Multiple opinions on the future of automation are all over the map, but one thing that is common to all is its positive impact on business productivity and efficiency. Automation paints a bright picture for every kind of industry in the future by streamlining and strategizing business operations quintessentially. Overall, there is a lot of excitement about the future of automation. Having said that, we also have to mention that all of this excitement is also combined with a flavour of doubt, uncertainty, and apprehensions.   

In this article we will talk about some of the most commonly asked questions and doubts around automation. We will also touch upon the future of automation and the endless opportunities that it holds for everyone. So, let’s get started without any further ‘ado’.

#1. Is automation only for repetitive and mundane tasks?

Well, no, there was a time when automation was just utilized for taking over the mundane work and tasks but not anymore. The present implementations of automation have helped us predict a clear picture of its exciting future applications. As per World Economic Forum (WEF), by the year 2030, it’s estimated that only 35% of the time will be spent on routine work. These were the stats for the routine industry tasks.

If your requirement is for automating a few small, menial tasks, an RPA solution may be the right choice. However, if you are looking to transform and streamline more complex processes across the entire business, then a DPA solution, coupled with RPA capabilities is an intelligent choice. On the other hand, BPA (Business Process Automation) is the automation of corporate procedures and does not define a specific technology or methodology to be implemented.

Decisions taken by automation technologies will always remain unambiguous and free of any bias and error. Thus, what can be better than this for businesses that involve multiple stakes and thus decision-making becomes critical and error-prone at times. This might sound like a concept of the distant future but surprisingly the time is not that far. 

#2 Does automation help reduce costs significantly?

There is no doubt about the fact that automation reduces costs of operations, as it certainly reduces time and staff required to do things by automating the mundane and repetitive tasks, hence the costs involved automatically cut down. To explain this, let’s talk some data. As per a study of the World Economic Forum, the costs of leveraging RPA are predicted to get reduced by 65% by 2025.

So, it is obviously clear, how businesses can leverage the constantly reducing automation costs to their benefit in the long run. The cost-based benefits that automation brings in were limited to very few industries in the past. But with more and more advancements in RPA, the technology is paving its way into many different industries like banking & insurance, retail, FMCGs, education etc., and cutting across the verticals as well as the horizontals. 

#3 Can AI implementation take care of scalability in the long run?

As per Deloitte’s analysis “Deloitte’s AI in the Enterprise, 2nd edition survey of 1900 AI early adopters in seven countries” AI optimizes internal business operations up to 41%. This itself answers the question that whether AI implementation will have a great impact on the scalability within the organization.

Once organizations’ internal operations are optimized, the ability of an organization to handle increased market demands augments by default. Not only AI can incorporate new requests but will also improve profit margins in the long run.

So, if you are worried about handling exponential increase in demands or unusual requests coming up in the future, then AI is by your side and our experts will be there to support handling such unprecedented demands at ease leveraging automation. 

#4 Will RPA be able to complete cognitive tasks?

The perfect blend of RPA solutions and Artificial Intelligence, has opened new doors for automation in the future. With the inputs of cognitive algorithms, RPA is now able to learn and adapt to critically challenging tasks.

As per Gartner’s “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020”, Hyperautomation has bagged the first position in the list. Hence, RPA will not be just able to automate but also discover, monitor, analyse and even design in the future. With the help of hyperautomation, superior business outcomes can be achieved by leveraging the consolidation of AI, NLP (Natural Language Processing), OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and ML (Machine Learning).

#5 Can bots and humans work together without any apprehension?

As unreal as it might sound to some, but the reality is that its mind-numbingly true. According to Loup Ventures Research, cobots i.e., collaborative bots will stand at one-third of the robot market. With this, industries can attain undefined levels of productivity and efficiency. They will be designed to work along with humans, wherein both of them will be utilizing the best of their capabilities and will be able to push the best business results out of the door. 

Automation offers a lot of benefits to the organizations by giving access to collaborative intelligence where humans and technology works side by side so that they can perform their roles optimally.

Since employees don’t need to perform repetitive tedious tasks, they can be educated to work with automation tools and learn the latest business and marketplace information through machine learning.

#6 Will automation have a positive impact on talent acquisition also?

Automation will help organizations and candidates to find the best job match. As per Salesforce– 62% of the hiring managers expect AI to substantially change and improve the nature of work. This is something that recruiters and organizations can leverage to hire the best of the candidates in the future.

With advancements in AI, job seekers will not only be able to find the best match but will also be able to eliminate biases in the existing hiring system. Hence with the help of automation job positions will be filled by the best possible candidate in reduced time and effort.

#7 What lies beyond automation?

This comes down to a very debatable topic of the current decade. We are already observing the positive impacts of intelligent automation, smart automation, etc. but what lies beyond all of this. Businesses are utilizing automation optimally to run processes with minimum costs in the present.

In the future, automation will help organizations to invest more time in innovating to go beyond just automation wherein there is complete harmony between automation and humans.

Conclusion

To summarize, automation is and will continue be the sole reason for changing the dynamics of businesses and their operations from top to bottom. Automation in no way is threat or competition to the manual work as it collaborates with manual operations to offer a better way of doing things. Hence brace yourself for the future adventures of automation and be ready for a whole new era of innovations.

However, an important thing to keep in mind here is that it is worth spending the extra time thinking this through properly from beginning to end rather than just making it fit to an automation technology. This will save your from having to go back and forth doing it again or compromise with an unproductively automated process that does more harm than good to your organization.