Unlocking the Power of Digital Transformation and Automation

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Unlocking the Power of Digital Transformation and Automation

Summary

Businesses are under more pressure than ever to transform, disrupt, or face obsolescence. Digital transformation is a top strategic priority, allowing companies to leverage technology to expand, become more productive, and increase their customers’ engagement. Automation, or using technology to carry out every task rapidly and efficiently, is the key to digital transformation. Read this article to examine how automation is critical to making the most of digital transformation to fit our potential.

By now, you’ve undoubtedly witnessed and heard countless discussions about the curiosity surrounding the digital revolution. If it’s not the decade’s buzzword, it ranks highest in the lane. Automation is another candidate contending for the top spot. But how do they make a difference if they are both about making business operations more efficient?

Thorough research predicts that the digital transformation market worldwide will reach 3.2 trillion by 2025.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic’s unparalleled effects, several companies stepped up their digital transformation initiatives to weather the storm and realize more extended returns on investment. Although this trend has been increasing over the last ten years, the COVID-19 crisis has pushed businesses to go to the next stage of digital maturity and produce real value from their efforts.

Digital transformation, in the words of George Westerman, author of Leading Digital: Transforming Technology into company, entails a “radical rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people, and processes to fundamentally change business performance.

Technology drives significant shifts in the global economy, but technology alone can’t solve these new challenges. Customers now demand seamless, end-to-end experiences. Digital natives expect interactions to be as quick and intuitive as using a smartphone app. High-quality products are essential, but the delivery method is equally important. Additionally, customers expect value and innovation without extra cost, and social media gives dissatisfied customers a powerful platform to voice complaints and hold companies accountable for their practices.

“If you’re not measuring your digital initiatives, how can you manage or optimize them?”- Peter Drucker.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies should “serve their customers, not sell to them” and build the connections needed to adapt to the next normal. Global strategies are also becoming more “glocal,” with growing pressure to develop products and services for the needs and expectations of specific national markets.

Automation as the backbone of Digital Transformation

“Digital transformation is all about unlocking value in your business processes and releasing it back to customers – as well as being agile enough to use data and analytics to create new, innovative experiences.” – David Macdonald.”

A new report by Camunda, titled “The State of Process Automation Report,” reveals that 97% of IT decision-makers consider process automation critical to digital transformation. Based on a survey of 400 enterprise IT decision-makers across the US and Europe, the report explores how these leaders are leveraging end-to-end process automation to drive digital transformation. It also identifies the key trends, challenges, and opportunities for improvement in this domain. Thus, process automation is cited as a key driver of innovation and an important factor in achieving business outcomes.

Your company will become irrelevant and outdated if you do not automate it. Keep routine processes digital and energized with digital transformation and automation. Due to digital transformation and automation, you can digitize repetitive processes, simplify workflows, run quicker, reduce prices, and increase productivity and output. As a result, you may add more business worth.

Digital transformation is more than just selling your products and services online or providing employees with laptops. Instead, it’s utilizing all of the digital tools and capabilities available to you, from automation to data analytics and everything in between, to reshape the core of your business and its decision-making. It means constantly innovating and perfecting your offering and your entire business model to deliver the best possible version of your product for your business and your industry. Finally, successful digital transformation is always proactive, never reactive.

“What is coming at us is bigger than the original internet, and you need to understand it, get on board with it, and figure out how to transform your business” – Tim O’Reilly.

It is worth noting that when one talks about the pioneers of digital transformation, it is usually the companies that completely revolutionized the industry. For example, Netflix and Uber used all the available technology and data to redefine their products and meet the customers’ needs, which the latter previously did not even know they had. If you strive to achieve such success, even on a smaller scale, you need to track your industry’s heartbeat and its relationships with customers, which is only possible with the help of data analytics.

How can automation help your organization grow?

Increased efficiency, accuracy, and productivity

The most fundamental function of digital transformation technology is to help workers get their jobs done effectively. Automation functions lower the number of errors and quickly complete jobs previously manually done by humans. As a result, operations are accelerated by 208%. In a survey by Salesforce, 89% of employees trust automation because they believe it can help them achieve error-free working. It enhances the flow of work and the workforce’s performance, resulting in a more efficient staff. According to McKinsey, productivity is one of the most common perquisites of automation for 50% of global businesses. With the automated workflow, employees can focus on the more imaginative and challenging parts of projects. They are inspired and dedicated to their labor when participating in more considerate endeavors.

Provide a better customer experience.

Digital Savvy customers are one of the engines of Digital Transformation and are accustomed to interacting with organizations anytime. Staying competitive requires offering a superfine customer experience while keeping the cost low. Automation ensures customers are frustrated and inconvenienced by quickly giving them access to the details they need. Employees seek automation solutions that would improve work/life balance. 

Automation analyzes repetitive customer issues, such as phone order placements and common questions, to develop a customized experience and reduce the time it takes for a response, increasing customer satisfaction. The report of Salesforce reveals that 91% of employees agree that automation provides them with a better work-life balance and saves them valuable time.

Reducing costs and expenditure

When you lower inventories and production throughput times, you also take care of your reduced wastage and cost excesses. Reduces redundant costs, minimizes the operating costs, increases the free cash flow, and breaks your budget limitation. Apart from being the best way to ensure that you do not maintain excess manpower expenditure, the conduct managers from a central hub ensure that it conserves its resources as you can perform the activities despite your geographical location.

Improving security and compliance

For 47% of organizations, better security and compliance are the primary reasons behind automation implementation, according to a RedHat survey. Two significant issues for modern organizations aiming at digital transformation include cybersecurity and meeting complex modern regulatory frameworks, particularly in sectors with constantly updating regulations. 

Automating the data-intensive tasks to show that you are in compliance simplifies and quickens the procedure and frees up time. The process simplifies because you can identify policy, account, and configuration violations. You can monitor typical usage and discern threats quickly. You can discover and manage security flaws before a bad actor can exploit them.

Accelerated growth

When your digital automation platform is aligned with your goals for transformation, your company can grow faster than with fewer resources. Through an initial test of automation tools on some projects, you may then proceed to an integrated, enterprise-wide deployment aiming to eliminate operational silos and stimulate growth. Automation of workflows reduces errors, resulting in consistent and repetitive business operations. It also makes the work of collaborating across business teams easier by eliminating the silos that breed division. Automation exposes your employees to different functions, creating a more conducive climate for innovation. The automation tools increase visibility into business operations, clarifying workflows and procedures.

To sum up

The industrial world faces constantly evolving challenges, including geopolitical and macroeconomic conditions, technology improvements, changes in the global marketplace, and the climate’s negative impact. Meeting these changes is only possible with the introduction of digitalization and automation. However, collecting, monitoring, and processing large flows of data developed within the Industrial Internet of Things is crucial. 

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