“Smart machines are becoming more ubiquitous in our work and lives,” writes Sumithra Gomatam. “In the near future, we will soon have smart machine ‘cobots’ or colleagues at work.”

Excerpts from Forbes India’s article:

“The rising influence of smart machines is expected to grow exponentially in unpredictable ways. The magnitude of change will dramatically influence how organisations and individuals perform their day-to-day work. While a majority of companies have begun to implement automation, they have not yet seen any significant bottom-line results. Although automation is among the most-discussed business topics, only a few organisations have built the right strategies to seize the business benefits of machine intelligence.

It is not just enough to join the bandwagon. Organisations need to find the right strategic fit to infuse automation that will help free up human capital to focus on higher pursuits. Before a company pursues the path of automation, the first step is to understand which processes are ripe and not ripe for automation.

Here are five progressive steps to aid any organisation for effective decision making:

• Assess the operational landscape. An organisation looking to automate should conduct a cost-benefit analysis to assess the operational landscape.
• Identify the right parameters. Evaluate the processes and find their fit for automation.
• Evaluate the business process. The above-mentioned parameters are based on variation and complexity of business processes.
• Recommend level of automation. While RPA easily fits processes with low complexity and variation, higher complexity and variations call for an increased human intervention.
• Arriving at the winning automation formula. Based on the findings, an automation implementation roadmap can be produced, where the level of complexity and variation would dictate the automation that it calls for.

If you think your business processes are not ready to be automated, then the first step should be to get them to a stage where they are. If you think your process landscape is ready to be automated, then the next step should be to identify and draw a roadmap for automation. Either way, the end goal is to become a smart organisation where business processes work optimally.”

Click here to read more.