Hyperautomation explained: Transforming back office operations with AI

Posted on 14th November 2024

Written by Richard Caddick, Consulting Director, Sopra Steria Next UK

Imagine an organisation that has embraced digital transformation. continuously improving the customer experience, information accuracy, and cost efficiency, all driven by teams leveraging insight data. Now imagine that the service itself is looking for ways to improve what it does, all in line with the policy and procedures of the organisation. This allows employees to focus on supporting the people who need it the most, strategic initiatives and creative problem-solving. The workforce, enhanced by technology, together delivers a seamless and excellent service.

This describes the goal of Hyperautomation, a word coined by Gartner in 2019. They give the following definition: “Hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organisations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, including: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), event-driven software architecture, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Business Process Management (BPM) and Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), low-code/no-code tools, packaged software, and other types of decision, process and task automation tools.”

So, whilst automation and continuous improvement have always been a part of back office service change and transformation, AI and NextGen software will accelerate the identification, automation and improvement of services at an unprecedented speed.

The promise of the new technology is huge

The potential of this new technology is enormous. Here are ten ways that applying these technologies will help your business.

Increased efficiency and productivity: Hyperautomation enables organisations to streamline operations, reduce manual and repetitive tasks, and focus human resources on more complex and strategic work.
Cost Reduction: By automating routine tasks, organisations can reduce labour costs and minimise errors associated with manual processes, leading to cost savings.
Enhanced Customer Experience: Hyperautomation can improve customer service by providing quicker responses and solutions, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Scalability and Flexibility: It allows businesses to scale operations quickly and adapt to changing market demands without significant increases in operational costs.
Improved Accuracy and Decision Making: AI and ML components of Hyperautomation provide advanced data analysis capabilities, leading to more accurate insights and data-driven decision-making.
Innovation and Competitive Advantage: By adopting Hyperautomation, organisations can lead in innovation, offering new and improved services or products to gain a competitive edge in the market.
Risk Mitigation: Automated processes are consistent and can comply with regulatory requirements more efficiently, reducing the risk of human error and non-compliance.
Enhanced Employee Experience: Removing tedious tasks from employees’ workloads can lead to higher job satisfaction, lower turnover, and an opportunity for employees to engage in more meaningful work.
Data-Driven Insights: Hyperautomation tools can process and analyse large volumes of data, providing organisations with insights that can be used to optimise processes, products, and services.
Sustainability: Automated processes can be more energy-efficient and less wasteful, contributing to an organisations sustainability goals. And they can be trained to look for more sustainable ways to deliver a service.

But for organisations, the consideration should not just be about the implementation of new technology. Releasing new technology without considering the needs of both people, whether they are employees or end users, and its impact on culture, is doomed to failure. People simply won’t adapt to change, or even go along for the journey unless they have had the opportunity to align to the vision (even having had the opportunity to shape it), and had their needs and behaviour listened to and built into the future service delivery.

Take a human centered approach

The impact of not considering the needs of people, even for a minority group of staff or users, can be huge. One organisation I am in frequent conversation with failed to do just that. When an external organisation came in to implement a new piece of technology, their approach was akin to the often mentioned 80:20 rule (I.e. our implementation will be good enough if we consider the needs of 80% of the staff). What they failed to recognise was that within the 20% were specialists that looked after thousands of end users that no one else catered for, and when the new technology was launched, they were cut off overnight from performing vital services to those users.

You need to take a holistic, people-led approach that balances the promise of new technology with the change that you, your workforce and your end users need to go through.

Sopra Steria Next’s approach does just that. It combines the potential of new technologies’ ability to automate and streamline tasks, with the necessity of engaging everyone across your organisation to grasp their needs and fully achieve the benefits.

The Sopra Steria UK family is the largest Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider in Europe, giving us the know-how for the set-up, running and continuous improvement of the back office.

But where to start? A great place would be for us to facilitate an AI Hothouse for you and your colleagues. It’s a fast-paced interactive workshop for us to help you demystify and make real the opportunities available to you and your organisation.