Around the country, sweeping data privacy regulations are compelling businesses to rethink every aspect of their data governance capabilities.
If your organization complied with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards set by the European Union in 2016, you may have a head start. However, compliance with the GDPR will not be sufficient for compliance with the new state regulations. If your data lifecycle management process hasn’t changed in recent years—or if you never had a holistic, company-wide process to begin with — it’s time to stop kicking that can down the road.
Our new infographic shows you how three states are changing their data privacy landscape. You’ll also see steps your company can take to avoid unexpected penalties in the future.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
Enacted in 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires transparency concerning the hosting and exchange of personal data, which includes a range of individual, or household, identifiers.
As of July 2020, companies have 30 days to comply once notified of a violation; otherwise they are subject to civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation and $7,500 per “intentional violation.”
Act to Protect the Privacy of Online Consumer Information (Maine)
Maine’s Act to Protect the Privacy of Online Consumer Information requires broadband internet service providers (ISPs) to obtain customer consent before selling or sharing their data with a third party.
While the CCPA gives customers the right to opt-out, Maine’s law prohibits ISPs from using customer data unless the customer opts in.
Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (New York)
The Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (SHIELD Act) requires any businesses that maintain New York residents’ private information to take concrete steps intended to prevent data breaches.
To comply, businesses must take reasonable protective measures, including:
risk assessments
workforce training
incident response planning and testing
Failure to implement a compliant program is enforced by the New York State Attorney General and may result in injunctive relief and civil penalties.
Federal Privacy Laws
The United States does not yet have a comprehensive federal-level privacy law that reaches the scope of the GDPR in the European Union. Still, there are several vertically focused federal laws that businesses must be aware of if they deal with private consumer data. These include:
Privacy Act of 1974: Gives individuals a way to access and correct their records, and sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA): Regulates the collection and disclosure of patient health information and requires health care providers to protect data from unauthorized use.
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA): Enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, outlines the appropriate use of information of children under the age of 13.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA): Requires financial institutions to protect customers’ data by limiting how information is shared with third parties.
Steps Toward Compliance
Your organization’s data quality and data governance team should discuss your approach tomanaging data assets. A methodical approach to making sure your organization is compliant will involve the following process:
Determine how much data exposure is present in your environment and which state/federal rules apply to your business.
Determine who in your organization needs to be involved and to what extent.
Identify the utilities and software solutions needed to facilitate compliance.
Identify the processes required to move toward compliance and the options you have to maximize your investments.
Build a roadmap toward compliance with minimal requirements and timeline.
We’re seeing the COVID-19 pandemic transform the job market to agonizing unemployment numbers not seen since the Great Depression. More than 36 million people are currently unemployed. A big question now is what happens when businesses begin hiring again – how will millions of people be vetted and ultimately brought onboard? A lot of companies are already prepping for mass hiring, and that means mass onboarding.
The scary part for most companies is that this is typically a manual process. A person must painstakingly review and validate I-9s, W-4s, direct deposit info and more; input and export data in multiple systems; notify different departments; and manage massive employee training schedules. As if that doesn’t seem chaotic enough, think about the amount of time all of this takes, and the real possibility for numerous errors. No wonder companies are looking for automated solutions to help. But be careful – not all solutions are created equal. Here are five important questions to ask when evaluating an onboarding solution.
1) Can it recognize the paperwork:
How often have you received an email from a new hire with an attachment titled something like “scandoc2020-04-17?” It happens all the time. In the rush to get info in, many people either forget or don’t realize that they’re not the only person coming in the door. They keep sending in poorly labeled info. You have to open the email and the attachment to see what it is and to send it on its way to the next step. If you have a few, or even a dozen, new hires like that, it’s an inconvenience. If you have 200 with a short deadline, it’s a nightmare. Make sure your solution can read the emails, identify the forms coming in, and get it to the correct next step – without you having to look at it.
2) Will it find the mistakes, inconsistencies and blanks?
In one space the new hire wrote “Tommy,” in another “Thomas.” In another form a new hire left off her phone number. Someone else forgot to sign their W-4. The solution you’re using should do data checks, look for inconsistencies and semantic checks for things like data format and completeness. Otherwise the problem will just show up later downstream, to the annoyance of the hiring manager and the new employee.
3) Will it go the distance?
The solution should be able to connect to, and update new hires in, other systems like payroll, benefits, and employee profiles. Will it notify the hiring manager? Security? Facilities? If a mass hiring requires you to still manually send a separate email each time you need a key card for a new employee, the solution is not doing all it can.The solution should be able to connect to, and update new hires in, other systems like payroll, benefits, and employee profiles. Will it notify the hiring manager? Security? Facilities? If a mass hiring requires you to still manually send a separate email each time you need a key card for a new employee, the solution is not doing all it can.
4) Will it learn on the job?
Many solutions that free up your employees from mundane or tedious tasks (like finding blank signatures on W-4s) employ straight robotic process automation, or RPA. RPA is great – it can run repetitive tasks 24 hours a day quickly with an extremely low error rate. But the real power comes in when you add artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (AI/ML). You can go beyond the standard onboarding processing steps and have the solution align with your company’s specific processes and navigate your HR systems. A good tech company should be able to do AI/ML customizations in 10 days to two weeks.
5) What else should I look for?
What other onboarding needs do you have? Make the solution do it. Things like identifying the supplies and equipment your new hires will need – including protective gear; and scheduling training courses the new hire needs, based on the job profile – including new safe workplace rules. The whole purpose of an onboarding solution is to have it do as much of the process as possible, having your human resource professionals intervening only when absolutely necessary.
Prolifics can help
Meet Leia — our digital Employee Onboarding Officer. She can complete your onboarding processing in two minutes. She can identify and understand forms and documents; connect to different HR systems; enroll new hires in payroll, benefits, and training; notify security and facilities; and more. Leia helps you manage applicant volumes, ensure data accuracy and speed up the onboarding process – all leading to more satisfied managers and new hires. Connect with Leia at solutions@prolifics.com.
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a seismic shift in the job market, going form record low unemployment to devastatingly high out-of-work numbers in just a couple of months. This section from a recent Guardian article sums up the grim news in stark terms:
The latest figures from the (U.S.) labor department mean more than 36 million people have filed for (unemployment) benefits in the last two months. The rate of claims is slowing but the record-breaking pace of layoffs has already pushed unemployment to levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Such news begs two questions: Is anyone hiring during this time? And what happens when the pandemic eases and businesses begin hiring again – how will millions of people get reabsorbed into the workforce?
Hiring now – and a glut on the way?
Believe it or not, while the pandemic is decimating certain industries, others need workers now. The Glassdoor blog “54 Companies Actively Hiring During COVID-19” posted on May 1 by Dominique Fluker lists – you guessed it – 54 companies filling positions. Some are even labeled “hiring surge.” As might be expected, health care and related companies dominate the list, along with tech companies. But there is also strong representation from food companies and financial institutions. A quick search will show similar lists, including many local news organizations compiling openings for their areas. So, there is some light in the darkness.
And what about when (hopefully) things return to a semblance of normal? There are already many human resource departments thinking about just that. The blog “CHROs Plan for an Abundant Talent Market Post-COVID” was posted on April 22, 2020 by Roy Maurer, Online Manager/Editor, Talent Acquisition, for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Online. Maurer wrote:
The employment situation has shifted dramatically in the last few weeks since the coronavirus outbreak shut down large portions of the economy. HR leaders have had to quickly pivot from recruiting amid the lowest unemployment on record to managing a sea change in the way people work while planning for a very different post-COVID future…Planning for a return to normal will bring a new set of challenges. The biggest change from a talent acquisition point of view could be the glut of job-seeking talent on the market.
Industries need to immediately shift to a heavy reliance on digital for all aspects from recruitment, interview, onboarding and even termination pay…Anticipating a re-emergence after the global health crisis calms down, we’re not only focused on today but hiring for tomorrow. We’ve pushed our HR Tech to help us thrive.
Kimberly Houston, writing in the April 29, 2020 JotForm blog “Online onboarding and training for new employees during COVID-19” reinforces this idea of needing current – if not cutting edge – technology for onboarding in the current and post-COVID-19 world:
We’re living in a new reality — one where online onboarding and training for new employees is no longer simply a perk offered to lure new talent or a tool used by tech-savvy companies, but a collective “new normal.” While many companies have instituted a hiring freeze during the COVID-19 pandemic, others are bringing on new talent, despite the disruption. And that means relying on technology to onboard and train new employees with the same effectiveness as your previous face-to-face process.
Current onboarding may not be up for the task
Unfortunately, many onboarding processes lack the technology to make them effective and efficient, especially given a hiring surge. Many companies still rely on manual /paper-based input into their different HR systems for onboarding needs like W-4s, I-9s, payroll info, benefit elections, equipment assignments and new-hire designated training/learning paths.
So, to mash-up the article quotes here, if in the current or post-COVID-19 world your company is looking to compete and fill its ranks from a “glut of job-seeking talent on the market” and get them up and running quickly, you should consider your need to “immediately shift to a heavy reliance on digital” and “relying on technology to onboard and train new employees.” Without the proper onboarding tech, you may be setting yourself up for lost time, lost money and lost talent.
Prolifics can help
Meet Leia — our digital Employee Onboarding Officer. She can complete your onboarding processing in two minutes. She can identify and understand forms and documents; connect to different HR systems; enroll new hires in payroll, benefits, and training; notify security and facilities; and more. Leia helps you manage applicant volumes, ensure data accuracy and speed up the onboarding process – all leading to more satisfied managers and new hires. Connect with Leia at solutions@prolifics.com.
Patient data is at the foundation of any well-functioning healthcare system. Physicians cannot make well-informed diagnoses, patients can’t choose the right care, and payers can’t make strategic financial decisions without the right information.
The last decade or so has seen an explosion in the use of health information technology (health IT) to store patient data. In 2008, 9 percent of hospitals could demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR). In 2018 this had risen to 96 percent.
However, a key barrier preventing full use of this data within the healthcare ecosystem has been a lack of consistency and rigor in data format. This has, in turn, meant a lack of data ‘interoperability’: An inability for different IT systems to exchange and make use of the data.
In order to advance the interoperability of healthcare data, Health Level 7 introduced the FIHR (pronounced ‘fire’) specification. In recent years it has become one of the most popular protocols for promoting the free exchange of health data.
In simple terms, FHIR is a framework which sets common standards for the exchange of healthcare information via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). It determines both the way in which data is shared, as well as what that data looks like. The current release of FHIR defines 145 APIs, and ensures common definitions of core healthcare concepts such as patient and practitioner, clinical observational data, diagnostics, and healthcare financials.
What are the potential benefits of FHIR?
FHIR enables data interoperability, but why is this so important? Key benefits of FHIR include:
Empowering patients. FHIR promotes standardized health information which can improve clinical diagnostics, and improve the basis on which patients make their own healthcare decisions;
Reducing the financial/economic burden of healthcare. The United States has the highest health care costs per person in the world. Our annual health insurance premiums average $19,616 per family (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation). Transparency of cost information means a more competitive market and, eventually, lower costs for all of us;
Unlocking the power of data. FHIR means healthcare datasets which are suitable for data analytics and AI applications. Enormous datasets can be analyzed to predict conditions based on common symptoms, recommend medications or procedures, or identify where resources are being mis-used.
What is the MyHealthEData initiative?
FHIR provides a key tool for building healthcare data solutions. But it does not, in itself, require any actor in the healthcare ecosystem to do anything. This is where various government initiatives come into play.
The 21st Century Cures Act became law in December 2016. Through this law, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) were directed to develop policies that support and encourage interoperability in data exchange, and prohibit blocking of patient data access.
In March 2018, the Trump government demonstrated that it, in turn, supported interoperable patient data with the MyHealthEData initiative: An initiative with the stated aim of promoting data interoperability in order to:
empower patients through access to their own data;
increase competition; and
encourage innovation.
Initially, the focus was on encouraging private actors to adopt data interoperability voluntarily. Note also that the initiative was specification-agnostic: It did not mandate the use of FHIR.
The sole compulsory data sharing policy, to date, has been Blue Button 2.0 .An API, utilizing FHIR, which contains four years of healthcare data for Medicare beneficiaries.
What is the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule?
CMS confirmed on April 21 that it is expanding data interoperability through the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule (CMS-9115-F, ‘the rule’). This rule regulates the Medicare Advantage (MA), Medicaid, CHIP, and Qualified Health Plan (QHP) issuers on the Federally-facilitated Exchanges (FFEs). That is, it regulates the activity of CMS-regulated payers.
The rule contains a range of policies that improve data accessibility and interoperability within the healthcare system. We consider each policy in turn:
The Patient Access API (applies from January 1, 2021): This requires CMS-regulated payers to share claims, cost, clinical and identification data, with patients. Through this API, the patient can transfer their data to other parties via a third party application of their choice. Patients could utilize this data in changing their healthcare plans or changing providers;
The Provider directory API (applies from January 1, 2021). This requires CMS-regulated payers to make their provider information publicly available;
Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange (applies from January 1, 2022). This means that CMS-regulated payers are required to exchange core healthcare data with other payers, where requested to do so by the patient;
Digital Contact Information (applies from late 2020). Under this provision, any providers that do not update their contact information (including FHIR API information), in the specified national registry, will be publicly reported;
Admission, Discharge, and Transfer Event Notifications (applies from fall 2020). This requires that patient event notifications (admission, discharge, and transfer information) be shared by Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals with primary care providers and certain other specified parties.
Unlocking data through interoperability standards, such as FHIR, has the potential to transform the healthcare system, both in terms of health outcomes and the financial burden of healthcare. Both the current and previous federal administrations have promoted this outcome via the 21st Century Cures Act and the MyHealthEData initiative respectively. With implementation of the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule over the next two years, we should expect to see a proliferation of new FHIR solutions enabling better patient, provider, and payer, data use.
Do you do business with anyone who’s considered a legal resident of California … and do you hold data on California customers that’s categorized as personal identifiable information (PII) under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)? If so, it’s not too late to ensure your company is compliant with the CCPA.
Being compliant requires a controlled methodology and industry-leading solutions to ensure your company is able to comply with the CCPA mandate both now and in the future. Prolifics’ CCPA Jump Start can get you on the right track.
Hyperautomation came in at number one on Gartner’s ranking of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020. The publication has also purported that businesses could lower their costs by roughly 30% by the year 2024 through the use of this new technology. In this short guide, we’re going to explore hyperautomation and why it has the “significant potential for disruption” that everyone is talking about. First, let’s talk about the official definition of hyperautomation.
There are several definitions that can be found across the web but the simplest one comes from Leapwork, which defines hyperautomation as “the mix of automation technologies and artificial intelligence that, when combined, augment humans’ capabilities, allowing them to complete processes faster, more efficiently, and with fewer errors.” It is the convergence of automation tools, packaged software, machine learning, and artificial intelligence that is set to revolutionize the way that businesses automate their processes on an incredible scale. As automation becomes increasingly popular across all industries, the technology businesses use to make that happen is evolving. The increased demand is driving innovation and hyperautomation is the ultimate destination of it all.
Business process automation uses a variety of tools to optimize individual processes. One of the first innovations to emerge in this space was Robotic Process Automation. RPA is an automation process where software (in this case, robots) can be programmed to replicate tasks based on a set of rules. This type of tool is something that is easy to integrate into existing systems and it is highly scalable, which makes it supremely attractive to businesses that exist in the dynamic landscape we see today. It also greatly reduces the need for human intervention. Hyperautomation has evolved from that.
Sometimes you may see it referred to as Digital Process Automation or Intelligent Process Automation. The intelligence element is what sets hyperautomation apart entirely because it combines RPA with machine learning. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence. Similar to RPA, it doesn’t rely very heavily on human intervention because these systems use pattern recognition to determine the next course of action. Once a system is trained, its algorithm is able to determine patterns and learn from them, then carry out processes in an optimized way based on the patterns it has detected. Instead of just focusing on rules-based tasks, they can carry out critical knowledge work as well. Machine learning takes RPA and transforms it into an adaptive and intelligent tool. There are several other technologies that come together to create hyperautomation. These additional tools are:
AI and Business Rules
Case Management
Intelligent Business Process Management Systems (iBPMS)
Process Management
When all of these different tools are put together, they function in tandem to go far beyond the capabilities they hold individually. This allows businesses to harness this trend to go beyond simple business process automation and simply do more, better.
One thing to keep in mind, which is part of what makes hyperautomation such a unique innovation, is that it is not simply a tool to replicate tasks and replace a human workforce. Instead, it is a means of allowing technology to work collaboratively with humans to maximize the capabilities of both. It is an innovation that allows for deeper engagement with an existing workforce and sets the stage for significant evolution in the automation of knowledge work in the future. Hyperautomation allows previously inaccessible data and strictly-human processes to be fully integrated, automated, and optimized.
Hyperautomation Strategy
Even the simple steps of business process automation get significantly more sophisticated in the process of hyperautomation. Artificial Intelligence can be used to discover processes, analyze them, design a process for automation, create the bot that automates the process, and then monitor its functionality to continually optimize the process. Intelligent bots can use other AI technologies such as Optical Characters Recognition (OCR), or Natural Language Processing (NLP) to transform the way that businesses store, analyze, and apply their unstructured data. Typically, when forming a strategy for adopting hyperautomation, businesses will use a combination of Robotic Process Automation and iBPMS to automate complete sets of tasks or processes.
These processes are typically augmented through the integration of AI and Machine Learning. All of these bots are designed to complete tasks quickly, without error, and they have the adaptability to continually optimize based on the data that they collect as they work. Advanced insight through deeper analytics is another key benefit that hyperautomation provides. The AI element allows bots to self-monitor and measure their outputs to see what is working and what can be improved.
They are also able to provide deeper analytical insight into how the business is functioning as a whole. There are automation tools that have been creating detailed reports that are already readable so that data does not need to be filtered through to create meaningful reports. This allows leaders in a business to take immediate action on the data presented to them, allowing the business to continue to grow, achieve its goals, and innovate the way it operates. Hyperautomation can take that a step further and take a lot more information into account so that business outcomes are easier to forecast, and the decision-making process can be simplified through recommendations based on up-to-the-minute metrics.
The Benefits of Hyperautomation
Automation was created to help relieve some of the burdens that used to lay completely on the human workforce. Historically, automation has been shown to provide a laundry list of benefits to businesses across all industries. As you can imagine, hyperautomation can take all of that to the next level. One of the benefits that we’ve already touched on is that hyperautomation is predicted to drastically reduce costs for businesses that adapt to this trend.
Because of the advanced tools that are used in hyperautomation, businesses will be able to make better decisions, workflows and entire processes can be streamlined for maximum efficiency, and ROI will be easier to track than ever before. Another source of cost reduction is the seamless integration of multiple systems and tools. Instead of reaping the benefits of individual technologies and tools, they can all work closely together and provide the digital agility that is becoming increasingly necessary in the tech-driven world of business. In addition, fewer resources will need to be dedicated to IT services because hyperautomation tools are designed for effortless integration and interoperability.
Employees will also be able to automate processes within their individual roles, alleviating the need for IT intervention at that level as well. This allows the workforce to be more educated with the entire process and they will be able to easily take advantage of the hyperautomation tools available to them so that they can do their most important work instead of getting caught up in lower-level tasks. Hyperautomation helps to create a deeply integrated network of tools that can streamline business processes and reduce the need for human intervention, allowing the workforce to do their most impactful work. It provides greater opportunities for collaboration, more detailed insights, and enhances the decision-making process. It helps to create an environment that is data-driven, efficient, and constantly innovating to propel a business towards its goals. In short, hyperautomation provides businesses everything they need to engage their team, effectively use their resources, and actively create value on a consistent basis.
Time is money, especially when you are paying premium hourly wages or salaries. In some cases, you can add business process automation to increase your bottom line.
Hyper automation is even better when you can use it. Hyper automation combines intelligent automation such as artificial intelligence and machine learning for discovery, design, analytics, measuring, monitoring, and reassessment of a process.
For business process automation to be successful, everyone in the company must be on board with the process, from the CEO to those who work out in the field and maintenance workers. The benefits of business process automation are many.
1. Reduced Costs
When you do a task manually, you can do one at a time, and the time it takes you to do it is slower than a machine can do the task. Because it takes longer to do the job, it costs more in payroll. When you use business process automation, you use fewer resources, which means that you can also open up those resources for other processes that you cannot or should not automate. Using automation software also increases customer service because you can serve more customers in a shorter amount of time with more reliability.
Businesses can reduce costs in all types of companies and all factions of their companies. Whether you offer retail, production, services or other businesses, you have several departments where you could reduce costs by partially or wholly automating processes.
2. Time Savings
When a human performs a task, it takes longer than if a computer or machine performs the task. Another way you save time is the elimination of mistakes. If a human makes a mistake, he or she must do the task over, thus using more time. In addition to saving time, business process automation reduces costly errors. Business process automation, including hyper-automation, also reduces turnaround times for staff and customers because you can optimize information flow from production through billing and collections.
3. Increased Productivity
Productivity needs to grow as your business grows. When you can’t increase productivity because of limited funds for payroll, your business becomes stagnant and you never reach the next milestone of the future x-figure profit. Intelligent automation and hyper-automation allow you to do more for less and increase reliability at the same time for all areas of operation, including IT operations, administrative processes, production and management.
4. Optimization of Performance
You can look at the optimization of performance in two ways: Optimizing your computers to work faster and better, and optimizing your workforce to work better and quicker. Optimizing your workforce increases performance by automating jobs that do not require human input. It also decreases the need to pay overtime and improves employee morale by reducing the need for humans to do repetitive tasks that, while they might seem menial, are essential for the success of your business. Employees “stuck” doing these menial, but necessary jobs can now use their skills in other areas.
5. Superior Customer Service
Providing automated customer service means that you can provide superior service that is faster and more accurate. You also reduce the costs of managing a support team. While most customers prefer dealing with humans, most also prefer some information is a quick and efficient manner. For example, if a customer just needs to find out what his or her bank balance is or if an employer made an electronic deposit, a bank can disseminate that information faster via automated technology. This applies to customers who want to know what hours a business is open, or if a company is closed for a holiday. If you’ve ever called a customer service line to find out something as simple as an address or hours, you know you get irritated when you have to wait for several minutes for a human to pick up the phone.
6. Increasing Availability
With more businesses relying on computers, the expectation of availability is high. Business process automation also increases availability, especially in areas of scheduling. Instead of using a human to make reservations, take orders for your online store, create shipping orders, or even having someone show new employees how to assemble products, the business automation can take over all of those facets of your business. People can make reservations for restaurants, hotels, trains, concerts and events online – in minutes. Instead of having an employee wait for several hours for someone to show him or her how to assemble a new product, the employee can pull up assembly instructions on the computer.
7. Increasing Reliability
When you have a business, you most likely have a database. Whether it holds customer information, orders, or you use it to track marketing or appointments, you need to keep the database operating flawlessly and you need to back it up. Instead of relying on humans to run chron jobs or backup your database every day, use business process automation to perform these tasks every day, on time, and without fail. Using business process automation also ensures that these boring jobs are completed in the proper sequence.
8. Reduce Errors in Recurring Tasks
Regardless of the type of business you have, you have recurring tasks on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Whether it’s monthly billing, paying bills, inputting employee hours from time cards into a billing program, or even mailing out marketing materials, some tasks take place on a schedule. When a human errs or even calls out, these tasks could be delayed, which means that people get paid late. Business process automation ensures that these tasks are completed accurately and on time.
9. Increasing Quality
Word of mouth is the best advertisement a business can get. However, if the quality of a widget is excellent, but the next widget does not have the same quality because two different people made the widget, then that word will get out faster than sound creates a sonic boom. With automation, you can ensure that every widget you produce is of the highest quality. Whether you use automation to create millions of widgets or a special run of limited edition widgets, you will know that each widget produced will make each consumer happy with its quality.
10. Metric Visibility
Record key metrics and place them in a report that is delivered at the same time every day to help retain a competitive advantage over your competition. Create workflows to locate strategic events as they happen so that you can modify your business strategy with the confidence that the automated process locates everything you need to show you where to adjust your marketing strategy.
11. Improve Employee Morale
Employee morale depends on several factors, including how you treat the employees. It is also based on how well an employee thinks he or she is worth. If you continuously assign menial jobs, that employee may think he or she is not worth much to the company. This attitude is then transferred to customers because your customers can see when an employee isn’t happy. Instead of hiring someone for minimum wage to complete the menial jobs, automate them and give your employees more responsibility with jobs that require them to their education and experience.
12. Improved Operational Efficiency
Efficiency is a product of cost, effort and time applied to a task. When you use business process automation on any task, you get improved operation efficiency, better quality and more reliability of completion.
13. Enforce Governance
When you use business process automation, all automated tasks create a report output that tells you what task was done and when it was completed. You can easily manage all automated tasks with a click or three, whether you need to change the order of the tasks, change the time they run or make other changes to make your business more successful. For example, when using an enterprise content management system to post blogs and social media posts at certain times, you might want to change those times based on the number of people who use a specific platform at a particular time on a specific day.
14. Increased Predictability
Look for any task that has a series of steps that do not require a thought process. Those are the tasks that are most easily converted to business process automation. When these tasks become automated, the predictability of the tasks becomes more reliable. You’ll end up with better quality products because the tasks are completed the same way every time and won’t be prone to errors. Many of these tasks are also entry-level tasks. You can save money by automating these tasks and hiring people to do those tasks that do not lend themselves to automation.
15. Hiring and Training Automation
When you have to hire new employees and then train them, you use a lot of time. You can narrow down the pool of candidates by using automation to determine the skills, experience and education of potential hires. Once automation narrows down the pool to a few employees, you can then meet with them on a face-to-face basis. Once you choose an employee, you can use automation to train the new hire for specific jobs. You can even use automation to test current employees for new duties or additional responsibilities instead of taking the time to interview every employee you think might be qualified for the job.
16. Increasing Consistency
Customers expect quality and consistency from your company. With business automated processes, you can automate the follow-up process and other customer service events so that your customers experience the same level of service from your business every time they call on you for services or products.
17. Payroll Automation
You can cut payroll costs by nearly 200 percent by automating your payroll tasks. Instead of hiring four or five people to complete the work in four to five days, you could drop your payroll department to two or three people working two to three days, depending on the size of your company. Additionally, the automated tasks will have fewer mistakes, which means happier employees. If you combine payroll automation with a time clock run by a database, you can further increase profitability and reduce errors, since the payroll process pulls employee data from the time clock database for hours worked.
18. Accounts Payable Automation
In most cases, your accounts payable are due at a certain time, whether they are on a 30-day, 60-day or 90-day payable. When you automate your accounts payable system, the automated processes sort batches, post invoices and can perform other tasks related to accounts payable. A manual sorting job that took two days could be shortened into 15 to 30 minutes, and it would be more accurate.
19. Accounts Receivable Automation
As with accounts payable, you could also automate certain aspects of accounts receivable to save time, including posting received digital payments, such as those paid via electronic transfers. Since many banks are also accepting scans of checks, you could partially automate accounts paid by check.
20. Order Entry Automation
Companies that rely on humans for data entry could save significant time and money by automating the data entry process. Instead of manually keying invoices, scan them into the system to streamline the workflow process. The automation process could also sort the invoices and send them to the appropriate department.
21. Tracking Commissions
If your business pays commissions, whether to employees, contractors or freelancers, you know that tracking those commissions can take a lot of time. Instead, use a commission tracking system to track and pay out commissions – you’ll save time and money because you’ll need fewer employees for this task, and you’ll save more money by eliminating mistakes that cause erroneous payouts.
22. Automate Mobile Order Entry
Instead of taking orders via email or over the phone, update your customer management system to accept mobile orders. Your customers enter their own orders and the system sends them to the distribution department. You’ll save tons of time and your customers’ orders will be accurate – or at least as precise as your customer is since you won’t have a human who could make an error when entering the customer’s order.
23. Automating the Cash Transaction and Reconciliation Process
Processing and reconciling cash transactions could take 40 or more hours, depending on the amount of cash a company receives. Adding an automated system could reduce that time to a mere six to eight hours. The data is sorted and forwarded to the departments as it comes in, instead of waiting for a human to go through the transactions.
24. Automating Reports and Workflow
Some businesses create daily reports and workflows for their employees. Instead of gathering that information manually, the business could use business process automation to create the reports and disseminate the reports, including workflow data.
Payroll reports, service reports, customer requests and more can be automated by using business process automation to sort data, create the proper reports and send them to the appropriate departments.
25. Integrating Systems
Integrating two or more systems could save an exponential amount of time. For example, a law office might use a customer management system to keep track of its clients. It may handle discovery by hand, including bate stamping documents, or it may have a separate system that partially automates the discovery as it is scanned in.
By combining the two processes, a firm could have a client upload documents to the system.
As the system scans the documents, it sorts them into the type of document – for example, doctors’ notes, medical invoices, photos – and bate stamp each document during the sorting process. You would eliminate those scanning and stamping, which could take hours in som
Businesses are always looking for better ways to cut costs and drive innovation. Robotic process automation (RPA) is a type of business process automation that allows enterprises to streamline everyday tasks, enabling employees to focus on more complex, creative, and valuable work. When implemented properly, RPA can greatly improve operational efficiency and give businesses a powerful competitive advantage.
What Is Robotic Process Automation?
The goal of RPA is to automate business processes. People can use RPA technology to program a robot to conduct various actions such as collecting and sorting data, processing payments, sending notifications to customers and business partners, and communicating with other systems in the organization’s network. In many cases, the robot takes the form of computer software and performs actions solely in the digital sphere. Manufacturing companies use automated robots to perform physical tasks on a large scale.
Robots can even be configured hierarchically, with a lead robot delegating tasks to hundreds or even thousands of its team members, each designed to automate its own set of tasks.
What Are the Benefits of RPA?
When designed and implemented properly, RPA can give a business competitive advantages on multiple fronts.
Reduce Costs RPA can reduce costs in the form of staffing and error resolution. Many clerical tasks such as sending order confirmation, providing shipping details, processing payments, and answering common questions can be delegated to a hyperautomation process. For businesses that operate in large volumes like banks and online vendors, the savings can stack up substantially. Robots can work 24/7 without rest and commit virtually zero errors outside of power failures or issues with the network or hardware.
Though complex tasks may be more costly to implement, most robots require a low upfront investment. They are easy to program and integrate seamlessly with the organization’s existing software and systems.
Scalability For most digital tasks, one operational robot can become thousands at minimal additional cost. Businesses can scale their RPA efforts quickly to respond to upsurges in demand. There is also high potential for upgrades. Machine learning, translating, and speech recognition are all highly functional and viable technologies that businesses can integrate into their automated systems. Robots can follow a chain of instructions with dozens of steps, processing data accurately, communicating with other robots and employees, and becoming more efficient at tasks through machine learning. This type of intelligent automation brings benefits throughout the organization, allowing for…
Improved Productivity and Innovation The greatest selling point of RPA is one that is difficult to quantify. By removing the burden of repetitive, draining tasks, robots give employees more time and energy to innovate and create growth for the business. Without the mental bog of answering emails and inputting customer data, employees are better equipped to bring new ideas to the table. They have more time to build relationships with customers, coworkers, and potential business partners.
More Employee Loyalty With the unpleasant tasks taken care of, employees may find themselves in a less stressful, more positive environment. They are more motivated to put forth their best efforts, inspired to learn more about the organization, handle more rewarding responsibilities, and nurture their careers. Their talent then becomes a sustainable competitive advantage for the business.
What Are the Downsides of RPA?
Despite its numerous potential benefits, RPA may not be an ideal fit for every business. One of the main issues is simply programming and implementing the system to perform its intended functions. It takes substantial time and capital to design, test, and deploy a robot, let alone thousands, into the organization’s workflow. It is highly unlikely for a business to seamlessly integrate RPA, meaning they must invest more resources into troubleshooting and resolving customer complaints.
Another issue is the fast-paced, dynamic nature of software and business. New applications replace old ones, and updates can add or remove functionalities at a breakneck pace. Even a small change in an application that the robot communicates with can prevent it from performing its job. Depending on the scale and prevalence of these disruptions, the costs of reprogramming the robots can quickly become overwhelming.
Most importantly, intelligent automation may eliminate an organization’s most important asset: people. Robots may replace many jobs, even those requiring higher-order knowledge and skills. Many employees won’t have the opportunity to learn about their business and bring new ideas into the fold. Business that heavily embrace RPA also jeopardize the loyalty of their workforce, risking both losing talent to less automated competitors and alienating new hires.
Should You Implement RPA?
The answer depends on the nature of your business. Weigh the costs and benefits. Does it fit your budget? Do you have the IT capabilities to design and implement RPA properly? Are you prepared for the risks? How will the changes affect your employees in the coming year or the next five years? Get feedback from your entire organization before making a decision.
What can HR professionals expect as stay-at-home orders are lifted, companies reopen and hiring and rehiring escalates to warp speed? Are you prepared to manage 10-times the normal hiring and onboarding activities you experienced pre-COVID-19? Meet Prolifics HR Manager Michele Turko and digital worker Leia… and learn how we can help.
Automation is increasingly transitioning from the stuff of science fiction to a reality capable of improving productivity and profitability. One of the most promising developments involves the concept of digital workers, which promise to transform nearly every aspect of the modern workforce. They form a core element of business process automation (BPA), in which time-consuming and data-heavy processes are automated to improve workflow.
Digital workers are not, as their name implies, human employees with impressive computer skills. Rather, digital workers bring the power of automation to low-level tasks, thereby freeing up human employees to focus on skills that better utilize their inherent creativity and problem-solving capacity.
While a growing group of tech leaders define digital workers as software-based labor, the concept’s application varies somewhat from one business or industry to the next. In general, however, these revolutionary workers are capable of independently carrying out complex tasks that once required human input. Their abilities go beyond the robotic process automation (RPA) that previously dominated the market. When properly programmed and deployed, they can autonomously perform a variety of jobs that feature several moving parts.
Prior to the development of automation digital workers, many employers looked to simpler automation tools to improve accuracy, productivity, and general workflow. These tools, while useful, ultimately proved limited in their applications. Their abilities were largely disconnected, so they could only take on tasks of minimal complexity. That has all changed, however. New digital workers link previously separate skills and concepts to achieve a seamless workflow.
To succeed, today’s automation digital workers must possess multiple skills that can be utilized concurrently. While typically thought of as a human quality, a skill simply represents the effective application of basic capabilities to job tasks. When combined, these skills allow digital workers to carry out a variety of essentials.
Job titles already attributed to automated workers include digital talent recruiter and digital accounts payable clerk. These and other digital workers are capable of reading emails, producing invoices, and performing a variety of other mundane, time-consuming tasks.
What Are the Benefits of Automation Digital Workers?
When strategically developed and deployed, digital workers can transform entire industries. Their value cannot be denied in a market that calls for maximum productivity and innovation. The following are just a few of the many benefits they provide in the modern workforce:
Productivity
Humans may beat out computers in terms of creativity and critical thinking, but they clearly fall behind with manual processes. Their productivity can be hampered not only by physical limitations, but also by sheer boredom. Humans crave a level of challenge and stimulation that many tasks simply cannot deliver. Digital workers, however, do not need such qualities to complete important tasks. Their built-in efficiency can lead to significant savings while providing a clear competitive edge.
Innovation
By increasing productivity, digital workers allow their human counterparts to stop worrying about keeping up with tasks that would otherwise occupy far too much of their time and effort. As a result, humans can shift their focus to the creative endeavors that are most likely to carry their respective businesses forward. The more effort and attention these employees dedicate towards exciting new concepts, the more likely they are to come up with groundbreaking ideas.
Accuracy
No matter how competent, human workers are prone to error. These problems can range from simple typos to major miscalculations. Even seemingly small mistakes can ultimately prove devastating. Hence, the need for digital workers to assist with the repetitive tasks in which conventional employees are most prone to messing up. Equipped with digital workers, business and IT leaders can take solace in knowing that critical tasks will be carried out to perfection every time.
Addressing Skill Gaps
As the pace of technological change continues to increase, humans are finding it difficult to keep up. This has produced a significant skills gap, in which human employees cannot be trained fast enough to take on suddenly available opportunities. Such gaps lead to lost opportunities and significant reductions in productivity. Automation digital workers deliver a powerful solution that allows humans to focus on the big picture.
How Do Automation Digital Workers Relate to Hyper Automation?
Highlighted by Gartner as the top strategic technology trend of 2020, hyper automation represents a valuable combination of RPA, machine learning, intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS), and several other revolutionary concepts and processes. Under a hyper automated approach, these technologies come together to streamline workflows through automation. Currently, this system is largely called upon to align business and IT, which have previously suffered a productivity-harming divide.
Digital workers provide the labor needed to make hyper automated systems effective. These tech-based workers can connect to a variety of business applications to collect and analyze metrics as needed — and to use ensuing findings to make data-driven decisions.
How Can Businesses Acquire Automation Digital Workers?
If there’s a downside to employing automation digital workers, it’s that they cannot be deployed as easily as the bots relied on for RPA solutions. Rather, digital workers must be carefully constructed to meet the unique needs of the organizations they serve.
Companies go to great lengths to attract and acquire human employees with the unique sets of skills most likely to provide long-term value — and the same is true of automation digital workers. In both scenarios, the initial effort ultimately proves worthwhile.
Depending on the business and industry, digital workers may be tailor-made for a particular company or sought from specific providers as a service. Outsourced digital workers sometimes serve the same function for a variety of departments or companies. Either approach can be valuable; a lot depends on a given organization’s priorities and budget.
How Will Automation Digital Workers Shape the Future Workplace?
Automation digital workers have already left an indelible impact on the workplace, but their influence is just beginning. In the future, digital workers will be capable of taking on increasingly complex tasks — and executing them with impressive precision and speed. They will be relied upon to a far greater extent than even the RPA that are used so prominently today.
An IDC survey of over 500 top-level decision-makers reveals that most expect the role of automation digital worker to increase by 50 percent as soon as 2021. At that point, the collaboration between human and machine will largely be regarded as the new normal.
The digital workers of tomorrow will not, as skeptics fear, present an either-or proposition in terms of employing humans. Rather, they will free up traditional workers to pursue more creative and less monotonous endeavors. Increasingly, digital workers will be deployed alongside humans in specialized teams. Their varying abilities will complement each other to produce better results than either could hope to generate alone.
The ingenious combination of digital workers and human employees will create an enviable work environment that benefits both employers and employees. The result? A win-win solution in which employers enjoy increased productivity and employees are able to pursue mentally stimulating and highly fulfilling work.
Digital workers represent a huge area of potential for companies across a broad range of industries. These strategic solutions provide an exciting opportunity to amp up productivity while also making the most of valuable human employees. This step forward in business process automation could make all the difference for organizations seeking an edge in a competitive market.
