Automation or Augmentation? The digital transformation of operations

Thanks to a huge rise in the demand for automation, robotics has quickly established a place in today’s society and presents opportunities to transform an organisation’s operations and processes through turning over high volumes of low skilled tasks.

The bottom line of the automation and particularly the introduction of robots is efficiency, productivity and cost-savings. But the recent Deloitte’s report Global Human Capital Trends points out that the common assumption that the robots can do everything that human can only more quickly and cheaply is incorrect!

Yes, robots are marching steadily towards broader adoption. This means that robots and individuals will work alongside each other and companies and organisations will need to move towards a new strategic and operational future. The report states: “Organisations face a radically shifting context for the workforce, the workplace, and the world of work.”

Reinventing workers role

As technology helps to automate some repetitive, low-level tasks, it frees up time to focus on more human aspects of our work, such as empathic problem solving, emotional intelligence or social skills.

In a survey conducted for Deloitte’s, business leaders across 140 countries were asked about the potential impact of automation on the future of work. 77% of respondents said that they will retrain and upskill their workforce to deal with technology or redesign existing jobs to take advantage of the human skills.

New ways of thinking

Reorganising and reskilling workers around automation will be challenging and will require new ways of thinking about not only company’s culture but jobs and people as well. Here we have to remember that every company is unique in terms of their aims and goals, and the extent to which they are embracing newest technologies.

Shift in a process

People are used to working in defined job roles, performing specific tasks and following established processes. The workforce is clear about the nature of their employment, career progression and technology they use to execute daily tasks. We will need to deploy new ways of working within a culture of human/machine collaboration.

Digital transformation

The Deloitte’s report points out that the workers will become ‘liberated’ from rigid constraints of automated processes that robots now perform. Also, as we are performing higher level tasks, our productivity is augmented, not simply automated. There need to be a better recognition of our creativity and social contribution, not just throughput.

OPX

We’ve developed OPX, a one-stop solution that digitally transforms back-office operations, supports RPA and integrates with front office processes.

Highly modular and quick to implement, OPX supports the end to end processes of back-office operations from the digital capture of incoming work, back office workforce optimization, robotic process automation to the automated output of customer communications.

For more information, please contact us today.

 

Source: Rewriting the rules for the digital age 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends