Every digital transformation journey is unique. More than ever, organizations need the tools to drive process transformation and ensure business continuity during the “New Normal” and beyond—even as we are all working remotely.
Automation is no longer confined to just one place or process; digital automation streamlines and strengthens operations across functions. But there’s still room to grow. Adoption rates for more mature use cases — like automation of back-office tasks, decisioning and accounts payable (AP) — are still fairly low.
There are two approaches to automation companies can take: 1) a best-of-breed point solution approach or 2) an integrated intelligent automation platform approach. The problem with a point solution approach is that organizations subsequently struggle with siloed automation that stifles, rather than encourages, success. This is confirmed in the Kofax 2020 Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study with Forrester Research. Nearly all decision makers surveyed said adopting an unintegrated approach to automation resulted in unanticipated challenges. Two of the most significant challenges reported were high technical debt and delayed success.
With siloed automation point solutions, when enterprises attempt to respond to new opportunities, additional cost and technical challenges arise, delaying beneficial outcomes, which, in turn, increases technical debt. It’s a vicious cycle. A lack of guidance for assembling the right automation technologies exacerbates this cycle. The deeper organizations get into their transformation initiatives, the more challenging it is to readjust their strategies. The study revealed that in hindsight, firms found a siloed approach to be more expensive, difficult to maintain long-term, and ultimately, one of the biggest challenges in achieving business outcomes.
Decision makers are evolving past basic automation and are strategically implementing and aligning with the right partners to further transform their businesses. Integrated intelligent automation offerings eliminate the challenges that arise from a multivendor, fragmented approach. According to the benchmark study, decision makers plan on expanding their automation efforts from a single team or department to scale across departments. To accomplish this, employees said they prefer a single technology platform because it provides them with greater efficiency and allows them to be more productive.
Significantly, the study finds that virtually all decision makers believe there would be considerable value in working with a single automation vendor and automation platform. With this approach, the vendor provides a fully pre-integrated offering and ensures full and timely continuity through upgrades of all complementary technologies. Organizations also benefit from simplified licensing, reduced vendor management complexity and, often, better pricing.
Rob Koplowitz will provide further details of the study at Kofax’s Virtual Intelligent Automation (VIA) Series “Ask the Experts” Webinar on Tuesday, May 19.