Author: Jimmy Hewitt, Sr Automation Advisor
Geoffrey Chaucer, in Canterbury Tales, tells us that “time and tide wait for no man.” Adam Smith and his invisible hand take it a step further by implying that the same is true for business opportunities. If an opportunity exists to gain a competitive advantage in the market, then it will be taken.
It’s just a matter of who will take it and who will wish that they did. However, even though Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and Business Automation are some of the most successful, paradigm-shifting advances in business solutions, there is an understandable number of risks in and around investing and implementing.
That’s why we, at Salient Process, decided to leverage our experience and learnings from over 600 successful client engagements to shine a light on some of these dark myths of implementing A.I. and Digital Business Automation solutions for your business. Here is 6 Digital Business Automation Myths- De-Bunked!
Rather than taking your job, it will remove the least enjoyable and most manual/mundane part of your job while freeing you up for more knowledge-based and value-add activities. Not a bad deal, right? For example, on the more basic end of the A.I. and Automation spectrum, we have Robotic Process Automation. One single bot can give back thousands of hours to a corporate finance team by automatically generating reports to compare a daily forecast to yesterday’s actuals. Rather than the FP&A team losing their job to A.I., they’ve outsourced the most boring part of it to technology!
Curing cancer is quite possibly the loftiest and complex goal ever set for artificial intelligence, and at best, the jury is still out. That said, A.I. and Digital Business Automation are making positive impacts on healthcare and the 20% of our GDP ($3.6 trillion) that we spend on it. For example, according to the National Library of Medicine, over 30% of the $3.6 trillion that providers and payers spend annually is earmarked towards “administrative expenses,” which, in other words, means “the management of paper-based forms and the data within them.” A.I. and Digital Business Automation can absolutely make a dent in this problem (ex: digitized medical encounter records). We’re still optimistically holding our breath on curing cancer, though.
Algorithms did receive the majority of the A.I. spotlight in its early days and still, have a major impact on business today (i.e., algorithmic trading in Finance, route & fuel optimization strategy for Trucking and Transportation, etc.), but we’d like to shine the spotlight on a new way of looking at A.I. and Digital Business Automation. If we decompose A.I. into its core meaning, we can equate it to a software program/platform that performs tasks much like a human would perform those tasks. You have A.I. if you invest in a solution that can replicate human tasks (but faster, better, cheaper, etc.). There is a whole world of undiscovered A.I. in the form of Digital Business Automation – a technological trend that Gartner is calling a top 10 strategic trend for 2021. Learn more about this topic here on our YouTube channel.
Focusing purely on efficiency just means minimizing waste. While this is generally good for business, it does not ensure an optimal outcome. As opposed to efficiency, efficacy is the goal for Digital Business Automation it is defined as “the ability to produce a desired or intended result.” Talk about a nuance – but this nuance matters! By focusing on business results, as opposed to eliminating waste, our automation clients achieve just that.
Admittedly, there are plenty of articles and research out there saying that a sizable percentage of A.I. projects fail to deliver on the originally intended business value, but that has not been our experience or that of our clients. With a disciplined approach (we use our own North Star Methodology combined with our proprietary Automation Compass), an expert-level partner, and realistic expectations, we have seen a payback period for A.I. & RPA investments as short as months, and in some cases, days! Adam Smith and I would actually argue that the expensive part is the lost productivity accrued from not implementing A.I. & Digital Business Automation.
We have implemented successful A.I. and Digital Business Automation projects with companies ranging from one-person startups to the Global 100. We can work with you to ensure that we are not just automating for automation’s sake; rather, we quantify the investment and calculate the benefits to ensure the project aligns with your unique business objectives.
Salient Process is a full-service digital business automation shop and proud IBM Automation business partner. To learn more about us at our website, request a free consultation with one of our expert automation advisors! We look forward to guiding you and your company along your own unique Digital Business Automation journey.
