Companies are increasingly turning to business process automation as part of an effort to increase workforce productivity and efficiency. Up to 40% of companies worldwide have employed automation, with Gartner projecting a double-digit growth through 2024. As companies continue to undergo a digital transformation to meet the new normal, one global consulting company has released a new book authored by its top automation experts to provide an in-depth look at how intelligent automation drives performance and value across the enterprise.
Accenture’s latest publication, The Automation Advantage, seeks to provide a practical guide for companies working to leverage intelligent automation to reinvent their traditional business processes, drive innovation, and free up staff to focus on more value-driven work. While automation has long been utilized by industry to improve overall performance, intelligent automation is a relatively recent realm brought about by the ongoing development of artificial intelligence technologies.
The new book, authored by Accenture Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Bhaskar Gosh, Rajendra Prasad, and Gayathri Pallail, draws on nearly a century of expertise to show how intelligent automation works - and works best - to provide leaders with a demonstrated path to deploy the technology at scale to drive performance and growth. By cutting through myths and misunderstandings, the authors lay out a clear path for business leaders to develop automation-driven strategies with a human-centric approach.
According to Dr. Gosh: “We’re seeing a dramatic evolution from the era of industrialized automation to a new era of intelligent automation, with the focus shifting from costs savings to new goals around customer experience, business excellence, service improvements, innovations, and smarter strategic decisions…infusing automation with intelligent technologies has become one of the most powerful ways companies can boost their top-line performance by using new tools to operate more efficiently, upskill and enhance the performance and productivity of their people, and drive significant bottom-line savings.”
By providing real-world examples of how global companies use the new technology, the book lists clear steps to build a strategic framework and approach. This allows businesses to identify opportunities and design specific solutions to align transformation efforts with their goals. Accenture’s research has shown that companies investing in digital transformation efforts - including intelligent automation - have grown up to five times faster than their peers who did not, with companies listing automation as the most important technology to invest in to transform key business practices.
