How Automation Supports Digital Transformation Initiatives?

Meticulous Research predicts that the digital transformation market will reach $3.2 trillion by 2025. If you’ve been in the tech world long enough, you've probably heard people passionately discussing the digital revolution. Many businesses are playing catch up and using digital transformation technology to speed up their strategies.

Digital transformation and automation can increase the efficiency of existing processes and drive change by creating or unlocking new value for customers. Up to 45 percent of business activities can be automated using ‌existing technology, which increases the potential to become more productive. If you are a business transformation professional, it's essential to leverage automation not just for streamlining processes and enhancing productivity but also for improving customer experiences, managing IT environments, and driving data-driven decisions. 

Organizations beginning the digital transformation journey need to optimize their businesses to fulfill new digital objectives and unveil new growth potential. Automation can help you efficiently manage a modern IT environment and prepare for a more digital future. Technology is already playing a pivotal role in digitizing businesses, but how does automation support digital transformation initiatives?

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is integrating digital technology into your business to reinvent how you operate and deliver value to customers radically. It’s a cultural change that requires capitalizing on people and digital tools to maximize business processes and transform how your business makes decisions. Digital transformation involves rethinking your organization's business model and fostering an innovation culture to transform your organization's performance intrinsically. Learn more about what is not a digital transformation.

What is Automation?

IT automation or infrastructure automation is using digital platforms to create reproducible instructions, processes, and workflows that reduce or replace manual work. It describes the application of technology to minimize human intervention with predetermined decision criteria and sub-process relationships.

The role of automation in Digital Transformation

97 percent of IT managers feel process automation is necessary for digital transformation. Without automation, your company risks becoming irrelevant and obsolete. Digital transformation and automation will help you digitize routine processes, streamline workflows, operate faster, reduce costs, and improve productivity and efficiency. Ultimately, you will deliver more business value.

“Digital transformation is all about unlocking value in your business processes and releasing it back to customers – as well as being agile enough to use data and analytics to create new, innovative experiences.” - David Macdonald | Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer, SAS

Digital transformation builds new business opportunities, while automation ensures business processes work faster and cheaper, giving you a competitive edge. Automating process-based workflows increases the speed at which tasks are completed, their reliability, and consistency, which promotes work continuity across the organization.

You can use data from digitized company forms and automated routine processes to address pain points and drive genuine change, improving business performance. As organizations rapidly identify and automate multiple processes with integrated technological capabilities, automation will drive the modern digital enterprise.

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How Automation can grow your organization?

Improved efficiency, accuracy, and productivity

The primary aim of digital transformation technology is to enhance workplace productivity. It reduces errors and eliminates routine, manual tasks previously performed by humans, which significantly accelerates operations. Actually,88% of employees trust automation to perform error-free tasks.

Automating tasks improves workflows and employee performance, resulting in higher productivity.50% of global businesses cite productivity among the top benefits of automation. Workflow automation allows employees to focus on creative and challenging tasks. When they perform more rewarding work, they’re motivated, engaged, and care more about their work.

Integrating systems and databases decreases tedious manual data entry and boosts workplace efficiency by changing the tasks humans perform. McKinsey reported a 30% to 35% run-rate efficiency in organizations that automated 50% to 72% of business operations across various industries. Automation is a strategic business tool that irons out pain points and increases employee capacity, helping companies scale operations.

Provide a better customer experience

Digital Savvy customers are one of the key drivers of Digital Transformation and are accustomed to interacting with organizations at any time. Providing a superior customer experience helps you stay competitive. Automation prevents customer frustration and inconvenience by ensuring they access information quickly. 63% of businesses have increased their customer satisfaction scores with automation.

91% of employees believe automation solutions offer a better work/life balance and save them time. When your employees waste time on manual tasks, they’re unable to provide great customer service. Interacting with customers makes for a smoother experience.

To increase revenue and gain a competitive edge, deliver excellent customer service. Use automation to analyze repetitive customer issues, such as taking orders over the phone or answering frequently asked questions. You’ll personalize customer experiences, reduce response delays, and boost customer satisfaction.

Lower costs and expenditure

Automating processes like data entry, approval workflows, document management, and financial processes reduces waste and saves you hundreds of hours and money. Automation also minimizes inventories and production throughput times. It eliminates redundant costs, minimizes operational expenses, increases free cash flow, and keeps your budget in check.

Automation also lowers your business costs because it lets you remotely manage decentralized global teams from a central hub, conserving company resources. Since you eliminate the need for humans to perform specific tasks, you can function with fewer workers and reduce payouts and bonuses.

Improving security and compliance

47% of organizations cited enhanced security and easing compliance as their major drivers for implementing automation. Contemporary organizations focused on digital transformation have two key concerns: cybersecurity and compliance with strict modern regulations, especially where regulations are updated frequently.

Automating the data-intensive tasks needed to maintain compliance makes the process more efficient, straightforward, and less tedious. It simplifies compliance procedures because you can detect policy, account, and configuration violations. You can monitor regular usage patterns and notice threats quickly. Identify vulnerabilities and proactively manage them before a breach occurs.

Accelerate growth

Aligning a digital automation platform with transformation goals can help your company scale operations with fewer resources. To break down operational silos and enhance growth, you can test automation tools on a few projects, then advance to a unified, enterprise-wide approach.

Since automating workflows reduces errors, it increases consistency and efficiency in business operations. It promotes collaboration and bridges gaps between diverse business teams, facilitating cross-functional cooperation. It also exposes your employees to varying functions, creating a favorable climate for innovation.

Automation tools offer insight and clarity into workflows and processes by increasing visibility into business operations and highlighting inefficiencies.

Examples of successful Digital Transformation by adopting automation

1. How Damamax crushed chaos with BPM technology

Damamax, a telecommunications provider established in 2008, faced challenges with its IT infrastructure. Their system struggled to support complex workflows, and the team was overwhelmed with requests for workflow enhancements. The existing tools were complicated, and the system lagged significantly.

Damamax discovered Kissflow, a cloud-based Business Process Management (BPM) platform in their quest for a solution. It was an immediate fit, offering easy-to-use features that boosted productivity and provided control over their processes. The COO found value in the productivity enhancement and the insightful reports generated by the platform.

Kissflow's customizable forms and centralized data repository provided Damamax with a clear view of its operations, enabling it to identify areas for improvement. This led to significant benefits, including saving the IT team from burnout, eliminating manual processes, and saving time, effort, and money.

Damamax has since expanded its workflow automation to include purchase requests, sales leads, and HR functions like leave requests, with many functions now being 100% automated. They continue to seek ways to improve productivity across their organization using Kissflow.

2. Digital Transformation, the key to decarbonization

First Philippine Holdings (FPH), a holdings company with interests in renewable energy, real estate, manufacturing, and more, faced challenges with manual approval workflows and tracking approval requests. The process was inefficient and increased their carbon footprint.

They turned to Kissflow for a solution. Joseph Arnel Chavez, Assistant Accounting Manager at FPH, chose Kissflow because of its ease of use, fair pricing, and familiarity among the senior management.

With Kissflow, FPH went paperless, reducing its carbon footprint and automating over 100 office processes, including accounts payable, billing, and admin requests. They were able to process over 1,000 paperless approvals monthly, dramatically improving their finance and accounts operations.

Kissflow's mobile app also allowed for timely approvals from senior leaders, enhancing operational efficiency and customer service. FPH plans to leverage Kissflow’s integrations and external portal features for further improvements.

Developing a strategic plan to accelerate Digital Transformation with Automation

1. Understand why you're doing it

Understanding your motivations for digitization is the beginning of your digital transformation journey. Outline your business needs and goals, then take it from there. You also require a strong business case and clear perceived business value. Knowing your core reasons for transformation helps you draft a clear roadmap. 

2. Create a Digital Transformation Road Map

Your digital transformation journey begins with reviewing the current process and system effectiveness. Next, create a clear road map outlining where you want to go and how you hope to get there. Evaluate your pain points and make suggestions on how to overcome them.

3. Establish a culture of innovation

You cannot succeed in digitization without a culture shift. Create an environment that fosters creative thinking and experimentation. Develop a team mindset with representatives across the organization. For an adaptive culture, encourage your team to be comfortable failing and learning from their mistakes.

4. Upskill your employees

Upskilling ensures your employees have the digital skills to steer the digital transformation process. You can either pull existing employees into a team or assemble one from scratch. Upskilling offers employees essential digital literacy skills.

5. Find the right technology

The right technology guarantees a successful outcome whether you’re revamping applications, upgrading processes, or creating a new digital system. Select technology based on your budget and business needs. Some digital transformation technologies include cloud platforms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

6. Implement an agile methodology

Digital ecosystems are constantly changing, so review your strategy with evolving external and internal factors. For success in any digital transformation strategy, your company should pivot and adapt easily to fix problems faster. Moving to an agile model requires transparency, flexibility, collaboration, and change.

7. Adopt, Scale, and Transform

Leverage your success to generate collaboration around the following steps and gain momentum. Identify ways to scale digital transformation across your organization and continue growing. Consider applying similar strategies to multiple locations and connecting additional technology.

Align Automation with your Digital Transformation goals

In this era of digital disruption, staying ahead means embracing digital transformation and automation. A low-code, no-code platform like Kissflow can streamline your business processes, enhance productivity, and foster collaboration between business and IT teams. With Kissflow, you're set to achieve improved business outcomes, increased revenue, and growth. Simplify your journey with our cost-effective automation solution.