As businesses aim to simplify operations and eliminate traditional silos, hyperautomation is the most recent technological trend that promises these intended effects. However, Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023 does not include hyperautomation, leaving corporate executives questioning its viability.

While hyperautomation may be a “new” approach, its component technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), low-code, etc. – have been around for a while. It may not involve the installation of previously undiscovered tools, but it does signal a widely divergent strategic approach to automation. This is sure to have a transformative impact.

Understanding the Power of Hyperautomation

Ford Motor Company created the word “automation” in 1946, at the dawn of the third industrial revolution. Now, a concept that originated in the automobile industry is now on its way to revolutionizing other businesses worldwide. On a road paved by artificial intelligence, we are starting to realize the complete potential of automation — via hyperautomation.

Hyperautomation, a phrase coined by Gartner in 2020, is a business-focused strategy that employs numerous technologies, platforms, and/or tools to detect, evaluate, and automate a vast array of IT and business processes.

Interestingly, Forrester presented the notion of utilizing various automation technologies in 1910; he termed this intelligent business process automation (iBPM). iBPM is dissimilar to hyperautomation. In iBPM, AI replicates human intelligence in order to perform high-level operations that necessitate some cognition and judgment.

Hyperautomation is more comparable to a toolbox; it handles higher-level functions, commencing with coordination, intelligence, predictive insights, informed suggestions, and ending with decision-making. It has two key benefits: it’s business-aligned from the very beginning, so you are confident of ROI. And, it is vastly more powerful than traditional robotic process automation or RPA.

Hyperautomation is More Effective than RPA

RPA uses software bots to automate individual tasks, while hyperautomation aims to automate the entire process, i.e., a bigger enterprise-level transformation. In essence, it contributes to the digital transformation process of an organization.

Hyperautomation improves RPA in terms of:

• The tools employed: RPA is task-based and built on individual bots, while hyperautomation includes the sequencing of various technologies.
• Inner workings: RPA is only applied on a single platform, but hyperautomation encompasses a network of technologies, platforms, and systems.
• The end results: RPA results in efficient processes, whereas hyperautomation leads to intelligent, adaptable, and efficient processes.
• Future potential: Hyperautomation can automate almost every aspect of a business, while automation can only be implemented for specific, standalone use cases.

At the close of 2019, interest in hyperautomation surged. Some of the buzzwords established by Gartner fail to gain traction, but hyperautomation is currently widely used by market leaders such as UiPath, Jiffy.ai, and Soroco. This is due to the fact that hyperautomation provides several substantial benefits to businesses of all sizes.

Hyperautomation enables the rapid identification, evaluation, and automation of as many processes as possible using RPA, AI, low-code application platforms (LCAP), as well as virtual assistants. Gartner expects that by 2024, enterprises will have implemented at least three of the twenty software solutions that allow hyperautomation owing to the widening interest around this technological phenomenon.

5 Ways Hyperautomation will Transform Processes in 2023

This year, there are numerous compelling reasons for businesses to implement hyperautomation:

1. Reduce the organization’s “efficiency debt”

A company’s efficiency debt is comparable to its technical debt. It is the accumulation of actions that an organization should have taken to achieve operational effectiveness. This may be connected to employee training, process design, absence of collaboration, data management, and security, among other factors. With hyperautomation, enterprises may coordinate and automate operations more efficiently and establish an ecosystem that tackles and eliminates efficiency debt.

2. Create a centralized source of truth

The hybrid cloud has become the new standard as a result of modern technologies; hence, system integration has become essential for digital transformation.

Fortunately, hyperautomation is based on the notion that it involves the integration of software and processes. This results in exchanges between on-premise equipment and data storage which are seamless. Therefore, such an architecture enables systems to connect and communicate without trouble, resulting in enhanced data accessibility via consolidation, even in a highly diverse environment.

3. Improve customer experiences (CX)

As a result of hyperautomation’s ability to automate complicated business operations, your teams can devote more time to other value-added tasks, such as streamlining customer journeys, meeting priority customers personally, or a host of other tasks that require a human touch.

In addition, B2C consumers also want immediate responses. They contact support desks via multiple channels, and here, hyperautomation may be beneficial. Providing customers with a tailored experience using AI chatbots, for instance, boosts customer trust and brand loyalty.

Thanks to an end-to-end software-enabled workflow, To enhance CX, you may also gain insights on customer behaviors, analyze agent engagements, the number of complaints, the frequency of first-time problem resolution, and more.

4. Accelerate the pace of innovation

If the COVID pandemic has shown companies anything, it must be the importance of adaptability and creativity. The organizations that emerged triumphant during this period were those that quickly adjusted their strategies, prioritized their workforce, and embraced new technologies.

In this case, hyperautomation serves as the key driver for digital transformation. Low-code platforms allow your business to design and improve processes, replace outdated systems without fear of data loss, and deploy new apps within weeks.

For instance, the tourism sector was among the first sectors to be severely affected by the crisis. With the rapid flood of refund requests and the most recent changes in policy, many organizations struggled to cope. However, a few utilized automation for customer service and query resolution. – this simple example can be exponentially scaled when one adds AI, ML, and LCAP to the mix.

5. Drive better outcomes and better decisions

Irrespective of the business in which you operate, hyperautomation improves the quality of your output. Low-code and AI offer an intuitive user interface featuring drag-and-drop elements that enable the rapid development of apps, processes, and automations. It ensures an error-free implementation pathway.  You may discover opportunities for enhancement in any business process and modify the workflow to achieve superior results.

Lastly, hyperautomation offers superior analytics solutions that can be employed to garner insights and understand broader organizational trends. Business executives can identify what is succeeding and what is not — so they may make the necessary changes.

Notable Hyperautomation Trends for 2023

Now that we have looked at the “why” behind hyperautomation adoption this year, let us look at some of the ways it will manifest. Here are three trends that demonstrate how this technology (rather, a set of technologies) can be used:

1. Hyperautomation tools and data to power digital twins

Simply said, a digital twin is a digital replica of a real-world process or object. It is not only a digital reproduction of the physical version. It is consistently synced with its real-time counterpart, experiencing the same material and behavioral changes as its physical duplicate.

Hyperautomation can help identify the opportunities for the intervention of digital twins. It then feeds it the data stream, and keeps the model updated in real time, automatically.

2. Rejigging team structures

Huge amounts of mundane chores would be performed rapidly by sophisticated automated technologies. Therefore, your employees will be able to pursue new opportunities, acquire new abilities, and reinvent themselves within the organization, working closely in collaboration with each other – which is a uniquely “human” thing. This will also demand new leadership capabilities and a more empathetic approach toward workforce management, in order to create a hybrid team that can leverage human and automation efforts simultaneously.

3. More inclusive technology use

With the widespread availability of numerous no-code as well as low-code AI technologies, a number of jobs will be more inclusive. Professionals interested in technology but lacking technical competence will be able to use and contribute to these tools with relative ease. Once these technologies are widely adopted, organizations will retrain their employees to utilize them, putting lesser emphasis on the “hard” skills previously deemed essential.

Hyperautomation may have first attracted attention because of Gartner, but it has now gone beyond its initial promise. There are hyperautomation offerings and service providers now available, and this technology strategy will prove influential in 2023 — regardless of whether the Gartner Magic Quadrant is relevant or obsolete.