Strategic partnerships and automation: A powerful combination for business growth

AI and automation technologies are advancing at record speed, but companies are setting off on their automation journeys at different paces. One of the biggest drivers of adoption is proving the value of the technology by applying it to a business problem.

Organizations often build robotic process automation, intelligent document processing, specialized machine learning, or generative AI solutions in siloes or limit them to tasks specific to one group. These disparate technologies often fail to provide their full value potential until they are brought together to build holistic AI and automation solutions that impact business processes spanning across functional groups within an organization. Even federal agencies recognize the importance of optimizing mission results with Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence.

While organizations may have automated processes, the challenge becomes bringing those capabilities together, adding the missing ones, and staying current on the latest advancements. This is where building a comprehensive approach to enable these technologies to work together can drive true business value and insights.

Once an organization has progressed past the initial technology hump and has some business process automations running, the next challenge is typically scalability. An organization’s automation team can only oversee so much throughput, and as the backlog builds, finding a technology partner becomes crucial to help overcome sizable business cases, discover and build more automation, and manage existing ones. A technology partner can offer insight through supporting other companies with their automation journey and understands impactful use cases for AI and business process automation and knows how to run automation programs and platforms.

What is business process automation?

Business process automation is the use of technology to automate manual, repetitive tasks and streamline business processes. The steps to adopting automation in your organization include identifying what processes can be automated, as well as workflow analysis, integration, and implementation. After initial implementation, monitoring, optimization, and scalability come next. Locating a strategic partner with the right expertise can help your organization overcome the natural challenges of your automation journey.

Why does my business need automation?

Allowing automation and technology to replace manual steps in a workflow allows for increased efficiency, improved accuracy and cost savings. Business process automation saves employees time, increases employee satisfaction, and allows them to focus on tasks of higher value. Organizations that embrace automation are often more agile and responsive to market changes, creating a competitive advantage.

The role of business process automation as a key driver for growth

Business process automation is a strategic initiative for many organizations to realize cost savings and scale a business. From automating mundane, repetitive tasks to more complex processes, automation efficiently reduces overall costs. This allows organizations to reallocate their time to higher-value tasks. Business process automation can also offer organizations improved accuracy and consistency, faster decision-making, and enhanced customer experience.

Many organizations don’t know where to start their automation journey or don’t have the in-house expertise to get started. That’s where a strategic technology partner can play an important role. Every situation is different, but often, organizations need a partner who can take ownership by implementing and running the business process automation program and platform.

Defining a strategic partnership and the importance of having the right technology partner

A strategic managed services partnership goes beyond the typical vendor-client relationship. A partnership like this aims to align strategies and grow jointly. Finding the right technology partner opens the door to opportunities for companies to bring capabilities together, resulting in mutual benefits and growth along your automation journey. For example, CGI’s stays in alignment with our top automation partner, UiPath, to synchronize our capabilities and expertise.

A true strategic partnership is not one-sided, and you should assess your partners to see if they are saying: “What can you do for us?” versus “What can we accomplish together?” The key is finding a technology partner with the expertise your organization needs to succeed together.

Selecting the right technology partner and aligning your strategy

There are plenty of criteria to consider when selecting a strategic partner:

• What are the credentials of your prospective partner?
• Do they have the right technology partners and the level of partnership that aligns with your organization’s needs?
• Do they have the scale required for your organization?
• Do they have the geographies covered that are required for the area of the business that needs to be interacted with?
• Have they helped organizations of similar size in a similar industry, and do they have client references?
• What is their body of work and existing use cases?

After identifying the right partner for you, the next question you may ask yourself is, “How do we align our business process automation strategy with our new partner?” The bottom line is that an organization will have its own strategy, and a partner can only influence so much. Many partners in the automation space will push to automate everything across an organization, but the organization may not be ready for that yet.

That’s where having the right partner comes into play. A strategic partner’s first approach is to understand an organization’s strategy and align it with that. The best partner will help an organization understand the potential savings and opportunities of automating different use cases across the business and help guide their automation journey in the direction that makes sense.

Getting started on your automation journey with your technology partner

Organizations will face challenges on their business process automation journey, often preventing an organization from getting started. However, those challenges do not need to be overcome alone – knowing when and how to seek the support of a partner is crucial to an organization’s success. Identifying and aligning with an appropriate strategic partner will help drive growth and efficiency in your organization.

Want to learn more about how to make a managed services partnership work for your organization? Download our Executive’s guide to managed services today.