Automation has been a part of every industry for several years and has normalized quite a bit. As a result, you will find most IT professionals offering template solutions to you. Unfortunately, there is a one-size-fits-all approach to the industry. While this was acceptable during the automation industry’s infancy, it is quickly getting old.
Related Posts
Since then, business processes have changed and require a more personalized and concerted approach. Younger companies looking for better opportunities and maximizing efficiency are looking for more sophisticated process automation, termed next-gen automation.
Table of Contents
What Does Next-Gen Automation Entail?
Until a few years back, if you were looking to automate any of your business processes, you had to hire a capable IT team, and they would then tell you what steps you had to take. Then, once planned and decided, you could hire external solutions or an in-house team to build the system.
While this was the most predominant method, it often did not produce what you needed. More so, you could not optimize the process with your evolving needs. This is where next-gen automation differs. With next-gen automation, you can use the cloud, allowing end-users to use low-code or no-code solutions that do not specifically require guidance from professional IT experts.
Consequently, this results in a more flexible, faster, and capable solution with a significantly higher return on investment. In addition, Next gen automation also requires less technical support, meaning businesses can optimize all processes and drive automation cost-efficiently.
While next-gen automation includes several different technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent process automation (IPA) and robotic process automation (RPA), at its core, it is as much harnessing the technology as it is a methodology.
More than purchasing the right tools, it is about empowering and enabling employees to assess, decide and employ automation solutions that improve your business. It also allows employees to respond more quickly to market changes. In addition, the shift from previous automation solutions to next-gen automation has further allowed innovation and growth regarding integration with process definition and mapping, leaving the innovation more inclined towards collaborative tools and environments.
This allows users to evaluate how processes are implemented daily and how they can be optimized for the future. Typically, next-gen helps a business by taking control and executing repetitive tasks, reducing human errors, cutting time-to-market shorter and simultaneously enhancing the procedure through IPA and AI.
Possibilities With Next-Gen Automation
There was a time when PDFs used to be the latest technology. But PDFs do not seem that advanced today compared to the auto-populating forms you can find. Yet, this is precisely what next-gen automation includes. There is no doubt that as technology keeps evolving, its use and applications also spread out exponentially.
Next-gen automation uses the same logic. In the beginning, automation had a more simplistic approach with point-to-point integration. However, with time it has been upgraded quite a bit, now allowing you to digitize or automate entire processes.
For example, a PDF form can be interpreted and automatically made into a useful form tailored to your business needs with AI. You can also detect any anomalies in the forms of inputs and outputs, and the AI will recommend improvements.
Integrating previous and outdated automation technologies with newer and more updated ones opens many doors for your business in the industry. Once you understand the next-gen space, you will notice the vast list of possibilities it unlocks.
Here is an example of how you’d benefit from next-gen automation in today’s setting. With the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been a lot of disturbances in the market. Like earlier, you could have one hundred people sign the same form. But now you cannot because of social distancing.
Even if you digitize the form, having one hundred people touch the electronic device is not advised either. But with next-gen automation, you can get the forms on their phones when they enter the building. So now you have all the information you need while ensuring safety and getting consent.