Study shows prioritising IA can deliver better operational outcomes

A new Everest Group Pinnacle Model study, supported by SS-C Blue Prism, has found that businesses that use and develop solid automated practices tend to see better operational outcomes.

Prioritisation of intelligent automation (IA) was found to deliver better operational efficiency, employee productivity, and customer experience, which the company believes are driving forces for intelligent automation adoption.

The company says the market for hyperautomation-enabling technologies is rapidly growing and expected to reach nearly USD$600 billion this year. Changes to the business landscape through the pandemic have resulted in a shift towards deploying IA practices, which help to maintain competition and agility as the market evolves.

The study tracked the outcomes of businesses that had superior operational outcomes thanks to their advanced IA capabilities, which the company described as Pinnacle Enterprises. These companies were found to generate 2.3 times the return on investment (ROI) and 3.7 times the cost savings from IA initiatives compared to enterprises with lower levels of automation.

They also benefited from a 62% overall improvement in operational metrics when compared to pre-automation figures. These include higher employee productivity, operational efficiency and quality, turnaround time, process governance and regulatory compliance, all key to overall business performance.

Revenue almost doubled over 2.5 years, and customer experience stats improved by 55% and employee experience improved by 52%.

The study also highlighted that, while still extremely useful, RPA (Robotic Process Automation) alone lacks the ability to deliver the full potential of automation, and it takes more integration and initiative to become a key Pinnacle Enterprise.

Key integrations include IDP, process mining and conversational AI, which were shown to lead to substantial outcome gaps in the survey.

"Initially, [our] cost savings from IA were low approximately USd$10,000 per year," according to comments from one survey participant who was head of digital transformation - strategy of global business services at an industrial manufacturing firm.

"However, these have grown significantly and are now over USD$1 million per year, after five to six years. We have also been able to create significant FTE1 capacity and employees have been able to take up more higher-value work.

SS-C Blue Prism believes that investing in people is a good way forward, and the survey results show what can be accomplished with in-house development through various resources like online training courses that up-and re- skill existing employees.

SS-C Blue Prism currently has over 2,000 users in over 170 countries and 70 industry verticals.