Automation strategies during the times of COVID-19

Wondering what business looks like post-COVID? Indeed, each one of us, with absolutely no clue when things will return to their normal and still strategizing to bring the world together as it was before the epidemic. A fundamental approach that steers us through the storm is to embrace these challenging times as an opportunity to redefine and reinvent business operations and become COVID compliant. Business owners around the world have become more vigilant and are on a constant look-out for digital enablement solutions that help them mitigate the losses and rebuild post-outbreak.

Automation plays a vital role here and is likely to become the ‘Future of Work.’ As many organizations toil to tune to the new normal and new demands, automation plays the role of a catalyst that speeds up changes that are on the way — it almost serves as an accelerant.

Leading organizations are adopting an agile approach to embrace automation, ascertain business continuity, and empower their employees to thrive in a healthy remote work atmosphere.

Find here how to initiate automation to not only replace human effort but also to drastically reduce your operational cost and enhance business continuity.

Strategies to adopt to initiate automation: Focus on smaller tasks at a time: Do not focus on one long, complicated process and automate it, instead identify multiple small tasks and automate them. When you automate a small task, you trim a lot of resources, shed the overload besides generating a high ROI for your enterprise. And once you are more comfortable and confident with automating small tasks, you become better prepared to tackle the complex ones. The smaller ones act as building blocks and lay a foundation for a robust automation plan, later. Consider using RPA for low-cost small automation needs.

Check what others have automated: Observe and get inspired what others in your industry have automated. You are likely to gain an instant clue, which may prove valuable in the long run. Evaluate how much automation applies to your IT ecosystem and make changes accordingly, to fit well. Also, let others learn from you and be open to suggesting your peers; it goes a long way in establishing your brand that cares for its peers too. Make your organization RPA friendly.

Think beyond the normal: Thinking of automation as a tool that impacts routine and repetitive tasks and reduces human effort is reasonable. The need is to think of automation as a tool beyond the realms of IT operations like Network Operations, Security Analysis, and Security Operations.

Automation also helps organizations with the following functions:

• Configures and deploys hardware network devices quickly.
• Deploys new security solutions where additional protection is needed.
• Reduces security attacks

Seek advice from the experts: Don’t directly jump and take ad-hoc decisions, first seek advice from industry experts or us. They are the people who are close to automation and know-how suitable it is for your industry and domain.

Industries and areas where RPA implementation is quick

1. Healthcare:

1.1. Automate patient communication

• Appointment reminders
• Send “normal” lab results to patients
• Send discharge guidance or instructions
• Post-follow-up visits of patients

1.2. Automate medical billing and revenue cycle management

• Manage unadjudicated claims
• Get prior authorization
• Eligibility verification
• Set up payment plans for delinquent patients

2. Banking and Financial Services:

• Audit process and Compliance
• Customer Service
• Credit Card Processing
• Accounts Payable
• Mortgage Processing
• KYC and Report Automation
• Account Origination & Receivable
• Collection

3. Supply-chain and Logistics:

• Order Processing & Payments
• Onboarding of Accounts & Customers
• Shipment Scheduling and Tracking
• Invoicing
• Procurement & Inventory

So, are we ready? From safeguarding employee health and ensuring safety to discovering new-age solutions for continued productivity in remote work mode, automation has become the ‘Future of Work,’ and in no time, it is bound to engulf the entire gamut of business operations. Adopt an ‘Automation First’ mindset and think of unconventional ways of automating your business processes to harness its multiple benefits.