IT-supported “automation” is a common buzzword, especially combined with AI. But by going deeper and analyzing the business process portfolio in the organization we may distinguish 3 automation directions.
The first – I will name it the ‘X’ direction – is the attempt to increase the range of automation, to expand the automated part of the process flow to the “end-to-end”, which means, not only the input events (i.e. documents) will be accepted automatically, but the entire back office flow will be automated until the final output event (whether it is going to be an output document, payment, registry update or a car). Notice – I treat workflow as an automation tool in this dimension.
The second – I will name it the ‘Y’ direction – is the attempt to automate a complete set of process flows triggered by a business event (i.e. for a document entry, the automation can be applied not only to a positive processing path but also to denial, claims, etc). Furthermore, the Y axis covers other business processes, and afterward a complete set of all business processes present in the organization.
The third – I will name it the ‘Z’ direction – is the attempt to reduce human activity inside the automated process, in order to eliminate human interventions and allow the entire process flow to be performed by robots (whether software or hardware/mechanical robots).
There is no universal rule, how to move in 3D space with automation. It depends upon organization and from its current position.
Anyway the 3D-100% automation (fully automated zero human enterprise?) is not a complete science-fiction – there is obviously no current organization present, which reached 100% in all dimensions, but the progress is visible (what I can also confirm from my professional experience).
When we look on Netflix (for example), we notice, that we can create an account, place an order/subscription, make the payment, and benefit from the ordered product completely online, which means, some process flows of:
- Account management
- Order management
- Service provision
have been automated 100% in X and in Z directions.
What is not accomplished is the Y automation as i.e. the claims processing needs some interaction.
But thinking back about AI, it is maybe not possible today but thinkable in the future, that the claims will be reported not to humans but to a claim-bot, which will try to understand our problem and process the claim automatically. For me, it sounds like a nightmare but maybe the next generation of customers will be more bot-friendly.
Anyway the Z direction is the most controversial one, it will be a subject of discussions, social disorders, and maybe additional money transfers. But it is inevitable, that organizations (not only commercial companies) will increase their progress in Z-axis (humanless following paperless?).
Now going back to the major post subject – assuming we will experience such a 3D-100% automated organization, processing automatically all processes end-to-end and leaving the humans completely outside the main business processes – can we still claim IT is the automation toolset?
On the contrary – IT will be the organization itself!
(I am sure, there are a lot of dissertations about this subject, but I had to write it down).
Obviously, such 3D-100% next-gen-organizations will have to be designed in a specific way (they must be architected and not developed heuristically by the owner). But this is a subject for another post maybe.
Of course, the 3D-100% automation is not going to happen today. But again – thinking about the future of IT, it is going to be one of the major development drivers.