As we enter 2021, businesses and organisations are needing to cope with the challenge of Covid, and the impact on the economy of Brexit. It is generally accepted that organisations need to adopt the automation of their business processes to keep up in the digital era.
This need for Intelligent Automation solutions has been accelerated by changes brought about by Covid and Brexit.
- Even in 2018 a third (34%) of UK managers said their organisation has considered automating elements of the business to tackle post-Brexit skills shortages (October 2018 by Opinion Matters for Adecco.)
- And earlier this year the PwC annual CEO Panel reported that 59% of UK CEOs have the digital transformation of core business operations and processes as a top-three priority.
The impact of Brexit on business
As of January 1, 2021, new rules apply for any trade or business that UK companies do with companies or customers based in European Union countries.
Brexit will impact the UK and cause disruption forcing organisations to rethink their medium to long-term strategies. The current pandemic has seen remote-working employees relying heavily on digital systems to ensure business continuity, become the new normal. The inevitable impact of Brexit on business, and their business processes will see the need for automation escalate even further.
It is evident that Intelligent Automation is key to sustaining and managing business operations in the post-Brexit, post-pandemic era, by connecting recurring business processes and applications that interact with people into a seamless end to end workflow.
Intelligent Automation solutions for Brexit pain points
1. Digitise documentation and information to effectively manage the increase in paperwork
The constantly evolving post-Brexit business environment will require rapid response to maintain business and operational effectiveness. Failure to respond at speed will quickly make an organisation ineffective, resulting in additional resources, paperwork, and costs.
Compounded by the risk of incurring additional tariffs and/or fines impacting revenue and margin growth and reducing competitiveness.
Information and data will be one of the most important currencies for any organisation. The use of dynamic analytics and insights will enable organisations to predict potential delays, roadblocks, and challenges, and therefore provide the ability to resolve in advance, to ensure maximum business and process performance.
Having smooth data and workflow systems will result in increased efficiency, productivity, and cost savings as well as creating a future-ready organisation.
2. Rapid standardisation of ever-changing processes to keep on top of new rules & regulations
With new rules and regulations appearing from January 1, 2021, a key priority will be the need to address increasing compliance costs and perform regulatory change management, as regulatory reforms continue, with new sets of rules appearing on the horizon for the foreseeable.
Providing an efficient and sustainable approach to meet legal and regulatory obligations, Intelligent Process Automation will enable the rapid delivery and agile standardisation of new processes, delivering time-tested benefits quickly, whilst keeping core processes and operations online and fit for purpose.
What is important is not so much responding to immediate needs as putting into place a robust and sustainable regulatory process change management model to help the organisation prepare for the future, mitigating the potential danger and incurring of additional delays, tariffs, and costs associated with not being able to respond quickly to new regulations.
3. Protect revenue flow by ensuring you can deliver your goods and services on time
Today’s challenges require businesses to be more agile than ever before. Processes need to be efficient and effective and have the ability to cope with all variables and challenges that occur.
Intelligent Automation can give you the speed, compliance, and control required. Enabling fast decision making so that you are prepared and ready to provide the right goods and services at the right time. Ensuring you are maximising all revenue opportunities.
4. Optimise working capital and financial liquidity, ensuring you have cash on hand to give your business resilience
All businesses need to maintain sufficient cash flow to meet current and future operating costs and debt obligations. Disruptions have cash flow implications that cannot be underestimated.
Mitigating potential damage to business during volatile events is something that Intelligent Automation can help with to make sure that the information to make daily business decisions that impact the cash conversion cycle is on hand on demand. Enabling the effective process management of Payables, Receivables, and Inventory with rigour and discipline.
5. Increase competitive advantage with speed to market that self-automation allows
For a digital process automation strategy to deliver a competitive advantage, it requires organisations to transform their operational speed to decision making processes. Eliminating the stalling points of information flow and purging errors existing within the current manual processes.
Intelligent Process Automation enables the creation of a System of Engagement layer which re-shapes the processes associated with customers, supplier, and employee engagements. This creates new areas of value and connects the people, process, and technology domains, increasing the amount of intelligence in the enterprise to:
- Create market agility - deliver high speed and accurate services underpinned by seamless operations with the ability to respond dynamically to an ever-changing business environment.
- Drive operational effectiveness – the change catalyst, Intelligent Automation, will release further value from current capabilities and approaches creating the next-generation target operating model to deliver the agreed strategic vision.
6. Use existing employees to deliver your own automation – quicker and cheaper
With Intelligent Automation you can empower your existing employees to innovate and deliver your digital transformation and build these Automations for you (process understanding is all that is required!).
With a no-code, AI-enabled platform at least half of the processes within a business operation can easily be automated. In doing so eliminating highly manual and time-consuming activities which leads to employee disengagement (resulting in higher absenteeism, decreased productivity, lower job satisfaction, and diminished employee wellbeing). Whilst enabling employees to focus on higher-value activities that drive engagement, productivity, and performance.
The use of Intelligent Process Automation augments teams by empowering key employees to create and change processes dynamically and on-demand. This empowered approach where you take control to deliver your own automation is essential when responding to new business process changes rather than waiting for ‘in high demand’ 3rd party organisations to respond to deliver your desired process changes.
Why Intelligent Process Automaton
The use of Intelligent Process Automation uses core technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotics process automation (RPA), business intelligence (BI), and advanced analytics so enabling you to empower your employees to take control and accelerate the changes quickly and effectively to maintain your competitive advantage.
An Intelligent Automation platform needs to be able to deliver digital transformation incrementally, whilst, harnessing existing investments in legacy solutions and data.
Re-actively managing to a new change is not enough. Being able to analyse and predict the impact and then respond quickly and effectively to drive further efficiencies will allow organisations to maintain and increase profitability whilst being flexible to ever-increasing challenges the Brexit implementation will deliver over the next 12-18 months.
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology. Intelligent Automation can offer the agility to rapidly meet new priorities. The Intelligent Automation solution for Brexit pain points needs to be scalable to evolve with wider digital transformation, flexible, up to date, adaptable, and always deployable when and where needed.
