Automation Reshaping The Future Of Businesses
Robotic process automation (RPA) is among the more important buzzwords among decision-makers for all industries. Leaders across organisations, whether large or small, are keen to implement RPA. This shift suggests that digital transformation has now become a top priority for organisations. According to a recent survey by Gartner, global spending on RPA is going to touch $2.9 billion this year.
Leaders associated with the IT industry deliberate on some emerging trends in the RPA domain.
Business needs are becoming more sophisticated. Pointing this out, Automation Anywhere, Director of Sales Engineering & Knowledge Services, Amit Mathur, explained that in general, the key emerging question is what more can be done? Businesses want more value to be unlocked and this is in terms of efficiency, accuracy, resiliency and the like. The boxes in this checklist keep on growing with time.
Seeking Preventive Maintenance Capabilities:
More than anything else, industry leaders expect automation to deliver preventive maintenance capabilities. “As we are invested in the power-generation sector, we have vast solar farms and windmill farms. We would like technology to play a role in getting machines fixed before they suffer a breakdown,” said Hero Future Energies’s Head of IT, Vinod Sharma, who was optimistic about RPA implementation.
Sharma quoted an example to further illustrate his point. He observed, “In the case of windmills, power is being generated round the clock and any downtime results in huge losses. It is of concern because it has an impact on the power grids as well, and we end up scrambling for power from storage or buying it from elsewhere. Technology can help reduce the windmills’ downtime.”
BPOs Exploring Automation For Better Results:
Automation can play a major role to improve services in the BPOs sector. Webhelp, Head of Technology, Piyush Gupta, commented that automation helps predict a surge in demand. “We receive seasonal demands coming from different sectors, and it is almost next to impossible to predict these. This is where technology can pitch in,” Gupta said.
He pointed out that automation plays a critical role in onboarding for IT organisations and also provides real-time information to customers for better decision-making. “We are trying to accelerate automation for better efficiency and consistency that can result in qualitative and quantitative returns for the business and customers.”
Trends Ahead:
IT leaders have several expectations from automation. Orient Electric, CIO and AVP IT, Manzar Abbas, highlighted three major trends in RPA. “Intelligent automation and low-code platforms are something we are looking forward to. It is also high time to look beyond applying automation in finance and accounting. Search engine marketing (SEM) should be the next stop going forward,” he said.
Abbas added that if automation can give insight into what is likely to fail, and detect incorrect versions and potential threats, it will be able to focus on what is important rather than simply carrying out general-purpose maintenance across systems.
According to JK Tyre’s CDIO, Sharad Kumar Agarwal, “a self-skipping bot can be really useful”. He explained, “Just like we have a self-healing tyre, we can have a self-skipping bot. In cases where the process is not stable, one has to keep changing it within the system. As a result, one has to redeploy the bot to learn. It would be great if this process could be integrated.”
JBM Group’s Group CIO & EVP for IT, V Ranganathan Iyer, focused on the importance of using automation in improving efficiency. He commented, “Using automation to improve supply-chain efficiency and the quality of products will remain the key area of focus in the upcoming months.”
Adding to these, Daikin’s GMIT, Umesh Khandelwal said, “As far as automation is concerned, finance remains my key priority. This will be followed by the HR process, SEM and then other areas."
Overall, business leaders are embracing automation positively to reshape businesses that are future fit in every sense.
