As businesses try to recover from the pandemic in the face of rising inflation, many will be eyeing the potential cost savings delivered by automation. A successful rollout would mean that software, rather than staff, carries out repetitive work, saving the business money and taking away unfulfilling tasks from employees.
Researchers at the management consulting company Gartner have predicted that organisations that double down and aim for “hyperautomation”, where many processes are automated, will see a 30% cut in their cost of operations by 2024.
However, for Simon Williams, director of automation within the payments division of Discover Financial Services, a US digital bank, programming repetitive tasks to be carried out by computers should never focus on budget alone. Every project should always be about people.
It’s good to be people-driven
“Automation has to be people-driven at all levels of the business,” he says. “For customers, it’s always about getting the best possible service at all times. For employees, it’s taking away work they may find unfulfilling so they can concentrate on more strategic tasks. It’s an important point because they may think the worst about automation, because it’s natural to react to something that might take your job. So businesses need to show how it can make their job better, how they can be more supervisory and get trained up to take on more strategic, leadership roles. This can be a very positive message in the current market where people are more likely to leave if they do not feel they are being fully developed.”
Automation has a lot to offer throughout any part of the business. For example, in Simon’s teams it empowers IT executives to improve systems and then test new solutions at far greater speed, with labour intensive security tests carried out automatically. These improvements allow millions of card and contactless payments to be processed every day, with full security checks in a fraction of a second.
In many businesses automation will often be used to cut down on paperwork by digitally processing applications and forms. It is also being used to link different parts of a business to offer a seamless service. For example, a customer’s order is sent to a logistics centre so it can be fulfilled, with the customer updated on the progress of their purchases.
When to automate?
With automation, one of the most difficult decisions can be knowing where to start. For Simon, there are some simple guidelines that can steer organisations in the right direction – and being driven by business objectives rather than using technology for the sake of it, is key.
“There are three questions we look to answer when considering automation,” says Simon. “How do I deliver something faster, how do I do it more effectively or more efficiently and how do I improve quality, while also increasing profitability.”
When prioritising which areas might be right for automation, Simon has some simple advice. Look for the parts of daily operations where workflows slow down or where a lot of people are repeatedly performing the same task.
“A good starting point is to look out for the bottlenecks in a business – where are things taking too long?” he says. “Another good rule of thumb is that any process you do three times is something that might be possible to automate. You shouldn’t do it straight away, though. You need to ask if it is something that can be standardised and, if it can be, it could be right for automation.”
Make sure you get the manual process right
Even then, there is a crucial step that needs to be taken before automation can be considered. A common mistake made by businesses, Simon says, is to rush to code computers to carry out a process, even if it is not a very good process. Get the manual process right first, then automate, is a golden rule, he says.
“If you take a bad process and automate, it won’t work because it’s very difficult to fix something that was already suboptimal,” he says. “You need to ask: ‘Do we understand the process and what we are trying to achieve?’ You need to understand the foundational layers behind a process, you first need to talk to the stakeholders to optimise the process. Then, automation is the icing on the cake, it takes you from running to flying at scale.”
With so many potential automation opportunities across every department within an organisation, the question arises: when not to automate? For Simon, the answer lies in keeping automation people-led. Bespoke tasks that are “intrinsically human” that require a trained person to use their judgement to complete or oversee are not right for automation. Similarly, the public face of a company needs to be kept human because, as he puts it: “You wouldn’t want a bot launching your new product or presenting yearly results to investors.”
Just as being people-led will show a business where to automate, it also helps determine where and when to leave well alone and let its people shine.
Find out more about the job opportunities and career progression offered by Discover Financial Services
