Can Automation be Answer to Business Demands in the coming months?

This year saw automation become a mainstream tech trend, with the COVID pandemic causing nation-wide shutdowns. As employees were isolated in their houses, IT companies switched to the work from home model. However, the same could not be replicated in the manufacturing and other secondary industries. This is why, business leaders had to adopt automation practices to sustain their businesses and enable smoother operation of organizational practices (including IT).

This trend will not end here. In the coming year, too, C-suite leaders will be making strategies to advance their company by adjusting to market dynamics based on changing customer expectations and new organizational realities. While it is too early to predict maturity in automation in 2021, one thing is certain: industries are moving to transition towards greater levels of automation.

Besides, with companies racing to bring digital transformation into their premises, they will also include automated services and more. According to the World Economic Forum, more than 80% of business executives are accelerating plans to digitize work processes and deploy new technologies; and 50% of employers are expecting to accelerate the automation of some roles in their companies. Not only that, but we can also expect automation in sectors like cybersecurity measures, retail, and so on.

For instance, in pharmaceuticals, data scientists spend around 60% to 80% of their time analyzing data before gaining any insights, as per a report by Zenith Technologies. This is not only a cumbersome process but also prone to errors. Hence, automating data collection, analysis processes will not only save time and resources but also aid in faster completion of research projects.

Andy Watson, senior vice president for Asia, Pacific, Japan, and Greater China at SAP Concur, says, "Many organizations will turn to automation and AI in 2021 as a way to address key business pain points and simplify cumbersome processes." He cited that as businesses maintain hybrid remote-working models and anticipate other potential disruptions in 2021 and beyond, the role of automation and AI use cases in the workplace will grow.

This may also imply that advanced versions of automation like RPA (robotics process automation), IA (Intelligent Automation), hyperautomation, and Cognitive Automation will also rise in terms of usability and demands in 2021. RPA will gain main traction in financial services and HR. In finance, it can improve budget management and liquidity, boost compliance and reduce errors, while maximizing profitability.

Gartner predicts that hyperautomation will be one of the key strategic trends for 2021. Hyperautomation is the coalescence of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, RPA, low code and more. Businesses will also move towards cloud-centric automation platforms to avail benefits like reduced total cost of ownership, reduced time to automate, and increased scalability.

At the same time, as investors are picking cyclical stocks that could benefit as soon as things go back to normalcy, next year, companies manufacturing automated tools and software will witness huge profits. E.g. for companies like ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc., a company that builds automated systems for medical equipment manufacturing related to vaccine production, 2021 will surely bring a tide of huge investment and revenue.

Moreover, automation based data analytics like process mining will also gain a greater share of attention in 2021. In warehouses and production lines, autonomous mobile robots (AMR) technology, cobots (collaborative robots) will become more visible. Cobots will also enable humans to work on crucial tasks, while the machines carry out the dirty and dangerous operations. They also offer benefits to smaller companies, as they are quite cost-effective and occupy less space since they are (generally) mobile.

As cyber threats and cyber-attacks become more and more frequent, business leaders are worried about the loss such threats may inflict in the coming months. The recent SolarWinds breach affected companies like Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, Belkin, and VMware. The list of victims also includes US departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, State, the Treasury, and Health.

Companies will opt for automated tools and file validation technologies that will spot spoofed authentication portals to protect themselves from such threats. Amid the new popularity of work from home, they may increase multi-factor authentication (MFA) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) solutions to provide secure connections to employees. Automation tools will also be leveraged to eliminate security gaps in legacy endpoints.

Even in retail and supply chain industries, which were exposed to vulnerabilities amid the COVID pandemic, automation has proved to be immensely resourceful. For instance, in retail, it offers continuous visibility inside a store environment, helps store workers identify availability issues, improve price integrity and optimize merchandising and assortment and more. In a supply chain network, real-time visibility to improve inventory availability into current levels is now possible due to automation.

To surmise, automation is going big, getting better and more pronounced and prominent in 2021.