Over the past 5-10 years, the implementation and use of AI and automation has grown at a rapid rate. This has been down to the ongoing development and findings of new technologies but more importantly the benefits it has brought to businesses that have implemented such solutions. Despite this growth, there are still some companies sceptical in applying automation solutions and as a result are falling behind as others accelerate their digital transformation programmes. The clearest and most common way automation can assist enterprises is by transforming the tedious office-based tasks.
How automation can help
To achieve this aim of removing manual effort of employees, automation and AI solutions work in various ways. One way is by installing software bots to track activity and extract data from a range of documentation such as invoices and emails etc. These bots can be set to work 24/7 and taught to pull certain data. Rather than having to complete this data extraction and input, employees can now instead move on to understanding that data better and make improvements to the automation solution. Having this option to view the process in full flow gives the employees and their leaders the opportunity to assess what parts of that process can be left out. If continued in a manual, tedious way, there isn’t the opportunity to take this step back because of the mountain of work that needs to take place.
Going to a more advanced level with the implementation of AI, businesses can utilise the intelligent side of the technology to offer chat bots and solutions that incorporate machine learning. By introducing machine learning solutions to an already functioning business process, AI can quickly pick up and deal with basic customer requests that once were dealt with by a human employee. This not only removes another tedious task but it also removes the chance of human error, hence improving the customers experience further.
Taking the robots out of people
With the increasing stature of AI and automation, there remains some misconceptions around the impacts it has from an employee point of view. The most common misconception is that the ‘bots’ will replace the human workforce by doing the tedious office tasks many employees have to do on a daily basis. This misconception couldn’t be further from the truth.
The reality is, that many businesses have now made their employees the robots by asking them to complete manual, tedious office tasks. An example of this is asking and employee to transcript information from physical documents onto a computer. AI and automations aim is to remove that time wasting task from the employee to allow them to carry out more skill based duties that the bots cannot do. Essentially taking the robot out of the employee to free up their valuable time to be re-deployed somewhere else within the business.
At ABP, our aim is to assess, help and guide your business through the automation journey. Understanding your current processes and the way your business operates is crucial to figuring out the best automation option. Working together along side your technical teams, we can support you throughout the journey and offer 24/7 assistance if there are any blips along the way.