Jakob Freund is the CEO of Camunda , a software company innovating end-to-end process orchestration.
Record-high inflation rates and mixed economic signals have hit global organizations hard in the second half of 2022 and will continue their impact as we enter 2023. As a result, many IT leadership teams have made tough decisions about which technology investments stay and which ones go. According to the Gartner report “3 New Realities to Guide 2023 Planning as Inflation Response Cools Economies,” “about 45% of CEOs and CFOs say digital technology investments to improve performance efficiency would be among the last things they would cut.”
What does that mean for automation investments? According to the 2023 State of Process Orchestration Report , 91% of IT leaders say their organization plans to increase investment in process automation over the next 24 months, compared with 88% who answered the same question the previous year. Why? Process automation, and its close counterpart process orchestration, are among the top investments that help companies achieve cost savings at scale. In case you’re not familiar with the term, process orchestration makes automation more efficient by tying together the various moving parts, or endpoints, of a business process—think people, systems and devices.
Let’s take a look at how to use process automation and orchestration to achieve cost savings, especially in an uncertain economy.
How to Use Process Automation To Reduce Costs
Some of the most prominent companies in the world operate like tech companies, even if they didn’t start out that way. A core tenet of their IT modernization and digital transformation efforts has been process automation. Many aspire to the likes of Amazon, where automated processes seamlessly flow together within the customer experience and appear as if they’re magic. That sort of automation nirvana doesn’t happen overnight and certainly doesn’t happen all at once.
Here’s how to get started. Analyze and audit your current processes that have the most impact on cost savings. Look at both internal and customer-facing processes that can reduce effort. For example, automating contact center workflows and offering digital self-service tools are proven strategies to save costs and improve customer satisfaction, leading to repeat business. In another realm, automating internal processes could save employees from doing mindless busy work, where their time could be applied more productively to something that impacts the bottom line.
Before undertaking a large-scale process automation overhaul, it’s wise to start with the question, “Where can process automation reduce my organization’s costs the most?” Start with a small proof of concept (PoC), where you can test the theory on a practical business process that can be automated within the span of a week or so and report results back to both technical and business stakeholders alike. From there, you can expand your process automation remit to additional internal or customer-facing business processes to achieve new efficiencies and cost savings.
Fixing Inefficient Or Broken Processes
The next important question is, “How efficiently are my automated business processes working together?” Many process automation efforts fail because processes are too complex for the technology that’s being applied to them. Or, there may be multiple process endpoints (people, systems, and devices) that are not effectively coordinated within a process. In the State of Process Orchestration study cited above, 72% agree that real-world, business-critical processes are complex to maintain.
In other words, even if you’re using process automation technology, you may be missing additional cost savings and efficiencies that come from orchestrating your processes. Orchestration can be a force multiplier for technologies that are already in your hyper-automation tech stack , like RPA, event buses, AI tools and more. Without orchestration, some of the most common issues include:
Broken or inefficient processes: Since isolated automations are not integrated with one another, the resulting end-to-end process is not fully automated. This can result in customer or employee frustration because the intended automation is not working as planned.
Process inflexibility: It can be impossible to make a change to a process because you have to make changes across many different systems—leading to wasted time and inefficiency.
Inability to analyze: Many teams don’t have visibility into the key metrics that indicate whether or not a process is working efficiently and effectively. You can’t change a problem you don’t see.
Your organization may have microservices-based applications, RPA bots, APIs, IoT devices, legacy systems, AI/ML tools and humans working together within automated processes. Instead of viewing these processes in a silo, orchestration makes multiple endpoints work together, maximizing those investments to achieve the best possible ROI and outcomes.
Consider an example of automated inventory management and automated retail fulfillment. If an inventory system doesn’t effectively communicate with a fulfillment system, a retailer may order too many or too few goods. Too many goods lead to markdowns and lost revenue. Too few leads to customer frustration and churn. To strike the right balance, you can apply process orchestration to ensure that each component in an automated process is successfully working together from end to end.
How To Decide If Process Orchestration Is Right For You
Maybe you’ve already started along a journey with process automation and orchestration, or perhaps you’d like to experiment in 2023. In the current economy, most organizations are looking to achieve greater cost savings and efficiency. In your evaluation process, ask yourself a few key questions.
First, can I select and prioritize automation projects that will achieve the most internal cost savings or external customer impact? Second, can I test a discrete PoC and/or pilot project to apply initial learnings to a larger automation effort? Third, can I orchestrate various endpoints of my processes together so that I can achieve the best ROI from my automation investments?
While 2020 was a year of massive change and digital transformation, 2023 might be the year to evaluate how to maximize automation investments to become more efficient and achieve higher returns.
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