Using hyperautomation to improve your business processes and increase profitability

Processes are the arteries of a modern enterprise. They define its success. There are thousands of processes across your business and each is inseparably connected to business performance. As a result, process inefficiencies can become the silent obstacle of business performance. These hidden inefficiencies are caused by pressures of the modern world, like fragmented systems, supply chain disruptions and increasing customer expectations.  

The way to overcome these obstacles is real time visibility and hyperautomation. You can only understand how to improve a process if you can fully see the process and all its fragmented parts in real time. Process excellence applications utilise real-time process intelligence to analyse your system's data, swiftly uncovering and addressing hidden inefficiencies. The ability to have such process insights at the right time can make or break your business goals.

Navigating complexity in business processes

More than ever, organisations are urged with navigating increasingly complex business processes. The art of simplification, a useful business principle in theory, has for many companies evolved into problem-solving by adding, not subtracting, technologies. For others, it has meant optimistically deploying automation on complex processes, only to see a poor fit that leads to disappointing results.  

To optimise business performance, organisations must quickly and objectively identify process inefficiencies and gather real-time understandings of their internal activities at scale, to meet company goals and successfully compete. This implies getting previously undiscovered, transactional data from available sources and systems.

Hyperautomation is particularly relevant in sectors that handle large volumes of repetitive tasks or require high levels of data processing and analysis, such as finance, healthcare, retail, supply chain and customer service. It’s impact is significant, enabling businesses to become more agile, competitive, and efficient.

The power of data in driving business efficiency

Successful companies leverage data to enhance digital capabilities, make fast and accurate business decisions, and introduce secure web and mobile apps to stakeholders. To access business critical data, organisations are investing in Data Collection, Data Management/Data hubs, Business Intelligence, Process Mining, Emerging Technologies and Data Security. Data sharing is essential for higher efficiency, conformity and transparency.

Today, organisations and employees are dealing with high process volumes and interconnectivity that make process visibility a real challenge. Although there are technologies that can provide greater visibility (e.g. process mining), few organisations are using them and discovering their potential.  

Real-time insights are hard to get and are hindering execution. Given challenges with visibility, companies are struggling to gather real-time data to improve their processes. This means employees are tasked with making decisions and executing without insights and objective recommendations when they need them most. Organisations are failing to optimise processes, losing out on key opportunities. Companies are struggling to put objective, process-based data to use across key systems and processes.

Meanwhile, automation has hardly proved a cure, given the lack of process visibility necessary to deploy it effectively. Daily activities are suffering, leading to higher costs, greater inefficiencies and manual rework, and fewer business opportunities, such as improved customer satisfaction.

Hyperautomation goes beyond visualisation

Many businesses today fail to maximise the value of their digital investments because they lack insight into how outdated processes hold back business operations. To apply automation that truly moves the needle, organisations need to understand how work flows across people, processes, and systems, and further into the Supply Chain.  

Hyperautomation usually implies “automate as much as possible”, but an enhanced and usable explanation would be: “AI controlled solutions that help organisations, in real-time, to identify and prioritise processes and activities that are suitable for automation, then create digital workflows to optimise and automate those processes for more seamless digital operations.”  

Where applicable, hyperautomation should be preceded by Process mining/execution and Process intelligence. This in order to first discover what, if and how certain processes and activities should be automated. Dedicated Process mining software can be supported by RPA (Robotic Process Automation), when applicable (i.e, outside the ERP system).  

After that, the necessary processes can be (hyper-) automated. This will help organisations visualise and map those elements in real-time, then build digital workflows to more efficiently automate workflows, mainly in the business system already used and through real-time data-hubs.

The enhanced Hyperautomation model

The below picture shows the interdependencies, digital workflows and data sharing in the 2024 Hyperautomation model.  

Hyperautomation can revolutionise business processes

Hyperautomation solutions, such as Process Mining and RPA, will help companies to more deeply understand how work moves across the enterprise, and to apply those insights to accelerate digital innovation and predict possible improvements.

An example of hyperautomation: When processing invoices, hyperautomation can validate invoice numbers, verify line-item details, and cross-check against existing records to identify potential discrepancies. By automating data validation, organisations can reduce errors, improve data quality, and enhance overall data integrity.

Hyperautomation is an advanced concept in the field of technology and business processes, representing the next level of automation's evolution. It involves the combination of multiple technologies, tools, and components to automate, enhance, and scale business processes in ways that go beyond traditional automation capabilities.

Key aspects of hyperautomation

Digital Workflows: Real-time data input to create data driven events in ERP, through Process Intelligence.

Integration of advanced technologies: Hyperautomation combines a range of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA), and other advanced technologies. This integration enables more complex and intelligent automation.

Process automation and optimisation: It focuses not just on automating tasks but also on optimising business processes. Hyperautomation can identify, assess, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.

Advanced decision-making Capabilities: By leveraging AI and ML, hyperautomation enables systems to make autonomous decisions based on predictive and prescriptive analytics.

Enhanced efficiency and productivity: By automating complex tasks and processes, hyperautomation helps organisations increase efficiency, reduce errors, and free up human workers to focus on more creative and strategic tasks.

Digital Transformation Enabler: Hyperautomation is often seen as a key driver for digital transformation, helping organisations to rapidly adapt and respond to changing market conditions and customer needs.