Digital Transformation is, broadly speaking, the adoption of digital technology by an organisation to achieve certain objectives or goals.
As an example, according to a report by Frost & Sullivan published by Research and Markets on Global Airlines Digital Transformation Programmes in 2017, it is estimated that the incremental value of a digital transformation program could reach up to $5-$10 per passenger annually; mainly generated from improved productivity, cost savings and new ancillary revenue streams.
Organisations have a choice of approaches to improving the quality and efficiency of their Business Processes, some of which are Business Process Reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma, Business Process Management, etc. All these methodologies focus on processes, an activity through which something is transformed into something else using a series of steps. Process excellence is about improving the way that businesses create and deliver value to their customers through application of the right set of processes.
Approaches to process improvement like Lean and Six Sigma provide tools and techniques to solve business problems in a structured and effective way, while Business Process Management looks at taking a leap in business performance through an optimal alignment of process, technology and people. The key is to automate processes to the extent possible to bring in efficiency and resolve process bottlenecks and drastically improve throughput.
When an organisation looks to bring in automation of its digital processes, it looks for multiple benefits:
- Reduction of total process time thereby increasing the efficiency of the process and reducing wait times for customers
- Time to implement a new process and ease of making changes to a defined process
- Reduce errors in the process caused by human errors
- Reduce operational cost by operating with a smaller number of staff
- Improve the availability of the operational process i.e., make the end-to-end process available for consumption 24×7
- Take the business process to the customer on their choice of platform by increasing the number of supported platforms and devices that the process is available on e.g., Earlier, a person had to visit the bank branch if they wanted to know the balance in their account. Today there are Bank APPs, bank websites. Now further digital automation can make the same things available through IVR, a chat message on SMS or platforms like WhatsApp etc.
- Improve scalability by overriding the limitations caused by having a set number of “Backend” staff handling the process or parts of it.
- Improve their end-customer satisfaction by providing a seamless and quick experience across devices and platforms.
Process Excellence brings in relevant processes or modifies existing processes by verifying the validity of every step of the process. I would like to define it as coming up with the simplest form of the process that can best address the process requirements of generating the necessary outputs with the minimum mandated inputs.
For software development, Quality and Process Excellence would be the application of a set of repeatable proven steps to developing Business processes that will result in minimum number of errors and speed up implementation time. This would give a multiplier effect resulting in a much faster achievement of goals and return on investments in the transformation.
So where does Quality come in?
Quality in automation means reducing or eliminating errors caused in the system. Errors in an automated process can result in catastrophic failures as there is no manual intervention unless it is flagged as an error. It can mean that the entire process will run without even flagging the error and can give erroneous results which may be shown directly to end customers resulting in chaos and poor customer satisfaction not to mention the adverse impact on the brand image of the company. It is, therefore, vital to ensure that every bit is tested thoroughly before release to ensure that the software meets the requirements.
Quality can only be obtained by relentless attention to detail. From an automation process perspective, it means validating the inputs and outputs of every step in the process and doing this for all the identified scenarios. E.g., looking at the various formats the data can come in like Driving Licenses, ID Cards etc. Ensuring that all possible variations can be catered to and building the steps needed in case there is a new format for the data. e.g., Ensuring that a new format is flagged off to a human channel for resolution.
Rigorous application of development standards and processes like Peer review and Testing is critical to ensure that all cases are covered and that all business cases are run through without any errors. Focus should be given to using tools for Continuous Integration, testing and deployment to further check for defects and shorten the development cycles.
Benefits from the Digital transformation can only be obtained if every component of the new system works seamlessly and correctly.
It is imperative that the business metrics be measured post implementation of the new automated process in order to measure the benefits of the automated digital process against the goals of defined in the business case for the initiative.
A well implemented Digital Transformation programme is often able to achieve results that exceed expectations
AutomataPi has helped customers across geographies achieve or beat the goals set for the digital process automation. Some of these measurements are listed below:
- A leading hospitality company reduced their Commissions and incentives processing time from 14 days to a few minutes
- A Securities and broking company with over a million customers automated the end-to-end processing of 53% of customer emails without any human interaction.
- A leading broking firm reduced the customer onboarding from 7 days to a few minutes
- A leading media buying organisation automated the media planning process which resulted in average TAT reduction from 2 business weeks to few minutes
- A mobile insurance company reduced their claim handling time from 3 weeks to 1 week.
