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Global companies were badly impacted by historically high inflation rates and conflicting economic signals in the second half of 2022, and these effects will continue far into 2023. This has forced various IT leadership teams to choose which technical investments to hold onto and which to get rid of. Almost 45% of CEOs and CFOs said in the Gartner report "3 New Realities to Drive 2023 Planning expenditure on digital technology investments to boost performance efficiency would be among the last things they would decrease, according to the article "as Inflation Response Cools Economies."

What does that mean for automation investment decisions? According to the 2023 State of Process Orchestration Survey, 91% of IT leaders say their company plans to increase investment in process automation over the next 24 months, up from 88% of IT executives who responded to the identical query the previous year. Why? One of the most common investments made by firms to achieve significant cost reductions is process orchestration, a closely linked concept to process automation. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, process orchestration refers to the act of tying together all the moving parts, or endpoints, of a business process, such as people, systems, and devices, to increase the efficiency of automation.

How to Save Expenses With Process Automation

Even if they didn't initially, many of the most well-known businesses in the world today function similarly to IT firms. As a part of its IT modernization and digital transformation activities, they have made significant investments in process automation. Many people aspire to be like Amazon, where automated procedures appear to operate magically and integrate flawlessly with the whole consumer experience. Automation perfection does not happen overnight or even all at once.

Here is where you should begin. It is important to review and audit the present business procedures to see which ones might save you the most money. Examine internal and customer-facing processes that can save you time. For instance, providing contact center procedures with automation and digital self-service capabilities are tried-and-true methods to save costs and boost customer happiness, which encourages repeat business. In a different situation, automating internal procedures might spare staff members from doing pointless, monotonous labor and allow them to use their time more effectively on projects that will have a positive financial impact.

Before beginning a comprehensive overhaul of your process automation, it's a good idea to ask yourself, "Where may process automation lower my organization's expenditures the most?" Start with a simple proof of concept (PoC), where you may test the idea using an automated version of a real business process. Present the results to technical and commercial stakeholders after that. You may then expand the scope of your process automation to encompass more internal or customer-facing corporate operations to realize even larger cost savings and operational advantages.

Repairing Damaged Or Inefficient Processes

How successfully do my automated business processes interact with one another? is an important question to ask. Many attempts at automation fail because processes are too complex for the technology being utilized to automate them. The existence of several endpoints (people, systems, and devices) in a process that is not adequately coordinated with one another is another option. In the aforementioned State of Process Orchestration survey, 72% of participants said it is challenging to sustain real-world, business-critical processes.

To put it another way, you might not be reaping the additional cost savings and efficiency that come from coordinating your operations even if you employ technology to automate processes. RPA, event buses, AI tools, and other technologies are already used by you. Orchestration may be used by any hyper-automation tech stacks. Some of the most frequent problems without orchestration include:

Broken or ineffective processes: Because the individual automation are not integrated, the resulting end-to-end process is not fully automated. Customers or employees may become irate as a result of the intended automation not working as expected.

Process rigidity: It may be hard to change a process since doing so would require changing numerous systems, which would take time and be inefficient.

Inability to analyze: A lot of teams do not have access to the vital measures that show if a process is running correctly and effectively. You cannot make a change to a problem that you are blind to.

Your business may leverage microservices-based apps, RPA bots, APIs, IoT devices, legacy systems, AI/ML technologies, and people in automated operations. Instead of seeing these processes in isolation, orchestration enables different endpoints to work together by leveraging their investments to obtain the highest ROI and results.

Let's use automated inventory control and retail fulfillment as an example. If an inventory system and a fulfillment system are unable to effectively communicate, a store may order too many or too few items. Overproduction leads to markdowns and financial losses. Having too few leads to irritation and customer churn. Process orchestration allows you to ensure that each step of an automated process runs smoothly and in the right proportion from start to finish.

How to Evaluate Your Process Orchestration Suitability

You might have already started down the path toward process orchestration and automation, or you might want to start testing things out in 2023. The majority of businesses in the current economy want to become more efficient and save money. Ask yourself a few crucial questions when you assess your work.

Can I first identify and prioritize the automation initiatives that will most significantly reduce both internal expenses and external customers' costs? Can I try a small proof-of-concept (PoC) or pilot project to apply early learning to a larger automation project, second? Finally, is it possible to synchronize several process endpoints to optimize the return on my automation investments?

While 2020 saw a lot of change and the emergence of new technologies, 2023 may be the year to consider how to make the most of automation investments to boost productivity and yield greater profits.