How enterprises are charting the new age realms of hyper-automation and how they can optimally deploy hyper-automation to drive business performance

HGS has a co-created automation CoE for their clients where it is supported by a multi-parameter-based prioritization approach. It also has a well-developed analysis of what and when to automate to maximize the value of business. Today, HGS also specializes in using ML and natural language processing that can impact decisions based on emotion detection. Human efficiency combined with the support of automated bot technology is going to be the crux of future business achievements and developments. Mr. Natarajan Radhakrishnan, President and Global CIO, HGS shares insights on the same.

1. What makes hyper-automation possible?

Nat: Hyper-automation is among the most used terms by IT leaders across the globe in the past few years. In the context of the contact center industry, hyper-automation has proven to be a game changer. Technology advancements and tools in the field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Optical Character Recognition (OCR) with Machine Learning (ML)-National Language Processing (NLP), process mining and task mining to identify patterns and predict the workflow, and intelligent business process management suites along with necessary infrastructure supports effective implementation of Hyper-Automation. Subset of the above-mentioned technologies can also be effectively used to implement Hyper-Automation.

2. How is HGS harnessing the power of hyper-automation across processes?

Nat: The use of hyper-automation at HGS has significantly enhanced the efficiency of the processes. We have deployed hyper-automation in most of our internal as well as client facing processes. Different processes have different needs hence we use different combination of technologies depending upon the requirement of the process.

Here are a few examples of the ways we use hyper-automation at HGS.

1. Customer Service
   • Chat Bots & Conversational bots
   • Social Media engagement
   • Complaint Management/Escalations
   • Sentiment analysis
   • Upselling basis customer enquiries.
2. HR
   • Attendance management
   • Claim processing
   • Payroll processing
   • Training and interview schedules
3. Finance
   • Use of RPA for Transaction processing in AP and AR.
   • Use of ML based IDP tools to extract data from various documents.
   • Use of AI to take decision on processes like Supply chain – quotation, vendor query management.
4. Sales
   • Tracking & responding to Sales inquiries form CRM software.
   • Allocation of sales leads to sales team.
   • Order fulfilment and KYC.

3. What are the advantages HGS is reaping with companywide hyper-automation?

Nat: There are a bunch of benefits that HGS is gaining from hyper-automation. HGS is implementing hyper-automation in different client environments depending on the requirements and needs of the client. Here are a few benefits of hyper-automation provided by HGS to its clients

• Coherence of operation
• Time savings and faster turnaround times
• Cost savings
• Error reduction
• Greater compliance and reduced risk
• Instant and accurate insights
• Business expansion

4. With a growing portfolio of tech products, how can enterprises determine the optimal scope of automation?

Nat: A hyper-automation practice involves identifying the tasks that can be and need to be automated, choosing the appropriate automation tools, and merging or extending their capabilities using various flavours of AI and machine learning.  Ensuring the right mix of human touch and technology is critical.  Some of the factors to be considered in hyper-automation include:

• The functionalities that must be integrated
• Budget
• Ease of use
• The extent of spread and collaboration

5. What are the key steps for enabling Hyper-Automation?

Nat: Setting up a hyper-automation platform may appear challenging because of the perceived enormity of integrating different systems within an organization.  However, a systematic assessment of the business processes of the company and designing efficient workflows for hyper-automation would ease the process. The success of hyper-automation depends upon the company’s understanding of the process, the technological maturity of the company, ability to integrate legacy technologies into the hyper-automation portfolio and finally the management support in the company.