Finding a Use Case for Hyperautomation: A Case Study

Hyperautomation has long been in our thoughts and conversations. But whenever I mention it to clients, sales teams, or even other automation practitioners, the same question comes up: How do we find hyperautomation use cases?

To answer this question, I’ll discuss a case study that was initially presented as an automation request and became a hyperautomation engagement. But first, let’s have a quick review of hyperautomation.

Hyperautomation vs. RPA: What’s the Difference?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) meets the general goal of reducing costs, improving productivity, and reducing error by automating businesses processes. This is all well and good, but there was a point where it became important to look beyond RPA to maximize the business outcome.

How do we arrive at this conclusion? We need to look at a business situation holistically, which brings in the need to look at various technologies working in tandem. This is where Hyperautomation fits in. With the changing business needs, management of complex processes, and advancement of technologies, Hyperautomation offers a structured approach to reduce process debt and standardize processes to realize the automation goals.

Hyperautomation includes many other technologies and processes, encompassing but not limited to:

• Process discovery/mining
• Process re-engineering
• Robotic Process Automation
• Conversational bots
• Intelligent Business Process Management Systems (iBPMS)
• Low-code and/or no-code platforms
• Integration platforms
• Artificial Intelligence

In short, hyperautomation provides a holistic approach that incorporates many other technologies in an efficient whole. It can do more to reduce process debt and standardize processes (thus realizing businesses’ automation goals) than any single component.

The Case Study: Incorporating a New Business Stream into a Vacation Rental Site

In this case, our client ran an online platform that allowed homeowners to list vacation rental properties. As part of their growth strategy, our client wanted to extend their platform to include selected hotel segments – i.e., to allow hotels to list rooms on the vacation rental platform. However, these hotels were not equipped with property management systems; their activities were mostly manual.

To encourage hotels to list on the rental site, our client hired an outside firm to contact hotels and guide them through the onboarding process. The firm used about 30 agents to manage outreach, secure contracts with the hotels, and help hotel managers list their property on the platform.

Challenges

A few months into the new initiative, the following challenges began to emerge:

• Conversion hovered around 30 percent. A significant number of hoteliers initially expressed interest, but never listed their property on the site.
• Turnarounds were slow; it took 15 to 30+ days to get a hotel listed on the site.
• Large number of errors. The manual listing processes resulted in many data errors and a lot of unnecessary work in consequence.
• Disappointing performance. Despite a target of 150K, the current volume was about 30K per month.

The client recognized that automation could reduce bottlenecks and wasted effort in their process. So, they reached out to us, asking if RPA could solve these issues. Certainly, RPA could help, but a more holistic view was needed to completely remedy the situation.

©Absolutdata/Infogain

Approach and Solution Overview

The first step in this situation is always to deeply understand the process. Because there was no documentation available, we conducted design thinking workshops, interviews, a shadowing session, and customer journey mapping to detail what was really happening. Below is a high-level breakdown of our findings:

Source: ©Absolutdata/Infogain

Adding Innovation 

The above plan addressed the client’s stated challenge – and they were thrilled. But we asked ourselves, is there another area we can improve?

And there was: how room and property amenities were added to the listing. At this point, amenities were added manually; agents looked at images of the room/property and confirmed the amenities. But couldn’t this too be automated? It could and was. Using computer vision, we could automate this process as well. (And amenities, as everyone knows, can really sell a booking!)

Here’s a simplistic view of the end solution:

Source: ©Absolutdata/Infogain

Outcome Delivered 

Now that we’ve thoroughly examined the approach, what was the result?

1. 2X more properties listed. In other words, better conversion leads ultimately to an increase in revenue.
2. Slashed TCO by 40%. Now the entire operation is performed by 3 bots and 5 employees – instead of the 30ish contracted workers.
3. Drastically reduced turnaround time. The client’s target of 5 days, but 71% of listings were completed in 1.5 days.
4. Improved data quality and accuracy, which led to a more efficient process and less re-done work.

Always Be Alert for Hyperautomation Opportunities

In conclusion, we automation professionals should always be aware of the possibility of hyperautomation. The typical approach would be to jump into the RPA route (as requested by the client) and focus on that. But as practitioners, we need to look at the business problem holistically. It’s up to us to deliver a solution that maximizes the business outcome – even if clients don’t specifically request hyperautomation by name. It may be the best solution to their challenges.

Authored by:  Radhakrishnan R, AVP – Automation, Data & AI at Infogain

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