How can you future-proof your business process automation against technological changes?

As per my experience, following are the 2 most important things needs to be considered: 1. To have streamlined and simplified business process. This is critical for any business process to adapt to new technology. 2. Flexible & modular architecture to plug in new technologies.

Before automation to come in you need to streamline and simplify your business processes. This is the best - and only - way to become resilient to technology changes.

Understanding your current business processes is the first step to making Business Process Automation work well. This approach makes sure that your automation efforts are in line with your business goals and have the impact on your business you would like to see. Don't automate for the sake of automation; choose your priorities wisely to get the most out of automation.

Process mapping is a great tool for visualizing your current processes and identifying areas for improvement. It can also help you identify opportunities to automate tasks, eliminate bottlenecks, and streamline workflows. Gap analysis can help you identify the differences between your current processes and your desired state. This information can then be used to develop a plan to improve your processes and achieve your goals. Benchmarking can help you compare your processes to those of other leading companies in your industry. This can help you identify best practices and areas where your processes can be improved.

To future-proof your business process automation, focus on flexibility and scalability. Invest in adaptable, vendor-agnostic software, utilize open standards, and maintain a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. Regularly assess and update your automation solutions to stay aligned with emerging technologies. Stay informed about industry trends and collaborate with experts to ensure your automation remains resilient in the face of technological changes.

Choosing the right tool is a significant task, but more important is the understanding that you will never be finished with IT Process Automation. So change is the only Constance most important in Process Automation. Please ensure your tool is ready for this journey or has some integrations or APIs so it is easier to add a second tool when requirements change. Also, a Tool Change is okay because it is the most important. The benefit of IT Process Automation is that you have a solid process; it is only a tool that can be changed.

You need to get a buy-in from the people. They need to understand what they have to do, why they’re doing it, and how the changes affect them. Without the full buy-in from the team, it’s impossible to implement any new processes or technology. In my experience, businesses see slow adoption or sub-optimal usage if the people are not on board.

You don't. This has been evident since someone drew up the visual of the "long-tail of automation", demonstrating that a by-product of change is operational or technical debt where another solution needs to address this in the interim. The majority of automations should have a shelf-life or an expiry date, there are the most optimised form of a legacy way of working. If they continue to evolve you completely loss the opportunity to capitalise on growth and change. We automated a process of licence fulfilment, and we were consistently asked to improve and innovate this solution. We regularly replied that our current general method of licencing provisioning would not be appropriate for our future but, we could give them the time to solve it.