How digitalization affects workflow automation

In recent years, digital transformation has become the top priority for enterprises , but now many enterprises are paying close attention to the rapidly developing concept of digitalization. Although the two words sound similar, they actually have slightly different meanings and have different impacts on the business and its workflow. In view of this, this article will briefly introduce digitalization and digital transformation, and explore how digitalization affects enterprise workflow automation.

What is digitalization?

According to Gartner , digitalization is “the use of digital technologies to change business models and provide new opportunities to generate revenue and value; it is the process of moving toward a digital business.” In contrast, digital transformation is a “broad term that can encompass everything from IT modernization (e.g., cloud computing) to digital optimization to innovation in new digital business models.”

Organizations that choose to digitize more aspects of their business may find that doing so is a pathway to digitalizing their systems, allowing them to leverage the digital systems and workflows that already support their operations to improve efficiency and productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated the digitalization process in 2020. In this unprecedented year of global "chaos", companies have quickly transformed, adjusted, and expanded their operations to ensure business continuity. As companies are eager to digitize their workflows, they are accelerating the pace of transformation through automation.

How workflow automation can make digitalization even more powerful

There is a close connection between automation and digitalization . Companies that want to digitize their workflows can use automation to update job roles and change entire business processes from start to finish. Although early technological improvements saved employees time to complete daily tasks, today's large amount of repetitive and rigid work still limits employee productivity and creativity, so companies need to make changes. For example, a global study found that repetitive work such as data entry and document sorting takes up up to 60 hours of valuable time per employee per month. Companies that automate end-to-end processes can free employees from the monotonous and boring process work every day, allowing them to refocus their personal expertise and talents on projects that attract them and the company believes are of strategic value.

Employees who participated in the study believed that automation would have the following benefits for them:

• Can focus more on core job functions;

• Increase departmental productivity;

• Open up opportunities to learn new skills.

Digitalization can provide multiple benefits, not least that companies can use the time saved from successful workflow automation projects to automate more processes and functions across the company, steadily improving the company's ability to innovate and grow.

Flexible automation is a must for successful digitalization

To successfully digitize their business, companies need to adopt an agile automation approach that can adapt to changes in the environment, and some companies are already using robotic process automation (RPA). According to TechTarget, RPA is "a technology that mimics the way humans interact with software to perform high-volume repeatable tasks."

For example, companies can use RPA to create robots that can autonomously fill out forms or transfer information between isolated applications, thereby simplifying boring and repetitive tasks for employees and allowing them to focus on work that creates more value.

But RPA has some limitations:

• Can only undertake individual tasks;

• Inability to automate end-to-end processes across the enterprise;

• Not flexible enough to adapt to changes in the user interface of a particular application;

• Long-term maintenance and management by IT staff is required, which may go against the original intention of automation to some extent.

In these cases, low-code workflow automation can play to its strengths. Rather than just replicating a fixed set of steps, companies can redesign entire business processes with a digital-first mindset. Companies can use low-code process automation to automate specific tasks, entire enterprise end-to-end processes, and even complex workflows. Because low-code process automation is available to both professional developers and non-technical people, users can collaborate on workflow automation solutions that benefit their teams and the entire enterprise.

As the gap in IT talent supply widens, low-code automation is of extraordinary significance to companies that are eager to achieve digitalization. The benefits that companies can gain from an integrated low-code platform include:

• Automate end-to-end business processes;

• Increase operating income;

• Modernize core systems;

• Enhance customer interaction;

• Improve enterprise agility.

Digital Workflow Automation Case Study: Zurich Insurance

Zurich Insurance has 700 underwriters who are responsible for creating policies for customers. When policies need to be updated, underwriters can only complete this task manually, which takes hours. Every time underwriters find a digital alternative, the lack of data verification may lead to shadow IT and increase business risks.

Zurich eventually used Siemens Low Code to create a new application that now allows underwriters to quickly update policies that need to be updated. This digital workflow automation reduced the time required to renew policies by 90%, helping Zurich save £280,000 in operational efficiency.

Digitalization and business transformation through automation

Although digital transformation has been popular for some time, many companies are only now turning to digitalization to improve their business processes and workflows. Through workflow automation, companies are able to not only simply modernize specific technologies or tasks, but also update their business models or discover new growth opportunities.

When enterprises achieve digitalization through low-code process automation, it helps promote internal collaboration and improve the company's own innovation capabilities, gain competitive advantages in the digital age, and realize the concept of digital first. To learn how to start digitalizing the company's processes, please read the e-book "The CIO's Guide to Successful Process Automation".