There’s been a lot of lessons learned since March of 2020. We’ve witnessed the disruption of the ‘status-quo’ of typical 9-5 commuter jobs as businesses were forced to change to meet the new expectations of remote and hybrid-remote work. As part of this change, technology offerings continue to be an increasingly important part of working at an organization that embraces a hybrid workspace.
One type of technology that has become integral to so many companies is automation. The benefits of automation far outweigh the cost of adoption, improving processes and allowing employees to drive focus towards more critical, thought provoking tasks. Not only are these types of solutions important from a business perspective, but we’re witnessing a change amongst employees who are looking for automation as a part of their work experience. These factors contribute to why we’re seeing automation grow in popularity and why it’ll become a fundamental part to the continued success of the hybrid workplace.
Hiring Trends: New Report: Talent Teams Are Still Struggling With Their Own Internal Staffing Shortages
Automation Moves the Workflow Needle in Hybrid Workspaces
Automation is a broad term and there’s a lot that can fit under the umbrella term.
Areas of focus for businesses looking to adopt solutions should focus on how technology can improve processes, workflows, and overall collaboration – especially considering many workforces are hybrid in some capacity. These solutions thrive on making certain aspects of a workflow faster and more efficient.
Businesses will also see benefits when it comes to cross-enterprise and inter-department work. Tasks like processing an insurance claim or loan approval can be especially fragmented as teams work in a hybrid setting. Leveraging automation can help deliver a better workflow of these processes and result in an improved end-to-end customer experience.
Workflow automation solutions also create positive changes to a businesses IT teams and infrastructure. Take no-code solutions for example. These solutions allow an employee with minimal technical expertise to become a basic developer in their own right. Through these solutions, employees have the potential to create positive change across their entire organization and contribute towards overall efforts to become a more efficient, automated workplace. In addition to helping an employee, IT teams will also spend less time assisting employees with technical issues that can now be easily addressed with no-code.
Employee Experience Technology News: Harri Launches Three New Products That Complete the First Employee Experience Platform For Service Workforces
Not only will businesses enjoy improved processes, but employees can also feel the benefit of these solutions. Many of the traditional processes employees became accustomed to over decades of office work are no longer efficient in the hybrid workplace. Automation has been a key part of this shift, as many basic tasks move to a digital format. Additionally, much of the classic manual, repetitive work that may not require any special skills, can be highly prone to error such as clerical work, data entry, document processes, and so on.
Rule-based automation and bot integration bots can ensure that the more mundane tasks are completed with higher speed, increased accuracy, and allows teams to spend more time on more thought-inducing tasks and improving collaboration.
The Time for Businesses to Invest in Automation is Now
While we’ve seen the adoption of automation solutions boom since early 2020, many business owners are still on the fence on if it’s a worthwhile investment.
As this market continues expanding, I strongly believe there’s no better time than now to consider adoption, as these types of solutions can create instant, positive change for an organization. Organizations that successfully leveraged automation during the pandemic point to three tactics to ensure effective deployment:
- Consider automation as a strategic priority: According to a McKinsey survey, 38% of organizations that prioritized automation during their strategic planning process reported automation success. Adopting solutions and having automation part of the wider company strategy will result in long-term success.
- Pursuing people first: 65% of organizations reporting automation success are adopting “human-in-the-loop” solutions that combine machine and human intelligence to scale their automation efforts. Successful organizations are much more likely to prioritize communication, gather employee feedback, and have a more efficient hybrid workspace while leveraging automation.
- Developing an operation that enables scaling: Organizations reporting automation success are facilitating better coordination across business units or functions to support their automation efforts. Heading into next year, the idea of scalability will be even more important as both enterprises and SMBs consider adopting solutions on a wider scale.
As businesses continue operating in a COVID reality, it’s crucial to have the right kind of technology investments in place to set themselves up for success Although automation has the potential to do great things, it’s simply just a piece of a much more complicated puzzle businesses try to assemble as they aim to grow during this tough period. We’ll see how these kinds of solutions continue making positive change into next year and what the long-term impact will be across multiple industries.
Read HRTech News: Introducing Moveworks for HR: The First AI Solution That Provides Personalized HR Support
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]
