As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business operations on an unprecedented scale, organizations focus on mitigating the impact of the crisis. Deploying collaboration technology became the priority as employees shifted to work from home. But now that businesses are past the early pivot point, they must turn an eye to the future – and put in place a workforce resilient to future disruptions.
One way to get past the COVID curve is to think about digital investments more broadly and how expanding technology capacity can augment the workforce. Finding the right balance between human workers and the digital workforce will go a long way in helping businesses mitigate the pandemic’s impact on operations while also helping them prepare for tomorrow. Intelligent automation is the key to making this happen. With it, businesses can foster seamless collaboration among remote workers, engage and serve customers, and make the overall business more resilient to future disruption.
To accomplish this goal, organizations should accelerate digital transformation, particularly focusing on three areas: elevating the customer experience, boosting operational efficiency and enabling the remote workforce.
Read also: Rethinking the Employee Experience as a Business Strategy
Driving a better customer experience
Across every industry, organizations are looking to expand self-service and digital sales. Consumer expectations – partly set by pre-COVID business practices like next-day delivery and fast-response rates – are even higher today as in-person transactions come to a standstill. Thus, customer satisfaction hinges more than ever on the organization’s ability to keep customers engaged and informed. As customers switch to digital for service, questions, orders and cancellations, the digital customer experience will become the number one priority for CIOs.
Intelligent automation expands an organization’s capacity to keep up with increased digital demand from any channel. It combines multiple technologies that can quickly and accurately process structured and unstructured data. This makes it possible for businesses to automate the receipt and processing of a wide range of customer information and requests, including applications, orders and requests to resolve issues. For instance, claims processing can be largely automated using virtual assistants and robotic process automation (RPA), leaving more complex tasks and nuanced customer service to humans.
The mortgage origination process offers another example. With e-signature and self-service capabilities, banks can digitize much of the “paperwork” traditionally associated with loans. Using cognitive capture, they can extract data from unstructured data sources like images and PDFs (e.g., driver’s license and other identification). There’s no need for the customer to come into the office or branch to complete the loan transaction. Automation means faster and better decisions and more loyal customers.
Boosting operational efficiency
While many businesses have made significant strides automating client-facing processes, back-office functions have lagged behind. Without integration of front and back operations, however, companies will find it challenging to deliver the kind of experience customers now expect. Although manual scanning, uploading and physical handling of paper was already a slow and error-prone process, the COVID-19 pandemic risks bringing it all to a halt, as employees no longer have access to documents left behind in the office.
Organizations need to reassess and retool their IT infrastructure if they want to “survive and thrive” in the post-COVID world, McKinsey & Co. stresses. To reduce costs, the consulting firm recommends automating manual and repetitive tasks and making greater use of the cloud. Further, as companies leverage technology to automate and digitize back-office functions, such as invoice processing, document intake, and remote exception handling, they’ll create greater efficiencies and deliver a higher level of service to customers.
Many organizations are already turning to the cloud to achieve business continuity. Indeed, Microsoft has reported a 775 percent increase in usage of its cloud services. It’s easy to see why. Cloud-based intelligent automation technologies enable businesses to be more flexible and agile.
Enabling the remote workforce
When staff can’t get to the office, intelligent automation makes sure data gets to them. Via the cloud, remote workers have access to all the information they need to keep the business operating normally. Digital assistants are accurate and fast. They handle the mundane and time-consuming tasks, including data collection, systems entry and communication routing – freeing the back-office team to attend to more critical work. And with document digitization, image capture, e-signatures and other digital technologies, the information employees need is a keystroke away – not on a hard drive in the office or in a pile on the manager’s desk.
The acceleration of digital transformation will help organizations get ahead of the COVID curve. By expanding virtual capabilities with intelligent automation and practices that support collaboration, organizations can begin working like tomorrow, today. In doing so, they’ll increase productivity, improve employee morale and be more resilient to future disruption.
Read also: Three Reasons to Rethink Human Productivity & How will We Experience Work in The Future
Zakir Ahmed is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at Kofax. This senior-level appointment reflects the exponential growth and market demand for intelligent automation solutions in APJ. Based in Singapore, Zakir is responsible for Kofax’s business growth success across the region and building strong partnerships with all of Kofax’s stakeholders. Passionate about customer success, Zakir joined Kofax with over two decades of global experience in management, customer acquisition, retention and sales leadership, complemented by a strong understanding of the APJ market.
Prior to joining Kofax, Zakir was the Vice President and General Manager of Oracle (NetSuite Business Unit), building and leading the organization across NetSuite’s offices in the region. He has also served in various leadership roles with Salesforce.com, TechnologyOne Corp, Microcell, CGI and Steltor (now Oracle) and had previously worked with Netsuite in Canada. Zakir holds a bachelor’s degree from Beloit College/University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
Connect with him on LinkedIn.
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