'Global Hyperautomation Trends 2021' survey reflects on the performance of hyperautomation

According to 'Global Hyperautomation Trends 2021' survey conducted by Analytics Insight, 37% of the organizations responded that they feel hyperautomation accelerates or replicates complex works. The survey gives an overall outlook of industries, regions, technologies used to support hyperautomation, reason for the technology's adoption, its benefits, and barriers.

Analytics Insight has reached out to professionals across all geographic regions to understand the performance of hyperautomation and how people and organizations are serving their purpose by availing the technology. Hyperautomation refers to the use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), biometrics, chatbots, and many others in various industries. It defines the tasks and processes that can be automated, but also the level of automation. The technology is seen as the new normal of the future. According to the answers by 320 respondents, Analytics Insight has provided a detailed outlook on the market scenario of hyperautomation. 

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Out of the 320 respondents, majority of them are from medium-scale companies with 100-1000 employees. About 36.7% of the respondents were from small-scale companies that have below 100 employees, followed by 21.5% employees from big organizations with over 1000 people to work for it.

Based on the geographical distribution, majority of respondents were from Asian region. Around 45.1% respondents said they were located in Asia. This was followed by North America (32.8%), Europe (14.1%), and Middle East and Africa (8%).

According to the survey, the highest adoption of hyperautomation is seen in manufacturing sector with 28% respondents saying that their organization has employed the technology to perform well and streamline workflow. Hyperautomation in manufacturing industry is a major accelerator of repetitive tasks. It replaces time-consuming and labour-intense work with automation. Besides, the technology also helps employees by taking up vulnerable jobs. This is followed by healthcare that is seeing 23.2% of the technology's adoption. Healthcare is a technology that has been on the shadow for a long time. Even though simple technologies were employed in medical services, it was not mainstreamed until the Covid-19 pandemic stressed the need for technological aid. Next is the banking sector with 15.6% hyperautomation acceptance. Banking industry was implying technology to tackle middle and back office routine jobs for some time now. So the survey proves that the sector is slowly turning towards automation to further enhance technological implications. The survey further finds that IT and Telecommunication, and automotive and assembly industries use hyperautomation across multiple areas of their functioning, contributing to the adoption rate of 9.3% and 9.5% respectively. Next up are life sciences at 8%, retail at 4.1%, and insurance at 2.3%.

In order to know the in-depth adoption of hyperautomation, Analytics Insight has also asked the respondents about what technology their organization has implied to leverage automation. A majority of respondents (22.5%) replied that robotic process automation is seen as the core influencing technology. Robotic process automation (RPA) leverages technology like software bots to replicate repetitive human tasks. It is followed by low-code and no-code technologies at 13%, intelligent document processing at 12.7%, advanced analytics at 11.6%, machine learning at 11.1%, and workforce engagement at 10.6%. On the bottom line are process modelling and mining and intelligent process discovery with 9.3% and 9.2% respectively.

Earlier, Analytics Insight observed that hyperautomation was seen as a technology that could strengthen the business performance and addresses customer preferences. To further understand the purpose of implying hyperautomation, we asked the respondents why they or their company take up the technology. Almost 34.4% of the respondents replied that they embrace the feature to increase productivity, followed by 21.1% of respondents saying they take up the technology for customer satisfaction. Almost 13.4% respondents feel that hyperautomation is to provide instant and accurate insights, 12.8% to increase ROI, 11.5% to strengthen team collaboration, and 6.8% to greater compliance and reduced risk.

Hyperautomation offers many benefits and potentially unlimited upside. Majority of respondents (37%) revert that the technology accelerates complex work. It is followed by time and cost savings at 18.10%, improved decision making at 16.7%, and focus on strategic work at 12.8%. It is followed by deploying other technologies (9.1%) and increased employee capacity (5.9%).

While organizations across diverse industries embrace hyperautomation to ease human workforce and increase productivity, there are certain pain points that stagnate or barricade the process. In the survey, Analytics Insight has also asked the respondents to speak about the barriers of technological implication. Around 31.9% responded that it's because of lack of skills, followed by cost to implement at 26.8%, and lack of IT readiness at 16.9%. On the bottom line are executive support (9.3%), resistance to change (7.2%), process fragmentation (5.2%), and regulatory or security concerns (2.7%).

"The survey has reflected upon the market performance of hyperautomation as overall. It also proves how the technology has created a stronghold on almost all sectors. Even though the adoption rate is less, it will drastically grow over years. Not just big, but medium and small companies will also be under automations influence ones that happens," says Adilin Beatrice, Senior Analyst at Analytics Insight.