When calculating Return-On-Investment (“ROI”) for an intelligent automation program, many organizations fail to accurately measure the value the technology provides.
The most common mistake is to solely limit the program’s value to the cost savings generated from a reduction in human capital costs. In most cases, this measure justifies the continued investment in automation but fails to effectively measure the efficiencies created by adopting automation.
When assessing the true value of automation, it is important to consider the impacts it might have throughout an organization. In addition to the reduction in human capital costs, here are five items we recommend you consider when assessing the value of an intelligent automation program:
1. Revenue
Automation is frequently integrated with revenue-generating activities to boost lead generation, customer engagement, and sales and marketing campaign effectiveness. A digital workforce can analyze vast amounts of data to identify high-quality leads and personalize marketing efforts, leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer retention. By streamlining routine tasks and providing precise insights, automation enables a more efficient, targeted, and impactful sales and marketing strategy, driving revenue growth.
2. Profitability
Beyond direct cost savings, automation enhances profitability by enabling responsible scaling and sustainable growth. Organizations constantly strive to optimize profitability by maximizing resource utilization before expanding their workforce. By deploying a digital workforce, they can exponentially increase capacity through efficient processing and around-the-clock availability. Additionally, during growth cycles, a key risk is maintaining quality control as new team members face learning curves that can lead to errors and increased costs. Automation mitigates this risk by ensuring consistent, error-free operations.
3. Employees
Automation can profoundly impact employees by transforming their roles and the nature of their work. By automating repetitive, mundane tasks, it frees employees to focus on higher-value activities that require creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. This shift can lead to greater job satisfaction as employees engage in more meaningful and impactful work. Creating a fulfilling career encourages longer tenures, which in turn benefits the organization by fostering deep institutional knowledge, enhancing team cohesion, and reducing the costs and disruptions associated with high turnover. When turnover does occur, automation reduces the risk of process inefficiencies and business stoppage. While this may be difficult to quantify, the cost avoidance from digitizing and automating processes is real and should be incorporated into your ROI.
4. Brand
Automation can impact branding by enhancing consistency, responsiveness, and personalization in customer interactions. Intelligent Automation Bots ensure that branding messages are uniform across all channels, reinforcing brand identity and recognition. They also enable faster and more accurate responses to customer inquiries and feedback, improving overall customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Furthermore, automation can deliver highly personalized experiences, making customers feel valued and understood. This level of customization can strengthen customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth, elevating the brand’s image to help distinguish it in the marketplace.
5. Decision Making
Automation empowers decision-making by providing near real-time data across the entire organization. Rather than devoting time to extract and transform data, automated data pipelines redirect the focus to analyzing data, which enables informed and thoughtful decisions. By having current data readily available, organizations can break the dangerous cycle of retroactive lookbacks and begin to proactively adjust to current business conditions.
Conclusion
Accurately assessing the ROI of an automation program requires a holistic view of its impacts beyond mere cost savings. By analyzing the positive impact intelligent automation has on revenue, profitability, employees, branding, and decision making, your organization can get closer to fully realizing the benefits of intelligent automation, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, and driving sustainable growth.
No matter where you are on your journey with automation, SD Digital is here to help you. When we talk to our customers, they tell us that they appreciate our thorough and business-focused approach to identifying the right problems to solve before solving them. Contact us today to accelerate AND derisk your automation journey with a FREE process discovery workshop.
About SD Digital
SD Digital helps organizations translate technology to transformative change and realize the best version of themselves. With a forward-thinking cap and digital lens, we empower organizations to realize the art of the possible with the power of digital through business-focused and technology-enabled solutions, built on an unwavering commitment to practicality, speed to market and the user experience.
Learn more on our dedicated Schneider Downs Digital page or contact the team directly at [email protected].
