Automation is Critical for Digitization

By Amy Townsend

Enterprises understand that to remain competitive they must go fully digital with customer-facing documents and processes. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to operate in a completely digital manner. All interactions, whether with customers or internally, are being held remotely. Furthermore, customers still expect a seamless experience – requiring organizations to leverage modern content platforms that can perform at higher levels of scalability and integration. Becoming a digital enterprise offers many competitive advantages, but for many organizations, the major roadblock to digital transformation is paper and the processes associated with it. The Post-Pandemic race to digital means focusing on automation.

The workflow and content automation (WCA) market is rapidly maturing as enterprises are now realizing that they need to shift away from the human creation of documents tied to processes and allow the application to automate document creation based on rules. The entire buying process, from start to finish, needs to be approached in an automated or semi-automated way. This is something that will be here to stay even when the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

What Is Workflow and Content Automation?

Workflow and content automation– previously referred to as advanced digital transaction management (DTM)—is a business category that combines workflow capabilities integrated with intelligent document generation to allow the creation of smart document processes that can be easily analyzed to know what is and what is not working in an enterprise.

WCA is designed to be used by business people and can be tied to any document-oriented business process particularly for contracts, loans, and intensive, multi-document forms processes like mortgages. 

Historically, enterprises relied on their basic associates, editors, and document generation software to enable document automation. WCA consolidates all three into a single category- combining analytics, workflow and process optimization, document generation, and integration through connections with middleware. 

Use Cases for WCA

According to the Harvard Business Review, 73% of business leaders said that delivering a relevant and reliable customer experience is critical to their company’s overall business performance. In order to remain competitive, enterprises need to focus on customer journeys by incorporating technologies and digital strategies that set them apart. Paper processes are slowing down business and negatively impacting the customer’s experience.

Three key benefits of implementing workflow and content automation into your business strategy are: 

1. Faster digital transactions
2. Faster time to revenue
3. Reduced errors and human oversight

There are a few areas where organizations will see positive ROI as a result of implementing WCA. Let’s dive into some examples.

• Forms Replacement – Digitizing your business starts with forms. Eliminating paper should be a primary goal. 
• Basic Document Generation – The requirement to generate basic documents is accelerating. With a local approach, more documents can be automatically generated based on rules.
• High-Volume Document Generation – Many areas need to perform large volumes of content generation on a regular basis. Traditionally, this was referred to as customer communications management (CCM). WCA takes this capability to the next level by enabling organizations to produce high volumes of documents with very high levels of personalization. 
• Document/Text Analytics – The ability to accurately read and understand what should be in the document will help to inform humans on how to improve current or future documents. There is a key shift towards using AI for document and content analytics, and it’s highly likely that document/text analytics will become embedded in every WCA process. 

Choosing a WCA Provider

There are some key capabilities to consider when choosing a workflow & content automation provider. These include:

1. Provides document generation (both in real-time and batch)
2. Can understand both structured and unstructured data
3. Low-code – reducing the required effort from the designer/developer and participants
4. Mobile and multi-channel enabled (e.g. email, instant message, texting, IoT devices, and existing websites)
5. Calls on features like digital signatures, faxes, electronic forms, mobile apps, API gateways, etc. (as needed)

The Aragon Research Globe for Workflow and Content Automation, 2020 evaluates fourteen key providers leading the charge in the WCA market. 

Bottom Line

In order to stay competitive, enterprises must offer a seamless digital experience to both customers and employees. This can be accomplished by integrating workflow and content automation into the business strategy. WCA speeds up processes, time to revenue, and reduces error. Schedule a strategy day with our analysts to learn where you can improve business processes with WCA. 

Sign up for Aragon Foresight to view our Workflow and Content Automation 2020-2026 Visual Forecast, which graphically represents the predicted growth trajectory of the WCA market.