Demystifying Automation - A Catalyst to Digital Transformation A Whitepaper by Arvind Bhardwaj

1. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 1
Demystifying Automation: A Catalyst
to Digital Transformation
Automation landscape from external facing customers to internal employees and
infrastructure automation to support both, covering ITPA, BPM, DPA and RPA
- Arvind Bhardwaj

2. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 2
Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technology into all
aspects of business, requiring fundamental changes in technology, culture,
operations, and value delivery. To best leverage emerging technologies and their
rapid expansion into human activities, a business must reinvent itself by radically
transforming all of its processes and models. Digital transformation requires a
shift of focus to the edge of the enterprise and more agile data centers to support
that edge. It also means shedding legacy technology that may be costly for the
enterprise to maintain and altering the company culture, so it supports the
acceleration that comes with digital transformation.
There are many factors which influence digital transformation like agile, DevOps,
continuous delivery, cloud native and automation. In this era of rapid change, if
any organization want to be front runner in digital transformation, it must be agile
and lean. It should able to change processes and procedure quickly in response to
business needs. Automation helps organizations to becomes agile and lean.
While the answer to digital transformation and disruption lies in software, the
obvious next question is, “Which software?” Many organizations start dipping
their toes into digital transformation by targeting the straightforward automation
and digitization of the existing manual and analog processes used to operate IT
and businesses. The next step moves beyond simple replication of existing
processes to create new sources of business value and customer engagement,
often by using mobility, social media and big data analytics. Many organizations
recognize that the convergence of big data, social technologies, the Internet of
Things, DevOps and mobile-first computing strategies requires a new, more
unified and dynamic approach. Automation addresses the need for agility and
meets digital transformation trends head on
In this paper we will demystify automation in the light of digital transformation.

3. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 3
It has been seen that people often do not understand the terms robotic process
automation (RPA), business process automation (BMA), IT process automation
(ITPA) and how those are impacting the overall automation for enterprise and
intern becomes catalyst for digital transformation.
ITPA refers to IT capabilities that automate system and network operational
processes while interacting with elements like applications, databases and
hardware infrastructure. Technology adoption plays an important role in
contributing to ITPA’s success as technology within ITPA can help organizations to
automate the remediation of alerts, incidents and increase their infrastructure
uptime as well as reduce their operational costs.
It is worthy to note that ITPA is not the same as Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) or Information Technology Service Management
(ITSM) Process Automation. In fact, ITPA is a subset of ITIL or ITSM process
automation. This is because ITPA’s system and network operational processes are
subsets of many processes within ITIL v3 Service Operation book. Service
Operation is only one of the five books of ITIL v3 which also include Service
Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition as well as Continual Service
Improvement books. Each of these books encompasses many more ITIL or ITSM
processes. Various technologies are used to facilitate ITIL or ITSM process
automation.

4. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 4
Source: Gartner (April 2018)
Source: Gartner (April 2018)

5. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 5
BPM is a technology that has made a major contribution to the digital
transformation strategies of many organizations. BPM involves designing
processes, executing them across systems and people, managing tasks, and
optimizing it all continually. BPM concentrates on reshaping the existing business
processes of an organization to achieve optimal productivity and efficiency.
BPM software helps facilitate the completion of an organization’s projects. It
offers tools to streamline and improve the way business processes are carried
out. BPM software components may include workflow engines, business
analytics, business rules, collaboration tools, and web forms. BPM process
improvement initiatives are usually large-scale projects and they can impact the
technology, customers, and employees of your organization and bring about
major transformation returns.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a digital enablement technology that
predominantly leverages a combination of user interface (UI) and surface-level
features to create scripts that automate routine, predictable data transcription
work.
RPA is a software technology that enables employees to focus better on higher
priority tasks by pushing the monotonous, routine tasks to software robots to
complete. The robots work in a direct manner across application user interfaces.
The input data automatically and trigger actions across many different systems
acting on the employee’s behalf.
Robotic process automation technology is a user-friendly tool for businesses. It
does not involve any programming. Therefore, nontechnical professionals are
able to configure and self-serve robots for themselves to solve their automation
challenges.

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Robotic Process
Automation
Business Process Management
Technology
Software Technology Holistic Technology
Software “bots” are
configured to complete
routine, monotonous
tasks that an employee
would normally have to
do
Encompasses a wide range of
software technology components
including business analytics,
workflow engine, and more to
optimize business processes for
maximum value and efficiency
Automation
Focus
Manual Tasks End-to-End Process Automation
Minimizing manual,
repetitive, and rule-
based tasks that do not
require complex decision
making
Re-engineering process flows to
eliminate bottlenecks, connect
systems, and increase productivity
enterprise-wide
Deployment
Effort
Low High
Non-disruptively works
across an organization’s
existing processes and
applications without
requiring coding or
extensive training
A longer-term effort which could
require dedicated technical
resources, depending on process
complexity and depth of
integrations
Business
Impact
Quick & Immediate Significant & Transformational
Returns can be realized
quickly and cost-
effectively, but
implementations may
not always address
underlying process
inefficiencies
Wide gains can be achieved in
overall productivity, agility, cost
reduction, efficiency, and
compliance
https://www.laserfiche.com/ecmblog/what-is-the-difference-between-robotic-process-automation-rpa-
bpm/#

7. DEMYSTIFYING AUTOMATION: A CATALYST TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY ARVIND BHARDWAJ 7
RPA tools are just one element of the integration and DigitalOps automation
toolbox rather than competing with iBPMS products, RPA tools complement these
more broadly targeted process automation tools. Other elements of that tool box
include process mining to quickly identify existing processes, integration platform
as a service (iPaaS) platforms for more-robust, API-based integrations, low-code
application development platforms and content extraction capabilities found in
optical character recognition (OCR).
Although BPM and RPA are distinct in their own right, they also complement each
other. If you deploy them together, they will provide you with a powerful
platform to enable digital transformation throughout your organization. BPM and
RPA have similar goals of increasing efficiency and productivity. Therefore, they
are not competing approaches. Instead, they can work together harmoniously.
RPA can assist you to boost the gains you have achieved with a conventional BPM
system.
Centralized management and monitoring of automated processes will be integral
for end-to-end visibility and control of IT and business processes; rapid, accurate
reporting will be imperative to ensuring regulatory compliance. Unified
automation and orchestration enables IT teams to support SLAs and business
requirements for continuous digital services delivery and operations. It also allows
enterprise IT to lower ownership costs, reduce learning curves and provide the
business with the speed and agility it needs to compete.
Digital process automation is one in a long list of terms that seems like jargon
until you realize just how vital it is to run a successful team.
Digital process automation is an evolution of part of business process
management (BPM), in that it’s all about optimizing your processes and practices
to allow your team to focus on the tasks that matter.

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Digital process automation is the practice of digitizing your processes and
systems, then automating information transfer to allow everyone free access to
anything they might need to know or use.
First, digital process automation includes the stage where you’re digitizing your
processes. Business process automation tends to assume that you have your
processes documented digitally and can almost immediately jump into the
automation stage.
Second, while digital process automation tends to be applied solely to business
processes, it’s not entirely limited to them. The theory and techniques for
digitizing and automating business processes are applicable to pretty much every
repeatable task you carry out.
Third, digital process automation focuses more on the human element of the
operation than the resulting system. While the system is vitally important, the
ultimate goal is to allow a team to interact with customers while knowing
everything they might need to know.

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Digital transformation is driving rapid integration and automation across
development, deployment, operational support processes and infrastructure.
Organizations need to focus on complete automation landscape from external
facing customers to internal employees and infrastructure automation to support
both, utilizing the best of tools of ITPA, BPM, DPA and RPA domain.

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Finally, I will leave you with few of my favorite quotes for automation & business
transformation -
“In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. The only
sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it because
nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will
replicate.”
Jeff Bezos | Amazon founder
“When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a
butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”
George Westerman | Principal Research Scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative
on the Digital Economy
“Most of the executives I talk to are still very much focused on digital largely as a
way to do “more of the same,” just more efficiently, quickly, cost effectively. But I
don’t see a lot of evidence of fundamentally stepping back and rethinking, at a
basic level, “What business are we really in?”
John Hagel III | Co-Chairman at Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge leaders
“Most of the executives I talk to are still very much focused on digital largely as a
way to do “more of the same,” just more efficiently, quickly, cost effectively. But I
don’t see a lot of evidence of fundamentally stepping back and rethinking, at a
basic level, “What business are we really in?”
John Hagel III | Co-Chairman at Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge leaders
“At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure
out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies”

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John Chambers | Executive Chairman, Cisco System
“We’ve moved from digital products and infrastructure to digital distribution and
Web strategy to now into more holistic transformations that clearly are based on
mobile, social media, digitization and the power of analytics and we think it’s
really a new era requiring new strategies.”
Saul Berman | IBM
“AI will be the most debated, invested in, and disruptive business technology
trend over the coming years. Organizations must get past the hype and
understand how to apply this innovation to become a truly intelligent enterprise.”
Lanny Cohen, Chief Innovation Officer | Capgemini
“We have fantastic contributors for this 11th edition of our Digital Transformation
Review, ranging from Volvo Cars and Prudential, to Andreessen Horowitz, Oxford
University or Google. We tackle topics as varied as the AI talent gap, AI use cases,
AI and jobs or the features of AI leaders. By combining so many different views,
this edition presents a nuanced perspective on the business opportunities of AI, as
well as the challenges that organizations and societies will face in their transition
to AI.”
Jerome Buvat | Head of the Digital Transformation Institute at Capgemini
“Automation of various activities can improve the performance of almost any
business process. Beyond enabling reduction in labor costs, automation can raise
throughput, increase reliability, and improve quality, among other performance
gains”.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute – A future that works: Automation,
Employment and Productivity

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“For many, robotics is an innovation that is poised to transform the landscape of
transaction processing. For others it is just another way of automating processes
that long ago should have been eliminated or simplified. We believe it is a
technology worth investigating because of its ability to improve efficiency and
reliability”
Source: Deloitte Insight report: The Robots are Coming
“Any company that uses labour on a large scale for general knowledge process
work, where people are performing high-volume, highly transactional process
functions, will boost their capabilities and save money and time with robotic
process automation software”.
Source: The Institute for Robotic Process Automation

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References
1. Gartner, Market Guide for IT Process Automation Published 18 April 2018
- ID G00331974
2. hbr.org, What Do You Really Mean by Business “Transformation”? by
Scott D. Anthony
3. McKinsey Global Institute – A future that works: Automation,
Employment and Productivity
4. Deloitte Insight report: The Robots are Coming
5. he Institute for Robotic Process Automation

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About the Author
Arvind Kumar Bhardwaj
Manager, Capgemini Group
Arvind has over 13 years of experience in
software development and testing, with strong
focus on Blockchain, Distributed Ledger,
Robotics Process Automation (RPA), IT Process
Automation (ITPA), intelligent Business Process
Management(iBPM), Scaled Agile, DevOps,
Continuous Delivery, Cloud and Big Data
Technologies. Arvind specialized in Energy & Utility, Finance and Healthcare
industries.