“Hyper Automation is irreversible and inevitable.
Everything that can and must be automated will be automated.”
Brian Burke – Research Vice President – Gartner.
We live in the 4th industrial revolution era: the world of industry is undergoing a cultural change at all levels and functions, which is achieved through the intelligent integration of technologies, processes, and digital skills. Technologies are being leveraged to generate added value and new services for the various stakeholders to create innovation by acquiring the ability to adapt to changing dynamics.
Today, in the digital transformation era, many companies have already adopted automation due to their ability to efficiently perform tasks at high speed and accuracy. The next step for these companies is artificial intelligence (AI).
Adding AI into automation means we are adding another layer to the equation and enabling these companies to do so much more. It takes them toward Hyper Automation, which Gartner says is “an inevitable state of the market“.
Hyper Automation (a standard expression, where the adjective ‘Hyper’ is based on the concept that the union of various technologies leads to a multiple of achievable benefits) is an evolution of automation; it provides a layer of high technology to automation, which enables more to be done with technology.
What sounds like science fiction may be the way of the future. In fact, today, this kind of technology is used in several real-life applications to quickly identify, validate and automate a wide range of business and IT activities.
Hyper Automation is a broad term for the result of multiple machine learning, ad-hoc software and a set of tools used to complete a given task. Advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to optimize work processes and assist people.
All this shows that Hyper Automation can be applied in almost every aspect of the modern market. The main components of Hyper Automation are:
1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
This is a system that enables the automation of work processes through “Robots” (Bots). These are intelligent programs fully or partially capable of replacing the human user using digital systems to perform business processes; typical examples of use are the automation of data entry, bank reconciliations and accounting reconciliation scenarios;
2. Business Process Management (BPM)
It comes with the introduction of digital tools into business processes to build, monitor and improve a successful automation strategy;
3. Artificial intelligence (AI) and/or machine learning (ML)
AI and ML are vital automation tools needed to achieve Hyper Automation;
4. Advanced Analytics
Hyper Automation provides companies with solid tools and analytical capabilities to analyze structured and unstructured data using advanced techniques and tools, typically beyond traditional business intelligence (BI), to uncover insights, make predictions, or generate recommendations.
Before going on, we define a basic rule.
From now on, the automation referred to is the automation of IT processes and not the automated machines or robots used in production plants.
The automation we meet here can be further split into two parts:
- test automation;
- the automation of robotic processes, a meaningful contribution to business test automation.
Both concepts, although separate, offer the same benefits as any other automation process: complete processes faster, more efficiently and accurately, ultimately contributing to higher productivity, lower risk and higher ROI.
How did Hyper Automation become the future of Test Automation?
According to research by MarketsandMarkets Enterprise Software Testing and Global Enterprise Test Automation Services, the market size of the global test automation market is expected to grow from $20.7 billion in 2021 to $49.9 billion by 2026 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 19.2%.
Gartner’s latest report estimated that the global market for this technology would reach $596.6bn in 2022. An essential tool to help balance investment and test processing efforts is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
RPA tools can make testing 80% more efficient and productive and decrease time to market (TTM). There is a strong push by large enterprises in all domains to move from manual testing to intelligent RPA testing processes, as it helps in test automation and gives them a competitive advantage in reaping benefits faster.
After all, the current COVID-19 pandemic has given us a key lesson, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told hundreds of developers at Microsoft Build 2020, “We have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months!”. Automation supported by intelligent automation platforms has already played a role and will continue to do so. Put simply, RPA was not supposed to be on the roadmap before COVID19, but in fact, it has now entered as the number one priority!
Hyper Automation is already a de facto standard and will be adopted in the coming years in most sectors, such as education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and the automotive industry. The speed at which this standard is introduced will depend on the industry’s investment and understanding of a process that can only improve and increase productivity.
What is Hyper Automation in detail (in simple terms), and how can companies use it to minimize the effort required to introduce it? Let’s look at some use cases.
Trade Promotions Automation
In the consumer products space, successful brands and wholesalers realize the importance of sales promotions in their B2B activities and use them to gain an advantage. You can’t promote to B2B customers the same way you would to the end consumer. Let’s explore this scenario and see how RPA can help build bots that perform tasks intelligently to help initiate Hyper Automation in the trade marketing process.
Public Services
Companies in the public services category, such as hospitals and the public sector, are usually considered obsolete in terms of technology. Being users of legacy applications and systems, they are ideal candidates to use emerging technologies to start an approach to Hyper Automation, even more so if you consider that most of the operations are almost manual and repetitive.
Below is the typical example of a citizen accessing the web platform of his municipality of residence and requesting, via BOT chat, information and/or documents or at the same time notifying problems encountered in his country of residence.
In this way, thanks to Hyper automation, the citizen’s need is put at the center of the system, improving the services offered, resolution times, and satisfaction.
Conclusion
In today’s global and digital world, companies in every sector must be ready to make rapid changes and innovate to remain competitive. It is imperative to innovate and automate when combining advanced intelligent tools such as AI, ML, RPA.
It is also important to remember that Hyper Automation is not meant to replace humans; instead, it is used to leverage humans’ capabilities and work efficiency. The tools each company chooses must be scalable, easy to use, and interoperable with the existing system; otherwise, it could become a real cost hub.
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