CIO OPINION
The secret recipe for success is the symbiosis between your team ' s creative faculties and automation ' s analytical processes . When experts talk about orchestration , they don ' t mean allowing machines to take over your business hymn sheet ; it means people and machines working together to configure multiple tasks into one complete process .
Which leads me to job retention .
To foster innovation , you need everybody rowing in the same direction . This means open dialogue and clear communication with your teams about the positive aspects of automation , combined with process improvement and reimagination . Some may bury their head in the sand and hope it doesn ' t have downside consequences – but many will embrace the change and recognise it will create new opportunities .
Let ' s be honest : the cost of losing employees is high . Real numbers are involved – recruiting , training and loss of productivity . If businesses adopting automation see improved job retention , these machines provide professional growth and skills development opportunities .
Communicating the goals of automation
Lastly , we need to talk about culture . Adopting intelligent automation is not a plug-and-play solution to all your problems . Automation is a marathon , not a sprint . Continuous learning and process improvement must occur to achieve commercial value – and the mandate for this must come from the top down .
While there are obvious dangers in betting the entire farm on technology , the simple truth is when you invest in both technology and people , you provide a clear pathway for your workforce to become better , stronger and more productive . Technology also gives people what they want : fewer repetitive tasks and customer complaints , lower stress levels , more time to focus on strategic work , extra learning opportunities and higher morale .
So , there ' s nothing to fear . Think of automation as your digital friend and remember what happened to HAL 9000 in the end – all it needed was love and understanding , just like the rest of us . p
46 INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA www . intelligentcio . com