Digital process automation over traditional technologies


Digital process automation over traditional technologies

Digital process automation brings together people, applications, devices, and information across an organization to produce a truly agile and digital organization.Ram Narasimhan, Global Head of Cognitive Services and AI, Xebia, recently spoke with the editor of siliconindia about the significance of automation in today’s businesses

Share your thoughts on how digital process automation is preferable to Traditional BPMS and BPA tools.

Traditional business management platforms and tools are all about introducing software. "BPA" or "intelligent BPA" focuses on the process, speed, and digitalization. About digital process automation: In this modern era, the world is moving and sort of dividing across three different areas. To begin with, the digital process automation that is to model and replicate the existing manual processes and the formation of intelligence simulations help to understand where automation can come in.

Second, platforms like RPA, robotics process automation, and low-code process automation are considering a specific use scenario in which bots or automation steps forward and manual tasks can be automated. Imagine an organization that has a goal; for example, in the case of a logistics firm, the billing is only 44% automated, and the firm wants to make it 100% automated, keeping in mind to improve the remaining 56% of automation as well. This is the place where the company has to go through phases of analysis in the form of DPA consulting and workflow analysis so that the interpretation can be done to bring in intelligence. After that, launch local automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, where simulation will be performed and machine learning will provide decision-making power for algorithms. 

Following low-code for a firm's billing transaction solution's ERP solution, integration platform as a service becomes the go-to platform. In CBR, the usage of APIs in local automation, Mendix out systems where the platform can be built as a service on top of an enterprise application to digitize. For instance, when taking attendance, completing a time sheet, and ordering money, Deploying a bunch of low-code forms and applications on top of it that will go out and perform the tasks for the organization in terms of backend integration, and the work flow will be processed completely. Additionally, the data and analytics, insights will be initiated for the users , end users, employees and all.

On the other hand, traditional business process management, it focuses only on deploying a platform, but in the case of digital process automation, it can simulate intelligence within the organization, How to take out more value out of it and accomplish something like an event driven architecture for your organization. To clarify, for an event wherein customers generate an order or contract goes and writes a report, and based on this, the firm should proceed. This is where BPA comes into play in terms of synchronizing your operations, building scalable architectures, lowering costs, and implementing best practices in the organization. Hence, these are all the fields where it assists the enterprise.

How does implementation of DPA benefit any organization?

There are around five significant layers in which the firm undergoes the DPA process, which helps. First and foremost is the user experience, followed by the app, the web, the platform, and the tools. Moreover, it becomes so uncomplicated to go with it. Even though with all these, the human interaction is imperative to move along and assists the individual in winding up the task. Simultaneously, the user experience improves as the process speeds up and the quality of the data improves. It also aids in decision-making, which was previously lacking. 

Furthermore, it is capable of bringing business engagement. To exemplify, assume there is a center of excellence for contact center for UI and UX, wherein it helps both business and technical team engage together. It enables processes and the teams more responsive and more customer oriented. Besides, the Software Development Office services are more towards integrated intelligence for the enterprise.

Kindly tell us about the various aspects of the emerging technologies regarding digital process automation.

There are heaps of start ups, products, and plugins on the market, and platforms are on the way. Going through the Gartner report, research papers, and others where there are various categories of digital process automation. DPM is also referred to as "hyper automation" or "intelligent automation" where case management is available. Additionally, intelligent case management, intelligent product recommendation, customer sentiment automation, business automation for marketing, voice assistants, net promoter scores, and CSAT score for customers and chats.

Considering the number of startups and companies, for example, ServiceNow, MuleSoft, and Microsoft with Power Apps and Logic Apps, these are tremendously innovative products that have entered the market. Also, ABBY for OCR, digital image recognition; Microsoft, which needs to have APN, work fusion and these are platforms that help in various aspects of business. Besides, they're embedding AI and machine learning on account of software logic. Even though integration is occurring with a platform like AI Ops, Xebia invests in and has a product for AI Ops. For example, stackstate.

To obtain digital process automation on track, it is essential to have both the deployment of a low code platform and an AI ops platform, which indicate the health of infrastructure, the health of systems, the business processes that are getting impacted, how the intelligent platform will be able to simulate or manage the problem statement, and how an underlying fabric will be able to come in and assist with decision making. As a result, it is a synthesis of everything. Apart from that, there are industry cases. For example, in the case of a contact centre where case management and ticket management are available, For procurement, it is contract management platforms, and these are various features of automation.

Enlighten us about the trends and future of DPA.

The tools will be utilized under this umbrella of technology. But the stakes will be in machine learning, low-code, packaged software, and event-driven architectures that will aid with the DPA platform. On the whole the crux of technology investments that will arrive, kind of solutions will come out of DPA, What sort of platforms will come out it? These all are categories, under each, there are broader set of categories exists.