How to See Value from Your Intelligent Automation Project, Fast

Blog: Bizagi Blog

Intelligent Automation isn’t new. Organizations have been using technologies like Digital Process Automation, Robotic Process Automation, and Artificial Intelligence to drive their digital transformation for the last few years. But the current climate has forced many organizations to push these projects further as they drive efficiency and resilience across their organization.

Bizagi, UiPath, Symphony, and SCOR were hosted by Discussion Box to talk about how Intelligent Automation can help organizations thrive during times of uncertainty. These are some of the key highlights of that roundtable session ‘Driving Efficiency and Resilience By Leveraging Intelligent Automation.’

Agile matters more than ever

As budgets are squeezed due to fear
of an economic downturn, cost-saving has become a focus for many
organizations. It’s important to prove that your automation project is a
worthwhile investment.

“Agility has become a core capability… We’re talking a lot
about Automation, RPA, and Big Data. But how do we focus investment where it really
matters and where it will make a huge difference?” posed Mata Valenta, Head of
Operational Agility, SCOR, one of Bizagi’s customers.

“The big shift, from my perspective, is we need to define those short, agile ways of actually leveraging all the amazing tech that we have in place, or could be implemented to bring quick results… We need to segment the areas where we can start investing wisely and proceed that way in smaller chunks, rather than huge implementations,” she said.

Indeed, funds will be diverted to projects that can deliver
an investment, as Chris Duddridge, Area VP and MD UK & Ireland, UiPath
highlighted in the discussion. “The ROI organizations are looking for, and the
agility that’s needed, needs to have a very quick payback, or it will be pushed
back to a future investment. So, the challenge very much falls back to the
strategy.

“Businesses need to develop and understand what they
ultimately want to achieve and validate that it benefits their BAU operations.
It’s a challenge and an opportunity to showcase where all the connected
technologies can accelerate the outcomes for customers and impact the bottom
line.”

Identify the best place to start

Traditional projects are not agile enough to deliver immediate ROI. So how do you decide which area of the business to apply your new agile methodology to first? A process-led approach can help decide where to begin. “With a process-led approach, you’re looking at the outcome of the business, and the strategies of the business,” said Rachel Brennan, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Bizagi.

“Transparency is so important – you need to have your business analysts and stakeholders able to understand what’s going on with their process rather than having it hidden in code… Having the visualization of a process model for everyone to agree on means they can say, ‘Yes, this is what we’re going to do’, and I think that’s coming to the forefront again.” she said.

The panelists discussed that rather than undertaking a huge Six Sigma analysis project, business process analysis can be an easy way to find quick wins. Using process modeling and simulation helps organizations to automate the most valuable processes and focus efforts where it counts and where it will deliver value. This way, you don’t just deploy automation technologies and then try to make them solve problems that you find along the way.

As one of the chairs of the roundtable, Frank Casale,
Founder and Chairman of the Institute for RPA and AI, commented, “There is significant
ROI in Intelligent Automation projects that are more process-led, as opposed to
those that start with the technology.”

The power of Intelligent Automation

Combining technologies like Bizagi and UiPath to create Intelligent Automation can deliver end-to-end automation across your processes, and help you realize value quickly. “Digital Process Automation and RPA coming together make a much better story together than separately. It’s the sum of the parts,” said Bizagi’s Brennan.

“This is a perfect time to use Bizagi to orchestrate, then
you can automate the pieces that are going to count with RPA… The two come
together and you’re able to orchestrate over the legacy systems as well as
integrate with them without having to do one-year projects to get these changes.
It’s a great story to put them together and actually achieve those five-week
projects.”

That’s exactly what insurance provider SCOR did. “Within SCOR
we had an amazing experience. Our claims process within the UK was entirely
manual, to the point where people would print out emails from clients and take
them person to person to be assessed. Now suddenly, everyone’s working from home,
what do we do? We worked with Bizagi and within five weeks we digitized the
entire claims assessment process for the UK, which is incredible looking at how
we did things previously,” said Valenta.

“It is great to see positive impact through a bad situation.
It can actually be an accelerator both in terms of adopting new technologies
and also rethinking the way that we operate… You don’t have to look at the
end-to-end process and change the whole thing, but segment it so it can be
rolled out and you can continue the efficiencies, she said.”

Applying Intelligent Automation in agile sprints delivers
results quickly, which is exactly what organizations need during this turbulent
period. Producing results fast helps to prove the value of these exceptional
technologies.

“Intelligent Automation is evidence-based. It is here to
stay and playing a part of digital transformation,” said Jason Martindale, VP
EMEA, Symphony. “It’s one of the biggest enablers to make [digital
transformation] a reality and the benefits that optimization can deliver.”

If you would like to hear more about what was covered in the Discussion Box roundtable, you can listen on-demand now:

Highlights include: