The man versus machine discourse has left people divided. While one camp vouches for the efficiency that machines and automation would bring in, the other one expresses concerns about the impact it would have on the labour force.
Anil Bhasin, Managing Director and Vice-President, India, and South Asia, UiPath, belongs to the former. To make his point, Bhasin points out five ways how automation can help accelerate human achievement.
This is what he has to say about automation and its impact:
- Increases capacity to handle volume of work
A robot has the potential to work continuously at a high speed, unattended or with humans in the loop. This reduces the turnaround time for service delivery and organisations will find themselves having an improved capacity to handle a higher volume of work. With each business being a cog in the larger industry, this will indirectly aid the larger group.
- Robotic process automation frees up employees’ time for higher-order work
Most of employees’ day-to-day activities involve monotonous tasks that take up most of their time. Employing and teaching bots to take over the same will help the employees focus on more strategic tasks, including innovative and creative aspects of their work.
- ‘Robot for every person’ empowers employees
With a robot for every person, there is so much that can be achieved. Organisations can make sure that employees leverage automation to use a low-code/no-code approach to automate their individual tasks that drain their time. This democratises automation and empowers subject matter experts to build their own automations.
- Increases employee engagement
Engaged employees are key to the productivity and success of any organisation. By freeing up their time spent on monotonous tasks, organisations can enable employees to make time to connect with their peers or learn new skills. Automation frees up employees’ time and makes them happier, more productive and less stressed.
- Encourages employees to explore their solutions
In an organisation, a department could set an example by creating its own bot and scaling it. The bot’s ability is then showcased to other departments in what we refer to as the ‘automation flywheel’. The process will lead to each department creating and adding its bots to the cycle, thereby encouraging employees to explore their solutions while keeping the larger organisation in mind. Having an automation-first mindset at an organisational level is key.
