An organization can invest in people and systems, but effective automation starts with clearly mapping the process, then improving it where necessary, and only then automating it.

Investing in people and systems remains important and necessary, but the basis of good automation lies in the process: understanding, structuring and making the process more efficient is the most important part of good automation. A new system does not improve a bad process. And increasing capacity alone usually does not lead to structural efficiency gains; sustainable improvement primarily requires process optimisation.

The real gains lie in end-to-end automation: setting up more efficient processes, reducing manual work, minimising errors and shortening lead times. With #RPA we drastically reduce manual work. With #AI we take this automation to the next level of efficiency. And with Intelligent Orchestration we connect the different steps in the process and monitor and orchestrate the process.

That also means the organization will start working differently. We still often see people trapped by work instructions for sub-processes without being able to see the whole picture. And then it is also difficult to gain insight into the savings and efficiency that can be achieved at process level. Process owners who know the entire process from A to Z are rare, also because responsibilities and execution of processes are divided across different teams. As a result, a process is automated at sub-process level and important links are often missing, which are then corrected by people. This creates double work again, for example control rounds.

Starting with a helicopter view of the entire process and zooming in on the quick wins delivers more. Of course, you can fully optimize a process in advance, but that also takes more time and as MvR Digital Workforce we optimize as part of the automation process. This reduces the operational work and you can invest in #processknowledge and #automation. That is the future of a modern organization.

We would be happy to show you how processes can be designed optimally for maximum impact. Ask your question via: info@mvrdw.nl

By Frank Mester