The top technology trends put forth by Gartner have hyper-automation listed for the last two consecutive years. This by itself is a testimony to the fact that we live in the era of hyper-automation.

The hyper-automation market is forecast to reach $200m by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 14% in the period 2019-2025.

The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) when amalgamated with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and intelligence business process management tools gives a whole new dimension to automation.

According to Gartner, “RPA enriched by AI and ML becomes the core enabling technology of hyper-automation. Combining RPA and AI technologies offers the power and flexibility to automate where automation was never possible before: undocumented processes that rely on unstructured data inputs”.

Hyperautomation is an advanced form of automation, serving the purpose of completing tasks and processes faster, more efficiently, and with less error. It enables enterprises to combine business intelligence systems, complex business requirements, and augmentation of human knowledge and experience, whereas simple automation is used to get simple, and repetitive tasks are done that don’t need a lot of intelligence.

According to Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, “We’ve seen tremendous demand for automating repetitive manual processes and tasks; so robotic process automation was the star technology that companies were focused on to do that. That has been happening for a couple of years, but what we’re seeing now is that it’s moved from task-based automation, to process-based automation, so automating a number of tasks in a process, to functional automation across multiple processes and even moving towards automation at the business ecosystem level. So really, the breadth of automation has expanded as we go forward with hyper-automation“.

Hyperautomation came into play when a traditional RPA found it difficult to automate the process for unstructured data. Switching to hyper-automation become a smarter automation choice to many CXO’s for the limitations posed by RPA. Hyperautomation shifts the focus to more complex work, process simplification, culture in enabling automation, and decision making.

Technologies enabling hyper-automation

The technologies enabling hyper-automation include Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS), Process Mining, APIs, Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO).

Hyperautomation applications vary depending on the combination of technologies. Just like the Internet of Things (IoT), the components that constitute hyper-automation are related to each other. With an evolving set of AI technologies, they rapidly identify and automate all possible business processes.

As Gartner Research Director Manjunath Bhat states, “Robots aren’t here to take away our jobs, they’re here to give us a promotion.”

Hyperautomation unlocks more automation opportunities by enabling robots and people to automate together, from basic processes to more complex, long-running, end-to-end processes. It should not only be a potential opportunity, but also an inevitable change to the business.

According to Gartner, “Hyperautomation is an unavoidable market state in which organizations must rapidly identify and automate all possible business processes.”

Implement hyper-automation, requires the right toolbox and a strategic approach to deliver value.

Key stages that lead up to hyper-automation

Some of the key stages that lead up to hyper-automation are as follows –

1. Tasks Automation: Without any manual intervention, use different ways to run the tasks that are identified for hyper-automation.
2. Architecture Development: It is vital to building an architecture that is robust and scalable. The framework should be adaptive to exchange information with other intelligent business process management systems. It should adhere to the basic principles of how hyper-automation works.
3. Process Automation: All the processes that are ideal for automation should be identified and automated.
4. Smart Tools: To collaborate with other people working on it and monitor the processes, a hyper-automation loop should contain tools such as virtual assistants and chatbots.
5. AI and ML: The data gathered from the above events are analyzed with the help of AI/ML. This will help robots to further execute the business process and can define how it should be done. Until the above steps, data from business processes and automation were running on different threads. With AI and ML, further steps of enhancements are identified and implemented if applicable.

Benefits of Hyperautomation

The benefits of hyper-automation will allow your workforce to be educated with the latest marketplace information and business so that they can perform their roles optimally. Rather than being bogged down by low-level, repetitive tasks, your workforce will remain engaged with their jobs as they seek to resolve problems and provide creative solutions.

Hyper-automation provides your business and its leaders with:

• Identifying and automating all the business processes and possible tasks by combining RPA with AI and BPMS (Business Process Management Suites).
• Using technologies and tools to manage complete automation cycles, ranging from measuring the ROI (Return on Investment) on a large scale and process delivery.
• Using hyper-automation technologies to effectively orchestrate work between bots and humans.
• Achieving a more significant impact by automating and contributing to the process of automation.

At Cigniti, we take pride in fortifying our clients’ organizations to tackle the continuously evolving market landscape. With next-gen technologies and experienced industry professionals in our team, we ensure that your organization always stays ahead of the curve.

Cigniti’s Digital Assurance & testing solutions address the multi-faceted needs of digital transformation while keeping agility and customer-centricity at the core of our services. We conduct comprehensive testing across your digital value chain encompassing digital marketing, web portals, web content, digital assets, web analytics, as well as the entire digital ecosystem including cloud, mobility, big data, and connected devices.

Source: https://www.cigniti.com/blog/hyperautomation-smarter-choices/