6 Automation Trends to Start in 2022
Let's look ahead to 2022 and what’s coming in the world of automation technology, what organizations are prioritizing, and how they use it. The pandemic has accelerated new trends in automation, showing companies how crucial it is to innovate while having a system in place to make sure processes work seamlessly from anywhere, even amid a crisis. Leaders have learned that investing in the right technology enables them to be more resilient, improve their operations and remain profitable.
These six key areas in automation are ones to watch:
1. Safety and Security
A higher priority than ever: As security improves, so do hackers, phishers and scammers. It becomes increasingly more important every year for Robotic Process Automation or RPA developers to ensure that the sensitive and critical business information that is stored in their systems is safe and secure. New architectures and safeguards are constantly being developed to assure that data is secure.
2. Increased Scalability
The pandemic emphasized the need for automation technology, even for small organizations, to keep business operations running efficiently regardless of where employees are working from. Automation providers are making their solutions scalable, accessible and affordable for organizations of every size. Organizations won’t just be scaling the size of their automation solution. They will also be scaling it to meet the needs of other departments, including human resources, accounts receivable and legal departments or anyone that typically processes large amounts of paper. Early adopters have experienced the benefits of automation technology, are seeing the ROI, and see value in implementing for other departments within the organization.
3. Restaurant Robots
According to Forrester, “Thirty-five percent of service companies will introduce physical robot workers” in 2022. Due to the influx of job openings and the shortage of workers, many companies in the service industry will start to fill those gaps with robots. These companies tend to have repetitive processes, like customer service, grounds maintenance, delivery and food preparation.
4. More Platform Migration
As automation vendors move to develop more intelligent automation and comprehensive platforms, organizations that have previously adopted small-scale automation technology will see the value in moving to platforms that offer more functionality and scalability. Not to mention, increased security and more options for integration with their other technology solutions.
5. Start to Finish, Full-Scale Automation
Automating just one task isn’t enough anymore. More and more organizations are embracing automation to support whole process lifecycles. Automating processes from start to finish allows organizations to embrace the power and effectiveness of a single workflow like accounts payable payments. Invoice processes can be fully automated and efficient from procurement to payment.
6. Eliminate Touchpoints with Intelligent Automation
Intelligent automation is increasing in popularity because it takes away the guesswork, busywork, and touchpoints from processes that could easily be automated. Intelligent automation, like Meta Viewer's Touchless Invoice Processing, works with the user’s Microsoft Dynamics ERP and features RPA technology. This functionality processes invoices and documents then pushes them through workflows. These steps are based on pre-determined rules that require no human intervention. The system runs rules against the corresponding invoice in Microsoft Dynamics, checking whether it is a current invoice, a duplicate invoice, is open against a PO and other pre-defined rules. Freeing up staff to work on more challenging, pertinent projects while leaving the tedious tasks to automation. The automation industry has gone through significant changes and transformations over the years. In a continuing global crisis, we are seeing organizations not only embrace automation but expand its usage, creating new trends, applications, and ways to take advantage of automation. This has created more strategic, resilient, and efficient enterprises.
In Conclusion
In 2022 look for more trends and applications for automation you never thought possible. Automation is not industry or department agnostic as it has proven itself invaluable in countless scenarios in vastly different organizations.
Early adoption of automation technology has been the key to success with continued uncertainty related to Covid-19. Ensure your processes are ready for more efficiency, visibility, scalability, and intelligence this year with solutions like Microsoft Dynamics and Sprout Social.