To its credit, digital transformation emerged in 2017 as a defining vision for the kind of disruptive hyper-efficient, customer-centric organizations that companies in any industry aspired to become in their quest to lead their industries and own their markets the way that Silicon Valley companies like Google and Amazon have. Nearly two years ago, digital transformation was the focal point for discussions in the tech and trade press about how companies needed to change, from the perspective of technology and culture to become a leading, disruptive force in the industries.
That dialog continued in 2018, though by that time all of the shining promises and breathless proclamations led to more stories about how companies were challenged to transform. A variety of challenges emerged from the real world experiences of companies trying to transform hype into concrete results, and so did the conversation.
From Artsyl’s own experiences, we’ve seen the interest and enthusiasm about digital transformation lead companies to look at existing processes that were ripe for digitization and automation to achieve tangible results and quick ROI. Those successes have allowed them to go beyond automating and streamline one or two back office processes to levering our platform and applications to go deeper into their organizations and transform thornier processes.
And that’s led to companies looking for ways to affect change faster and more effectively by leveraging tools that can adapt quickly and help focus the energies and talents of their staff on process improvement, rather than on implementations, integrations and IT-heavy customization.
In that vein, digital transformation had remained an important part of the conversation about what businesses need to do to thrive in a digital world. BUT, it also explains why technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) and now taking center stage in those conversations.
It’s because, as the vision of digital transformation is becoming a reality, the dialog is shifting for “What” to do and “Why” to do it, to “How” to best achieve it.
For Artsyl, 2018 was the year that we introduced Version 6 of our docAlpha transformation platform. One of the most exciting things about and its evolution is the potential for machine learning and RPA technologies to allow our platform to be set up without coding or complex implementations. Out of the box, for example, we’ve created applications on top of our transformation platform capable of handling huge volumes of vendor invoices or customer sales orders without any customization or additional coding. When the system encounters something it can’t handle, like a document where it can’t find the right info, or maybe a process exception that required human decision-making, it interacts and learns from whatever the human operator adds to the equation.
That’s RPA in action, and it presents how the marriage of a vision for digital transformation, combined with the capabilities presented by AI and RPA, will make it easier to deliver on the promise of a digital future, for customers, partners, executive, managers and staff members.
For 2019, expect to see digital transformation continue to be part of the conversation. It will likely be eclipsed by more real life examples of how technologies like RPA, IPA or AI will help us get there—and by deeper discussions about real life lessons learned and a continued challenge to shift cultures and empower workers (not to mention the usual sensationalist article about the robots have come to steal our jobs).
To explore how Intelligent Process Automation and data capture can help automate and accelerate operations for your back office and throughout your enterprise, contact your Artsyl Technologies representative.