siliconindia | | December 20209automation is to create human-less enterprises. But how these technologi-cal advancements are used remains up to us. During current times, the major economies have shrunk alarmingly and hundreds of thousands of peo-ple at all levels are losing jobs. This makes it even more important to un-derstand how automation should be approached to support businesses and workforce in tiding over current crisis. Automation qualitatively redefines the very nature of many tasks and, in the process, creates many newer jobs. The key point is, any productivity in-crease and subsequent growth leads to enterprises looking for newer mar-kets, segments and revenue streams that ends up creating newer roles and jobs. Also, paradoxically, automa-tion makes the newly aligned jobs of humans much more critical since any error or flaw in automated system can have magnified adverse impact. STAGES OF AUTOMATIONA typical automation journey for an enterprise goes through four stages ­ it starts by first automating simplest of the tasks like job scheduling, data processing or simple workflow execu-tion within a system; for e.g. using Excel macros to process data or us-ing shell scripts to automate some of the basic tasks. At the second stage, the enterprises move on to exploring more sophisticated RPA tools to au-tomate backend tasks across systems or tools boundaries based on fixed-rules to help automate high-volume, predictable and repeatable tasks. The typical use case examples are Invoice processing, payroll management, re-source scheduling, system monitor-ing, employee or customer onboard-ing etc. So, far the tasks are mostly back office and independent with no-to-minimal inputs or interference from the humans. In the third stage of automation, the fixed or static business rules are replaced by dynamic-learning based approach as well as more front-ending or user interactions. At this step, the big data and AI&ML comes into the picture to enable creation of bots and models that leverage massive data for analysis and predictions. Examples of such systems are conversational bots, personalized offerings of content and services, supply chain and inventory optimization, proactive maintenance monitoring and scheduling etc. The combining of RPA and AI/ML marks the evolution of RPA into IPA (In-telligent Process Automation).The fourth stage leads to prescriptive de-cisions-making based on Deep learn-ing and more complex AI models. For example, autonomous vehicles and systems, fraud detection in financial sector or intrusion detection in cy-ber security and real-time actions to address them.KEY TO SUCCESSFUL IMPLE-MENTATIONFor the smooth and successful imple-mentation, the CIOs must plan and strategize their Automation initiatives carefully. First and foremost, the CIOs must align all the automation initia-tives with business goals to get buy-in and sponsorship from the execu-tive management and turn the whole initiative into a business-led one. This helps in scoring quick wins, earning advocates and expand the initiatives across the whole enterprise faster. Secondly, the CIOs must keep abreast of latest technological trends to incor-porate them into their medium to long term planning. They also need to cre-ate robust KPIs and outcome metrices to track the success of the initiative. Third, the CIOs must plan to hire the right talent and upskill the existing re-sources to implement the projects as well as plan the trainings for the end users for the smooth transition to new processes. Finally, the proper, timely, proactive and adequate communica-tion plan must be charted out to pro-actively inform all the stakeholders re-garding the upcoming initiatives, their impact and to address their concerns, fears or queries.CONCLUSIONDigital Transformation considers hu-mans at the centre of its core objective. It includes all the stakeholders includ-ing employees, partners, vendors and not just the paying customers. Any au-tomation initiative needs to look at the larger picture rather than with a nar-row focus on operational efficiency to replace humans. While hard times ne-cessitate the businesses to look for the ways to cut cost and stay afloat, any reduction in the workforce will ham-per the revival of economic activities which in turn will impact the business revival indirectly. It is time to imagi-natively use technology in ways to support communities and societies at large while helping businesses as well. Augmented intelligence cou-pled with Automation that lever-ages the cutting-edge AI/ML models while keeping humans at the driv-ing seat is the way forward towards an empowered workforce and a prosperous community. Avnish Mehta
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