As enterprises scramble to automate further to maintain post-pandemic buoyancy, they should keep the people factor in mind, through analytics.
In the age of the pandemic, wasting time and being left behind are no longer options because our vulnerabilities have all been exposed. Everything can be snuffed out in an instant by a fulminant pandemic, so that the adage “time is of the essence” is now truer than ever.
For businesses to speed up their survival strategies, automation is the most obvious tool, accompanied by the removal of redundant manual processes. In a study of some 157 CXOs, 87% said they would prioritize enterprise intelligence in the next five years. As an example, an asset management company reduced a manual analytical process from eight to five months, thus minimizing their reporting time from five months to five minutes.
This was achieved with Analytic Process Automation (APA), an analytics software solution that combines optimizing automation, data and people to save time and turn time into more earnings. APA also offers digital transformation, democratization of data, and streamlining of processes as some of the many positive outcomes.
Analytics converging with automation
Not so long ago, when one heard the word “analytics,” it was usually taken to refer to Google analytics, which calculated the number of times an article was viewed over the internet or on social media.
In reality, analytics can achieve much more in established companies, which can use it to strengthen their workers’ weaknesses. An illustrative example would be, by using analytics, identifying workers who are more liable to fall for phishing scams.
In two virtual events hosted by analytics platform Alteryx held in May 2020, industry leaders like Coca-Cola and PwC shared APA’s business impact as measured through its outcomes in upskilling people and facilitating marketing.
The seminar speakers painted a clear image of how APA enables analytics—“with more than 260 automated building blocks,” and the analytics can be diagnostic, prescriptive, or descriptive.
One speaker, Rodney Bates, Coca Cola’s Vice President on Decision Science and Data Strategy, mentioned how APA has helped to examine the effectiveness of his company’s marketing approach. Automation helps people to communicate with clients faster, and even in inventory management, to obtain supplies more quickly. Bates actually went so far as to say that “automation is key to building competitive edge.”
Another speaker, Suneet Dua, Chief Product Officer of PWC, revealed that APA was responsible for upskilling no fewer than 55,000 executives in his company. Dua reminded participants that, after the convergence of data and processes, people remain the final part in that continuum. “When you upskill people, then your return on investment from all the processes you have infused into the company becomes manifest.”
