Hyper Automation & RPA

From RPA to hyper automation – because a real transformation must include both ends of the process

The digital transformation has created a huge buzz in recent years. A lot of emphasis is placed on enhancing the customer experience, with automation tools that make it easier for people to access products and services by enabling capturing of digital documents, digital signature and more. But what about streamlining what goes on behind the scenes? How can we enable back office start to work more efficiently and free them up to do tasks that add greater value?

In our last blog on the subject of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), we introduced you to ‘Tammy’, an employee of a large insurance agency responsible for managing client claims. Capturing, inputting and validating data, cross-matching data between systems, obtaining the necessary approvals to complete the process… from beginning to end, Tammy’s work was dull and intensely time consuming. Digital technology RPA was about to ease up her workload, taking care of some of those repetitive tasks that require no thought. But, while RPA offers basic task automation, the concept of hyper automation goes much further.

It is clear that a business cannot ‘go digital’ without also automating its core processes – and not just the dull repetitive ones. It is in extending the digital transformation to the business processes happening behind the scenes that hyper automation – identified by Gartner as the top strategic technology trend for 2021 – comes into play.

Taking a unified approach to the digital transformation, hyper automation seeks to achieve maximum automation and coordination, transforming processes and creating new ones that are not possible using traditional methods.

The basic premise is that there are tasks carried out by humans in different ways. By combining a number of technologies in one end-to-end automation methodology, hyper automation mimics the various actions performed by humans to create an optimized end-to-end process. It looks something like this:

• Manually inputting data (hands) – Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Capturing data, in written text or unstructured image format (eyes) – Optical character recognition (OCR)/Capture
• Analyzing data to achieve actionable insights that inform decisions (brain) – Business Process Management (BPM), Artificial Intelligent (AI) and Machine Learning.
• Communicating with customers, suppliers and partners (mouth) – Digital Channels

Vendors wrap all these tools in a package that delivers a complete methodology for automating business processes. The quality of the component tools will determine the overall efficacy of the hyper automation. For example, Capture recognizes where specific data sits in documents that are formatted in a consistent way. Taking this a step further, matrix’s SaaS in AWS, CoDx, uses artificial intelligence to extract data from non-uniform documents, adding a new layer of competence and reliability to the system.

The benefits of implementing hyper automation, which have proven especially helpful in this challenging period of the Corona pandemic, include: maintaining or improving customer experience, reducing employee inputs, improving compliance with procedures and standards, improving employee efficiency, reducing human error, reducing development costs… the list goes on.

In practice, what this means for Tammy is that she only has to get involved in the process when something irregular occurs. For example, if an insurance claim form was placed on a jeans-clad lap before being photographed, or has a nice coffee-mug ring right in the middle of the page, the OCR may not recognize the data, meaning that it has to be processed manually. But, in 95% of cases, the technology will be able to carry out the whole process, from start to finish, leaving Tammy free to deliver the excellent service her customers deserve.

The bottom line? Hyper automation helps you connect the dots of all the parts in your business processes, completing the digital transformation needed to boost the level of service you give to your customers and employees.

If you’re ready to explore how hyper automation can transform your business, contact our professionals to see how they can help.