Executive Summary of Digital Transformation (Written by IFUA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

The overwhelming majority of Business Service Centres use automation technologies that usually support many functions; most commonly, finance and accounting and IT. The key aims that drive digital transformation are quality- and customer-related: either quality improvements or increasing speed of service. Less than one-third of companies mentioned cost improvements in first place.

The most commonly used technology is still desktop automation (e.g. Excel macro), but the ratio of RPA (robotic process automation) is rapidly growing; twothirds of companies already use it. Among RPA tools, 74% of the companies use any of the “leaders” tools – as per the Forrester Wave classification. The number of bots implemented is increasing, but as the majority of these are attended, likely most bots are supporting only smaller tasks.

The main selection criteria for automation technology is the possibility to integrate the tool within the existing IT portfolio. This, combined with the current trend for vendors to be able to integrate different technologies (sometimes called “hyperautomation” or “large scale enterprise automation”), may lead to a further increase in the share of automated tasks and, most likely, more complex, end-to-end processes will be carried out by these bots.

As digital technologies are becoming more common, and as the key aim to implement them is not mainly costfocused, resistance towards these tools is decreasing among colleagues. On the other hand, less than half of companies set up Centre of Excellence (CoE) units to manage the digital transformation centrally. These kind of units come in very handy when a mix of different automation and digitalization technologies are implemented. Most likely, the lack of these CoE units is the reason why the involvement of outside consultants is still frequent.

As a result of process automation and digitalization initiatives, companies mention enhanced efficiency, reduction of errors and ending repetitive work as the most important benefits of RPA implementation. When it comes to barriers to implementation, a lack of time and resources are the two main factors: exactly what could be saved by leveraging these technologies.