Why Should You Care About Bots?

Growing up, my parents taught me that there are some questions that aren’t appropriate to ask. Generally, it’s safe to avoid asking people their age, their salary, their weight, their politics, etc. Some questions can make the people being asked feel uncomfortable and so should be avoided.

Are bots one of these hot-button topics that we avoid asking about at work?

I ask because I see many of us are using some type of AI-driven technology in our personal lives, but it continues to be a missing piece in the work environment.

Bots can be an invaluable tool in any organization too. But how many of us are asking, “How can bots help us here?" at work? Are we afraid to bring that up? Maybe there’s a misunderstanding of what kind of a solution a bot would bring; maybe there’s a fear of automation replacing people’s job, or something else. But, ultimately, it just feels like people are asking how AI can help them in their personal lives, but not in their work lives.

These advances in technology can bring increased efficiencies in both people and technologies. You’ve heard about some of the ways bots have improved my personal life, but now let’s explore the benefits on the business side.

• Cost Savings – Organizations that use bots to automate redundant and repetitive tasks can achieve significant cost savings since software bots cost much less than a full-time employee. And the process efficiencies help make the most of both people and technology. If, for example, a manual process takes two hours to complete, and automating it reduces that time to 15 minutes, that’s 1 hour and 45 minutes saved per task. That means the same number of employees can complete many more transactions in the same time period, or better yet, move on to more important activities that bring increased value to the organization.
  
  
• Fewer Errors – Consider the old adage: to err is human. Every time a human touches a process, it’s an opportunity to make a mistake, like forgetting to include something or accidentally entering a wrong value. Bots provide near-perfect accuracy. Fewer errors means time savings, which means cost savings. It also reduces the likelihood of poor customer satisfaction, increased liability, and so on.
  
  
• Consistent and Transparent Execution – When you use bots to automate a process end-to-end, you ensure that no steps were missed, data is complete, and that every task was performed according to specification. And in contrast to manual processes that are often hard to measure and manage, by their very nature, automated processes provide transparency with metrics and reports that show what’s going on with the process as a whole and with the individual instances of that process.
  
  
• Increased Customer Satisfaction – In the digital age, customers don’t want responses at the speed of paper, and they don’t want manual processes that could provide them incorrect information because something was missed or processed incorrectly. Bots enable systems and workflow that transform service and customer experience in ways that were not possible until recently, and that will be truly transformative as increased agility and superior service become benchmarks of digital transformation.

The New Question is “HOW Should We Use Bots?”

Automated bots may seem futuristic – something out of a Hollywood movie – but the truth is that they are at work today, helping support and shape the way work gets done in the 21st century.

Forward-looking organizations are at work adopting and implementing bots in every-day processes and leveraging the advantages to truly drive innovation and speed the pace of digital transformation.

Process automation has traditionally been directly associated with increased efficiency and reduced costs. And while these drivers are still important, it is also critical to position intelligent automation as an organizational imperative addressing C-level strategies like customer experience, business agility and intelligence, and digital transformation.

Learn more about how bots can fit into your information management strategy with this free on-demand webinar, How to Boost Your Workforce with Invisible Start-to-End Bots.