Accelerate Digital Transformation with Hyperautomation

Hyperautomation is the practice of automating as many processes as possible across an entire organization as quickly as possible, using a combination of tools, systems, and techniques. Per Gartner, hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach businesses use to rapidly identify, vet, and automate processes to accelerate digital transformation with hyperautomation process.

Hyperautomation Is Central to Digital Transformation

The events of recent years have underscored the importance of hyperautomation as a pivotal part of true digital transformation. For example, the global pandemic exposed the shortcomings of digital transformation efforts for many organizations, as those organizations were suddenly forced to adapt their business models to a newly distributed workforce, disrupted supply chains, and economic uncertainty.

As deficiencies and inefficiencies came to light, several facts became clear. Those organizations that had prioritized agility and automated most essential business processes were much more prepared for disruptions than were organizations that had not embraced automation.

The lesson was loud and clear. To survive and thrive, organizations must set and act upon the following three priorities:

1.  Agility

Agility is a core requirement for any organization to establish and maintain a competitive advantage. A 2019 study by KPMG found that 67% of CEOs agreed with the statement that “Acting with agility is the new currency of business; if we are too slow, we will be bankrupt.” Automation and digital transformation play pivotal roles in building and maintaining the agility needed to face the challenges ahead.

2. Speed

Speed has always been a valued attribute in the business world, but it has never been more cherished than it is today. Together with agility, speed can often be the deciding factor in who performs well amid significant market disruptions. As new market opportunities emerge, or as unprecedented threats loom on the horizon, the companies that can respond quickly will be most likely to succeed.

3. Data Quality and Integrity

Improved data quality and integrity are foundational prerequisites for making sound data-driven decisions. Organizations should be careful not to automate business processes before considering which data sets those processes impact. Automation increases the potential to create a large volume of bad data very quickly. Conversely, beginning with high-quality data and ensuring continuing data integrity helps automation efforts succeed.

Digital transformation leverages data and new technologies to drive value through innovation and efficiency. Hyperautomation is a key enabler of that transformation. There is an obvious benefit in the form of increased efficiency, but hyperautomation has a profound potential to positively impact data integrity. That accelerates the business value of digital transformation initiatives on an entirely different level by elevating data-driven decisions and processes across the whole organization.

Building Your Hyperautomation Strategy

As your organization recognizes the need for hyperautomation, building a solid strategy for achieving it becomes critical. You must identify, vet, and orchestrate the processes you plan to automate.

Hyperautomation refers to automating as many processes as possible, but the order in which you automate those processes matters. Where you start often dictates where your digital transformation journey will end—and whether it will be successful.

As part of the identification and vetting strategy, consider the following questions:

• How will you measure success when you automate the process? Will you define success by money saved, time saved, increased productivity, competitive advantage, or some other metric important to your organization?
• Can complex processes be automated in incremental stages? 
• How will automating a certain process impact other related processes that you are not planning to automate?
• Would deploying a process mining tool be valuable for your organization?

As you answer these questions and further refine your strategy, you will likely find that hyperautomation of your processes requires multiple tools and solutions, deployed together to address the challenges inherent in complex processes.

Precisely has found that these types of automation solutions are often most effectively implemented as a hybrid professional and citizen developer model, where there’s a dedicated effort to develop the automation solution using tools that can effectively be managed and maintained by citizen developers.

The Precisely Automate Platform

Many organizations running SAP have complex, data-intensive processes in place, but this need not be a roadblock to hyperautomation—if you have the right partner and tools for the job. The Precisely Automate Platform offers a strong foundation on which to develop your hyperautomation strategy. It consists of two applications: Automate Studio and Automate Evolve. Together, these enable data management, workflow automation, and integrated data stewardship for common mass data processes in SAP ERP systems, as well as for complex, data-intensive processes.

The Precisely team offers a comprehensive set of services, capabilities, and software built around an in-depth knowledge of SAP and a long history of helping enterprises build speed, agility, and data integrity.

Interested in learning more? Download our free white paper, Supercharging your Digital Transformation with Hyperautomation for more in-depth information on how to apply hyperautomation to your critical business processes.