following:
- Re-engineering of procedures to eliminate non-value-add or identical steps
- Develop and deploy independent modules so that there is least inter-dependency
- Use ready tools wherever possible
- Provide quicker results
How does hyperautomation aid in a typical business function?
Every organisation has multiple business functions. However, certain functions such as Finance and Accounting, Sales and marketing, Human Resources, and legal are always present in any organisation.
In the accounts payable division, which regularly involves receipt of invoices and releasing of payments, hyperautomation can help in document extraction through Optical Character Recognition (OCR), verification of invoices, the automated release of payments on completion of credit period which can be done by RPA depending on the correctness of invoice.
This would decrease the manual errors made, time taken by humans to process invoices and can significantly curtail the pay-out time to creditors.
- Likewise, hyperautomation in the accounts receivable department can too extract the invoice details from invoices raised, send automated pre-defined reminders to debtors on completion of credit period, and compute interest and process debit notes in case of delayed payments, knock off entries as payments are received in banks.
- Hyperautomation is a blessing when it comes to data management across various functions but largely in Legal and Human Resources. With the assistance of machine learning and OCR, data extraction, validation, and enrichment can be carried out. This also comprises conversion of data in the desired format, producing standard documents, and much more.
- In the case of tax compliances, hyperautomation can extract data, do data validations, file returns, make tax payments, conduct reconciliations, identify any variations, etc. This will considerably lessen the time that tax teams spend on compliances.
- For the sales and marketing team, hyperautomation can help in plentiful ways, be it setting up a new prospects pipeline, identifying key decision-makers in the process, automating the marketing and sales CRM.
Additionally, there are numerous potentials where hyperautomation can be used and benefitted from. Every industry/ sector has precise activities that can also be hyper automated.
For example, banking may have loan underwriting, customer on-boarding, etc. insurance may have claims handling, background verification, etc. Hence, the possibilities are infinite.
The Future of Hyperautomation
The future of automation is hyperautomation and its future looks bright. If used in the right way, it could prove to be a huge boon.
Hyperautomation can tremendously increase productivity and efficiencies and reduce operating costs in these unsettled times.
As per a McKinsey report, automation could raise the productivity rate globally from 0.8% to 1.4% annually.
Though hyperautomation can be said to be at an emerging stage, its future looks promising. However, the road to achieving it requires detailed planning and execution.
The selection of tools and technologies being the most crucial step. Though, the actual push would come when organisations start implementing it and experience the benefits resulting from it.
Once even a handful of large organizations start using hyperautomation, it will generate a snowball effect making other organisations adopt it too.
Another significant feature to be kept in mind is that just like any other technology revolution, hyperautomation does not mean at reducing the human workforce.
It would need a collaboration between a man and the machine to make it as successful as desired.
Humans will very much be the key decision-makers; only the repetitive and mundane tasks with simple decision-making would be deputed to machines.
Although the future looks promising, challenges still persist. To harness the complete benefits of hyperautomation, organizations should select their technology partners carefully.
(Sponsored by Cygnet Infotech – a global IT company with a focus on tax technology.)
