A new Everest Group Pinnacle Model® study supported by SS&C Blue Prism has unveiled the financial, operational and strategic benefits businesses realize by investing in advanced enterprise automation capabilities. 

Business process automation has become imperative for businesses to maintain competitiveness and agility. The latest Pinnacle Model study shows that enterprises that prioritize developing their intelligent automation (IA) capabilities see the most improvements in operational efficiency, employee productivity and customer experience, which are the key drivers for adopting IA. 

The IA ecosystem constitutes a host of technologies in the automation software sphere: 

• Robotic process automation (RPA) deploys software robots to perform tasks faster and more efficiently than a human. 
• Intelligent document processing (IDP) classifies documents and uses pattern recognition to process the data and extract it into a readable format. 
• Natural language processing (NLP) uses machine learning (ML) to interpret and understand human language. 
• Artificial intelligence (AI) mimics human intelligence and decision-making processes. 
• Process mining analyzes, tracks and models business processes for real-time insights into how they’re performed step-by-step. 
• Business process management (BPM) monitors and orchestrates business processes to connect them with people, digital workers, data and software. 

Pinnacle’s latest study highlights that RPA alone lacks the ability to deliver the full potential of automation. While all companies that invested in automation saw some improvements, Pinnacle Enterprises differentiated themselves by choosing to integrate advanced IA technologies with the highest level of capabilities, including IDP, process mining and conversational AI.

Together, these technologies are designed to streamline workflows and transform operations.

Study Outcome Highlights

The study defined businesses that achieved these outcomes thanks to their advanced IA capabilities as ‘Pinnacle Enterprises’. These businesses were found to:

• Generate 2.3x the return on investment (ROI) and 3.7x the cost savings from IA initiatives compared to enterprises with lower levels of automation.
• Benefit from a 62% overall improvement in operational metrics when compared to pre-automation figures. These include increased productivity, operational efficiency and quality, turnaround time, process governance and regulatory compliance – all key to overall business performance.
• Almost doubled their revenue over 2.5 years, highlighting IA’s boosting effect on business operations.
• Improve customer experience by 55% and employee experience by 52%.

IA is about much more than making businesses operate faster and with reduced errors. It’s about utilizing the full potential of human talent and enabling businesses to reach further to achieve outcomes they never realized possible while building organizational agility and resilience.

What Are the Challenges of Automation?

Before we dive into the benefits of automation, let’s look at the challenges organizations need to prepare for and how they might overcome the barriers to IA adoption using automation technology and other solutions.

Other challenges may include:

• Getting senior management buy-in.
• Adopting a new working model.
• Cost of implementation.
• Lacking the right infrastructure and security.
• Encouraging human-machine collaboration.

Maybe you’ve faced a few of these challenges yourself. Luckily, we have the technology to answer each of those concerns. But first, let’s take another look at the study.

Use Case: Improving Employee Experience

Pinnacle Enterprises considered citizen development a key part of their IA strategy, with 90% investing in upskilling programs and innovation challenges. This is particularly critical given the current record numbers of employee dissatisfaction. By enabling employees to do more value-adding work, advanced automation solutions can contribute to their sense of purpose and satisfaction and, in turn, promote talent retention.

As a result, half of Pinnacle Enterprises have improved their employee experience by an average of more than 60% compared to pre-automation figures. Only 11% of other enterprises reported the same results.

“Initially, [our] cost savings from IA were low – approximately US$10,000 per year. However, these have grown significantly and are now over US$1 million per year, after five to six years. We have also been able to create significant FTE capacity and employees have been able to take up more higher-value work.” comments one survey participant, Head of Digital Transformation & Strategy of Global Business Services at an industrial manufacturing firm.

This study illustrates the transformative power of intelligent automation with advanced capabilities. We believe in investing in people and these results show what can be accomplished with in-house development through various resources like online training courses that up- and re- skill existing employees. I hope this study shines a light on the strategic and human impact of intelligent automation and its importance as businesses move forward.

What Are the Advantages of Automation?

As you can see from the study, enterprises are finding a lot of ways to use automated systems to their fullest potential. An analyst in the technology department at a banking and financial services firm said, “With the help of [an] RPA and ML-based document processing capability, we were able to achieve significant productivity gains, especially in processes that involve a large volume of documents. It also helped us make the process less prone to human errors and significantly reduce processing time.”

Some of the benefits of automation include:

• Reduced manual errors: Administrative tasks like data entry can be time-consuming and prone to error, but automation can deploy digital workers to automate these repetitive tasks, working quickly, consistently and accurately.
• Improved efficiency: Automation optimizes your processes by identifying any siloes in the workflow. Some automation software also monitors your processes and creates an audit trail to give you greater insights into how your business operations are performing. 60% of Pinnacle Enterprises realized more than 100% ROI from their IA initiatives.
• Higher productivity: By taking over tedious tasks, automation allows your employees to focus on higher-value, strategic work that utilizes their skills better and brings more productivity to your business. Pinnacle Enterprises improved their operational metrics by 62% on average over pre-automation operations.
• Increased throughput: Automation streamlines workflows by analyzing data faster and more efficiently without requiring human intervention. About 70% of Pinnacle Enterprises’ RPA deployments are unattended.
• Employee satisfaction: With employees no longer working on mundane tasks, they can turn to more complex solutions and stay engaged longer by upskilling and pursuing career progression. Pinnacle Enterprises have seen significantly more success in increasing business value through strategic areas such as employee experience.
• Cost savings: Automation reduces costs by cutting the amount of resources required to complete tasks. Digital workers are available 24/7 without breaks, meaning they’re always working to get the job done. Over half of Pinnacle Enterprises saved more than USD $10 million from IA initiatives.
• Better decision-making: Automation can collect vast amounts of data, which it can report on to give you valuable insights and make more informed decisions. Pinnacle Enterprises continuously monitors impact metrics to gain new insights and improve strategic and operational decision-making.
• Scalability: Automating processes helps optimize them, making it easier to scale your process automation to end-to-end workflows – helping your organization grow as needed. 50% of Pinnacle Enterprises have automated tasks, creating a capacity equivalent of at least 500 FTEs.

With the right operating model, you can set your organization up for automation success, driven by insights and strategic planning. The SS&C | Blue Prism® Robotic Operating Model (ROM™2) is a methodology built to guide organizations through their automation journey so they can deploy their digital workforce with confidence.

“Initially, [our] cost savings from IA were low – approximately USD $10 thousand per year. However, these have grown significantly and are now over $1 million per year, after five to six years. We have also been able to create significant FTE capacity and employees have been able to take up more, higher-value work,” commented one survey participant, head of digital transformation and strategy of global business services at an industrial manufacturing firm.

The Future of Business Success

This study illustrates the transformative power of IA with advanced capabilities. At SS&C Blue Prism, we believe in investing in people. These results show what can be accomplished with in-house development through various resources like online training courses that upskill and reskill your existing workforce.

The future of business success requires human ingenuity + intelligent technology.

Read the full Everest Group Pinnacle Model® Assessment here.