The road to analytics excellence is paved with automation

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As organisations embark on becoming more digitally enabled, the road is paved with many twists and turns. Data science teams and analysts, as well as the teams they serve, know full well that the path to analytic excellence is not linear. The good news is organisations have opportunities to unlock value at each step along the way. The pattern by which companies develop strength within their data is highly repeatable, underpinned by more ways to manipulate data and unlock the benefits of automation. 

While automation in and of itself isn’t digital transformation, since new processes are not being launched, it frequently delivers huge value and lays the framework for organizations to make major operational improvements. With automation in place, organizations can harness more analytical approaches with modelling enhanced by AI and ML. Once these core capabilities move out of the sole domain of technical IT teams and are put into the hands of more domain experts, true transformation of business process occurs and more overall value is derived from analytics.

Delivering value from the start

Automation is typically one of the earliest steps in overhauling enterprise analytics. In my experience, this step won’t deliver as much value as those that follow – but it’s still significant and, beyond that, vital. Let’s take a large manufacturer automating its VAT tax recovery process as an example. While some might assume that this type of automation simply saves time, many companies are not recovering 100% of their VAT because the manual, legacy process has a cost, and if the VAT is below a given value, it might not be worth the recovery.

Chief data and analytics officer (CDAO), Alteryx.

When this process is automated, 100% VAT recovery yields become possible – the hard cash savings for the business can’t be ignored. Finance teams can automate many of the manual processes required to close their books each quarter, reducing the time it takes to close from a matter of weeks to days. 

Audit teams can upgrade from manual audits repeated every couple of years to continuous audits which check for issues daily and report any issues automatically and instantly. From reducing cost and risk to increasing revenue and saving time for employees (your greatest asset), automation is having a huge impact on organizations around the globe. With this lens, it’s evident that automation amounts to much more than time savings.

Two varying approaches

There are two very different approaches that organizations have historically taken to drive automation. The first, which has a more limited impact, is to form a centralized team and have that small team attempt to automate processes around the business. The second approach is to upscale employees to allow every worker to be capable of automating a process. This latter approach can scale at a very different pace and impact. Organizations can upskill tens of thousands of employees and automate millions of manual processes. This would be very difficult with a small team trying to perform the same automation. It can lead to substantial business benefits, including increased productivity, reduced costs and greater revenue.

Historically, of course, the latter approach has also been nigh on impossible to execute – given the requirement for familiarity with coding language to use code-heaving technologies. But that was then – today, when mature low-code systems present a massive opportunity to upskill employees to automate processes simply by asking the right questions. This isn’t simply an alternative route – it should be the only route for organizations that are serious about achieving analytical excellence. 

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Code-free platforms remove the need for departments to wait in queues for the IT teams to deliver an application that fits their needs. It puts the power of automated analytical and development capabilities into the hands of business domain experts with the specific expertise needed to get valuable insight from analytics quicker. Therefore, upskilling efforts need to be directed towards making such a broad data-literate culture possible.

For many organisations, a common strategy for driving upskilling and capability is to focus on its new employees. With attrition and growth rates at many businesses ranging between 5 and 10%, organisations can face the challenge of replacing as much as a quarter of their entire team moving on every 18 months. Providing training and technology for inevitable new joiners to automate processes is therefore essential for every department to cut time to drive efficiencies and upskill the overall workforce base. 

This is already taking place within the education sector, with many schools beginning to implement automation technologies and analytic techniques in their curriculum, particularly in business schools and accounting, marketing and supply chain courses. Businesses that do not take notice and look to prioritize these skills as well will likely not only continue to suffer from the inefficiencies of manual processes but could also risk the attrition cost of failing to provide their employees with the modern tools that are being taught in the base curriculums of these degree programs.

Automation is the first step towards analytics excellence, but its relevance doesn’t stop there. It’s through automation that leaders can unlock clear, traceable benefits for their organizations in terms of overhauled processes as well as setting them on the right path when it comes to upskilling and democratizing data.

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Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer (CDAO), Alteryx.

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