The Last Mile — How to identify automation opportunities in your organisation

All Case Studies > The Last Mile — How to identify automation opportunities in your organisation

Growing a practice takes a lot of hard work and good planning. 

For many of our clients, CRM integration and automation is a central component of successfully scaling an operation. It’s also a big commitment on the investment, time and energy fronts to see it through while maintaining existing revenue streams and day-to-day business activities.

But there’s a phenomenon that emerges from this process that many will inevitably come up against — ‘the last mile’ of automation.

So, what is it, how does it impact automation processes, and ultimately, what can be done to cross the line in good shape?

We’ve broken down a few of the automation opportunities to look out for when your organisation moves towards embracing these game changing technologies.

 

Flexible, adaptable, open to change.

But first, a brief background.

When it comes to automation projects for composable businesses (flexible organisations that deliver business outcomes and adapt to the pace of business change), they are all about rapid adaptability and resilience.  

Obviously, that’s a good thing when undertaking legacy system change.

The goal of automation is to achieve a business outcome, through a re-designed automated process, often through multiple technologies, with minimal human intervention.

That’s where MuleSoft Automation tools come into play. 

 

  1. Beware the bottleneck

Many companies are in the process of digitising their operations by investing significant time and energy into replacing legacy systems or introducing new digital tools to improve the customer experience.

While this is great on one hand, unless all systems are integrated and talking to each other, bottlenecks will begin to appear. 

It’s not uncommon for operations to not completely integrate legacy systems for various reasons that seem rational and risk averse — it might be cost related or maintaining a process that works on one level — only for a lack of automation to slow everything down. 

This can push departments into silos where some areas are humming along, but manual data entry or transfers will bring it all undone. 

We like to use the analogy of it being like having only two legs of a three-legged stool. For the stool to work as intended, all of the main components must be there, working together in an integrated way for the greater good. 

 

  1. Find your own synergies 

Automation isn’t a new concept. It’s been around in many shapes and forms since the industrial revolution. It’s about multiple technologies coming together to deliver business outcomes with as little human intervention as possible.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), is essentially a software bot. Its role is to execute a raft of tasks that many humans could do. The evolution of this technology is the machine learning aspect that will allow even greater efficiency and ability to rise to the top in coming years.

Every business uses different tech, but the role of RPA allows them to talk to each other.

As an example, one client we worked with recently in the health and life sciences industry has a hugely manual onboarding process. Astonishingly, it was taking on average 45 minutes per customer to complete these processes. Multiple systems were slowing things down, and an automated solution was sorely needed.

By using MuleSoft RPA, we helped automate at least 90% of their onboarding process while greatly increasing the speed of the process and improving the quality of their data.

And one of the most rewarding aspects of the project? Staff satisfaction skyrocketed with time being freed up for people to spend more of their day-to-day on high-value, personalised service with customers. 

 

  1. How do I know we’re ready for automation? 

MuleSoft’s automation packages are never a one-size-fits-all solution.

If you’re looking to implement RPA in your own operation, then you need to find enough RPA use cases to make the business case to go down the automation path.

MuleSoft’s automation package actually comes in the form of three tools: 1) Anypoint 2) Composer 3) RPA.

What’s great about this, is that when you’re looking at implementing automation into your operation, you’re not just considering one element, you’re looking at the entire scope of automation possibilities. 

This means a clearer business case can quickly develop based on the specific needs of what it is you’re trying to achieve. 

 

  1. Talk to an expert

Long before you reach the last mile of automation, another challenge can be even knowing where to start. 

That’s where Cloudwerx comes in. We can make the process of understanding what mix automation tools are needed to integrate your operation’s technologies a much more accurate and efficient experience. 

To start a conversation today, reach out to us for a chat.

The last mile of automation doesn’t have to be the hardest — we’re ready to cross that finish line with you in one piece.

If you are interested in working with Cloudwerx, please reach out to hello@cloudwerx.com. We offer free consultations, and would love to hear about your business.

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