Automation is a long game.
That’s according to researchers from Cambridge University who analyzed industry data from 25 EU countries. While the study focused primarily on the use of robotics in manufacturing, we believe the results can equally be applied to the ongoing trend of front-office and back-office automation enabled by technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Some interesting findings include:
• When adoption levels are low, robots can cause early losses.
• That’s because initial use cases tend to focus on reducing costs by streamlining operations.
• However, such process improvements are time-consuming and costly, as well as easy for competitors to copy, resulting ironically in tighter profit margins.
• As the adoption of automation becomes more prevalent, the emphasis shifts gradually to product innovation instead (as the low hanging fruits have already been captured).
• This shift unlocks the organization to pursue value creation by finding new revenue streams and to establish sustainable competitive moats
The key takeaway?
Do not despair if your automation program has not delivered the returns that you desire. And the best returns from automation can be found in value creation activities (e.g. sales & marketing) instead of cost reduction.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10202238