Hyperautomation: More hype than hyper

By Gurdeep Singh, Automation CoE Lead and Product Owner at Tryg

Gurdeep Singh has worked with business automation and robotics for over a decade

The first and foremost question which comes to mind is: What is hyperautomation?

According to industry analyst firm Gartner:

“Hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations 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, 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.”

Now from the above definition from Gartner is very clear but at the same time it’s complex, it’s integrated, interdependent but mutually exclusive and independent at the same time. Which adds to more confusions, queries, fears, complex terminologies and eventually results in procrastination, lack of confidence and finally failures.

If there is any organisation which comes forward and say that we have attained hyperautomation or we are a hyperautomation organisation, I would humbly say either they are not sure or not aware what they are doing or they are definitely on the wrong path.

In my view, hyperautomation is not a state or a milestone or a title. It’s a journey. A journey that continues as we mature, as new technologies arrive and also when Gartner’s definition of hyperautomation changes, as it will in the foreseeable future.

In other words: Hyperautomation is a combination of two things: One is approach and the other is tools we use. My recommendation is that you both mature in using new technologies one by one, learn along the way and once things are stable and delivering value, do try to knot the dots together with the right approach.

Steps on your hyperautomation journey

So now that we have realized that it’s not the state and is a journey the next thing we should be considering is what are all these hyperautomation pitches vendors share with us and the promises we are sold or we are targeted as potential customers? Simply said these are tools which will make our journey eventful, resultful, measurable and quantifiable so that we can get approvals for the next phase in the automation journey resulting in hyper automation, intelligent automation or just simple automation.

Now lets take a step back and first of all understand what are the different steps to proceed with hyperautomation.

As stated earlier it’s a journey, so like any other journey this journey also has it’s stages or steps to follow and then we have the tools to help us move forward in the journey as enablers.

a. Phase I – Plan

i. Assessment: This is the stage at which we conduct an ‘as is’ state assessment. Some people call it due diligence as well. Here we analyze what is our scope, what is the current state of automation, what is current automation potential, what are the dependencies, what are the showstoppers and last but not the least what is the big why = What is the customer value / business value proposition

ii. Design : This is the stage at which we should create a technology, process and benefit 3D matrix which helps us in defining scope of automation (potential) and the technology that can be leveraged to achieve the degree of automation and has the ability to solve or address the big why with quantifiable benefits. Here we leverage the definition components from Gartner where we use all subcomponents and tools under the broad umbrella of AI, ML, PaaS, IaaS, TaaS etc. that we have or might have inhouse or can have as a custom-of-the-shelves solution with our vendor partners alternatively we can expand our search in the market

b. Phase II – do

i. Development : This is where we are focusing converting our conceptual design to developed solution design. Post development of the solution design development of the solution. The complex part is that usually these developments are multiple technologies, multiple teams, multiple platforms, multiple vendors and here is where agile plays a pivotal role in making each group independent at the same time responsible for their deliveries, mapping their interdependencies and creating a work breakdown structure to map the development timelines together.

ii. Deployment: There are a couple of important points which should be considered while deploying these solutions

i. Change management: It’s a very important step since most of these solutions are around humans and usually under budget pressure the first thing which is cut is the change management effort and timelines since 90% of the projects are either delayed or have overshot their budgets

ii. Pre production environment and testing: Another area which sometimes is compromised because of either unenviability of the proper use case, scenario, environment or time and money

iii. Devops : Development, deployment and operations should follow devops model to help in a sustainable solution

c. Phase III – Check

i. Monitor : This is the phase where we should consider monitoring the performance of not only the deployed solution but also the requirements and feedback from the customer and the business. We should have the right tool to achieve these and should have the ability to create a visual representation of the same which can tell the experiential story of our customers.

ii. Measure: This is where we should have tools to support us measure the right impact of the outcomes from the monitor stage. This also means that quantifiable and non-quantifiable impacts need to be merged together to see the outcome of the solution for the customer and business and what kind of value preposition does it brings on the table

d. Phase IV – Act

i. Reassess and Redesign : This is where we are looking towards a 360 degree feedback on the solution from the previous phases to retrospect and improvise our approach for the next cycle.

Now that we have understood about the different phase to achieve hyperautomation what are the tools that can help us since the steps shared before are similar to any automation journey, process excellence journey, business improvement journey, or Lean Six Sigma project journey at a high level.

Now lets talk about the tools that we can leverage at each stage:

a. Phase I – Plan :

i. This is a discovery stage and its important for us to understand the AS IS state of the process, scope, potential etc. Hence we should leverage some process discovery tools like, Task Mining, Task Capture, Activity Capture, Process Mining, Data Mining etc. They will give us valuable insights about the process with facts and figures helping us moving away from our gut feel to real data for identifying the problem and simulating the solutions giving more conviction towards our approach and better budget approval rate

ii. Design Stage: This is also a design stage so we need to seeks help from design tools which can help us in designing the process and the solution better. Some organisations leverage citizen designers and business analysts over here in helping design solutions better and faster to drive co-design, co-create and co-govern approach with tools like Blueprintsys, IBM flows, Task Capture UiPath etc. helps in driving it effectively.

b. Phase II – Do

i. Development stage is highly dependent on the problem statement. In hyperautomation we are focusing on augmenting more of human capabilities to drive effectiveness hence we are suppose to do thing more like human to increase the automation % hence we are focusing on as below

i. Conversational IVR – Speech driven IVR for faster and effective IVR routing and call deflections

ii. Conversation bots – VCA / Chatbots to help in resolving queries online, offline

iii. Omni Channel – workflows – connecting, emails, social media, chat, calls and all on a single dashboard to help customer service and sales

iv. Workflow and BPMs to route cases to the right team and measure and manage performance of transaction and transactor effectively, here are tools like IBM BPM, eGain, Pega, Microsoft workflows etc

v. Speech Analytics – Helping converting and analyzing speech to text for analysis for customer profiling, resource profiling, product designing, training design optimization, operational excellence etc.

vi. Next Best Action tools – taking data from various analysis like, speech, text etc. to design NBAs for customer service associates to have linear approaches towards customer experience and effectively case handling eventually increasing sales, cross sales, customer experience and retention

vii. Intelligent document processing for unstructured data from the documents in various different formats

viii. Text Analytics – Sentiment, content and context analysis to help in better decision making

ix. Image Analytics – Analyzing images for effective processing like claims handling, damage identification, automated payouts, salvages etc.

x. Basic automation – RPA based automation of manual repetitive tasks

ii. There are many other solutions which can be adopted to extent the list forward however moving on the next is the approach of deployment and operations and here Agile and Devops play a major roles it’s not a technology segment but definitely is a development approach and effective depoloyment segment which help in achieving hyperautomation more successfully, leveraging tools and enablers like, JIRA, GIT, Jenkins, Containers etc. help effectively in this segment.

c. Phase III – Check

i. This is where we are suppose to focus on the monitoring by designing /engineering our data pipeline this is where data handling approach, data mesh plays a major role. Data engineers should be leveraged in designing your data approach and effectively collecting and using it.

ii. Measurement and representation can be done with Power BI, Tableau, Process Mining etc. which can help in validating the benefits and the realization of the benefits from the hyperautomation more effectively.

d. Phase IV – Act

i. This is where we introspective / retrospective approaches, solutions, outputs, performance etc. with our process mining and design tools and recalibrate with the project and program teams. Agile toolkit again is highly recommended here.

Challenges you can expect on your hyperautomation journey

Now that we are aware about the different tools which can help in achieving hyperautomation we should definitely talk about some of the challenges we face with or due to or in the journey of hyperautomation.

a. Skill shortage. : Implementing hyperautomation requires a wide range of technical skills, including AI, ML, RPA, and data science. There is currently a shortage of these skills in the market, which can make it difficult for organizations to implement hyperautomation. This results in our dependence on vendors or technical integrators which results in our next challenge

b. Integration: Hyperautomation solutions often require integration with multiple systems and applications. This can be challenging and may require specialized skills to ensure that the solution works effectively

c. High potential of project delay or overbudgeting: Since hyperautomation involves multiple different technologies integration and parallel development can be a challenge resulting in delays and over budgeting

d. Blamegame: Since there is a skill shortage our dependence on vendors, consultants and technical integrators increase resulting in blamegames when things go south.

e. Data quality: Hyperautomation solutions rely on high-quality data to make accurate decisions. Ensuring that the data is accurate, up-to-date, and consistent can be a challenge, particularly in large organizations with multiple data sources

f. Security: Hyperautomation solutions often involve sensitive data and can pose security risks if not implemented properly. Organizations need to ensure that their hyperautomation solutions are secure and comply with privacy regulations

It’s not hyperautomation if…

Last, but not the least, let me conclude by briefly touch on what hyperautomation is not:

a. Its not a project but it’s a program and it’s a journey towards maturity at a technology and methodology segment. It requires a lot of collaboration between multiple vendors, teams and specially business and IT.

b. Its not a initiative by Business or IT, for cost effectiveness. It’s a journey towards customer experience excellence

c. Its not tactical solution but is strategic in nature keeping the future in mind

Learn more about automation and robotics

Gurdeep is an active member of our automation & robotics community, which meets regularly. Do consider joining us on the learning journey!

He’s also written quite a bit on the topic, including these related posts: