Digitally transforming businesses use digital technologies to drive business processes, culture and customer experience to meet ever changing market needs. Those businesses that don’t digitize to meet their customers’ needs won’t survive in the medium or long term.

However, most businesses still rely on manual and repetitive tasks for critical business processes. This trend is common across industries irrespective which one do we talk about. In fact the top most efficiency challenge for CFOs in these industries is the elimination of manual tasks.

Despite a growing call for automation, more than 50% of automation opportunities are missed in the organizations due to various factors including old legacy systems, selection of the right processes to begin with but most importantly the unavailability of the already overburdened IT teams for building these automations.

This article explains what citizen automation is and provides 6 reasons why you must adopt it now or you won’t survive beyond 2022.

Why is there a need for citizen automation?

As per a report by the Mckinsey Global Institute:

1) Automation would touch more than 230 million knowledge workers by 2025.
2) This could lead to a total economic impact of $5-$7 trillion with $1.7 trillion to $2.2 trillion in common business functions such as clerical and administrative work followed by social services sector such as education and health care $1.1 trillion to $1.4 trillion.

Businesses who choose citizen automation get many benefits compared to those who don’t including:

1. Improved operational efficiency (faster, cheaper, better) – Replacing inefficient, analogue legacy processes with digital workflows improves operational efficiency, flexibility and cost effectiveness.
2. Improved customer and employee satisfaction (happier, stay longer) – Businesses that automate processes, designed with both customer and employee experience at the center stand to gain from retention.

Businesses that provide a digital twin to knowledge workers can make process operations more resilient and enable those workers to perform work at scale. Happier colleagues stay longer, deliver more, whilst delivering better customer service and higher output.

This can result in better business returns as happy customers tend to spend more, stay longer and advocate for a business. Improved colleague satisfaction usually results in higher retention which results in higher profits and reduced operational cost.

Click here to read how citizen automation helped this company streamline processes, eliminate manual work by 92% and improve performance significantly

3. Streamlined processes (right first time, every time): With citizen automation, businesses have an opportunity to eliminate redundant processes or parts of processes, before they redesign, standardize and automate what remains. This saves time, money and cost. Savings can be taken on as increased profits, or passed onto customers or colleagues through competitive price discounts or better wages.
4. Faster and cheaper time to market possible (quicker and easier): It is often faster, cheaper and easier to service customers digitally than using traditional analogue methods. Businesses that can deliver more quickly than others gain first mover advantage and often a great share of market.
5. Adopt a continuous improvement mindset (better and more accurate):  Businesses that implement a citizen automation strategy often develop agile, continuous improvement mindsets. The digital economy demands constant change and innovation to meet changing customer demands. Businesses that listen, test, learn and deliver what customers want often gain a greater share of demand compared to those who don’t.
6. Reduced operational risk (accurate, consistent):  Digital and automation technology reduces the margin for human error in business processes.  This results in right first-time processes, consistent service and product delivery, less rework, less customer complaints and less business cost.

Digitize and thrive, don’t and you won’t even survive for very long. A digitally enabled business is a company that is more efficient, more resilient, and more profitable than its peers. At such a company, both customers and employees are more satisfied and are more eager to work for and advocate for that business.

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