How Hyperautomation Will Impact Global Supply Chains

Automation in global supply chains is nothing new. In fact, companies have been seeking new ways to automate tasks with machines since the Industrial Revolution. Consider some of the benefits technology can bring about and it’s clear to see why: automation technology lowers the cost of manufacturing processes and improves the consistency of products, along with the speed at which they are produced.

Different types of automation have been developed to meet the needs of businesses that choose to integrate the technology, leading to lower cost of processes and consistency of outcomes across industries. One of the latest developments in automation is hyperautomation, which has been featured at the top of several 2020 trending technologies lists. Yet, despite coverage on the subject, the way it functions in a particular context makes it somewhat difficult to understand.

Although hyperautomation is constantly developing and evolving, the technology isn’t going anywhere. Here’s a look at what hyperautomation is and how it will function within the supply chain industry. 

What is Hyperautomation and How Does it Work?

To put it simply, hyperautomation starts with traditional robotic process automation (RPA), a specific type of business process automation that uses programmable software “bots” to complete low-risk, structured tasks. An example of these low-risk tasks might include data migration, which can be mentally taxing and leave work prone to human error.

RPA software, in its most basic form, is unintelligent and lacks the agility required to handle skill-based, nonstandardized tasks that complex supply chains demand. RPA, in turn, relies on human intervention. This software can be built in-house by programmers and maintained by business analysts or implemented with the help of an RPA provider. 

No matter how the software is integrated into an organization, it requires monumental amounts of human observation and interaction to ensure that processes are being done correctly and efficiently. This is where business analysts would traditionally make it their daily routine to maintain RPA. Here is where hyperautomation steps up to create a more agile system.

Hyperautomation builds on the momentum that RPA started. With the integration of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, process mining and natural language processing, RPA advances to become what is known as hyperautomation – an end-to-end automation solution. 

As an end-to-end automation solution, hyperautomation can liberate workers from mundane and repetitive tasks across industries. The difference hyperautomation makes is that business analysts don’t need to slave over the tedious tasks; the amount of human interaction required is a fraction of the previous amount.

Since hyperautomation is an ever-changing landscape, it’s hard to identify exactly how it will function for each company or even industry, but it’s easy to predict that more tasks, which previously required a significant amount of human effort, will be fully automatable through hyperautomation. 

Hyperautomation and Global Supply Chains

Hyperautomation is developing as an overlap between cognitive RPA and intelligent computer vision to automate beyond tasks set in well-defined business rules. The result of this cognitive augmentation has led to the potential of an increased adoption of hyperautomation within the global supply chain industry. 

Since the technology has the ability to mimic the actions of human employees, hyperautomation can be used in capturing, replicating and processing data, communicating with customers, and making judgments and adjustments to its processes, according to past actions.

The strategic combination of all the tools that make up hyperautomation enable the streamlined ability to complete all tasks within a process without human intervention. This means that from beginning to end, the processes the intelligent software is taught to do will be refined and streamlined to become the most efficient process possible. 

RPA has already proven to be a cost-efficient way for supply chain companies to optimize their operations. With the implementations of other technologies, RPA becomes hyperautomation, which is end-to-end better suited to optimize supply chain operations. 

The technology presents the opportunity for global supply chains to streamline operations, while simultaneously reducing costs and risk involved. How is risk involved in supply chain? Global trade can be impacted by anything from government changes, all the way down to data integrity and quality. The devastating impact of COVID-19 offers the most extreme example.

While hyperautomation may not be able to protect supply chains from pandemics on the scale of COVID-19 or significant government policy changes, it can help protect company data by reducing the amount of human interaction with the information and by making more accurate decisions that can retroactively eliminate incorrect changes in data. Reducing risk will save supply chain companies monumental amounts of time and money.

Additionally, this technology has the potential to work in real time, around the clock, enabling top performance even under the worst conditions. Companies that implement hyperautomation can count on seeing success, even in some of the most trying times.

Will Hyperautomation Replace Supply Chain Workers?

Ultimately, hyperautomation will enable more efficient, accurate, secure and cost-effective processes within global supply chains. It will relieve workers of the mundane tasks that contribute to low productivity and employee engagement. Business analysts will have the ability to step away from monitoring the technology itself and instead work with it to make more accurate business predictions and decisions.

This doesn’t come as a warning for workers. Hyperautomation will create the opportunity for companies to focus their human efforts on more cognitive work. The technology will present new opportunities and ways to examine and interpret data, meaning that instead of manually laboring over data, workers will have the opportunity to spend more time on interpreting and applying the results and predictions. So, while it’s likely that jobs will change as business technologies advance, don’t count on jobs being eliminated by the software.

To summarize, hyperautomation will continue to integrate new technologies, impact even more employees and accelerate automation. The technology is ever-changing, so within the next decade, or even year, it could achieve even more than anyone would have thought possible. With hyperautomation, global supply chains will function in more efficient, cost-effective ways across future business processes.