Surprise: Automation isn’t a big, one-size blanket to drape over every single business process. Shocker: Just because a business or information technology process should be automated does not mean it should be. And no, it doesn’t replace human business sense or process planning.

So what is automation, exactly, and how should companies be using or planning to use it? It is just one more tool companies can use toward the goal of digital transformation, according to Elena Christopher (pictured, right), senior vice president research at HFS Research Ltd.

Intelligently applying — or not applying — automation is how to produce better business outcomes and end-user experiences, she added. “Not all processes are created equal, because you don’t want to spend the time and effort … to optimize a process if it’s not critical to your business, if you’re not going to get lift from it or some ROI,” Christopher said.

Christopher spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the UiPath Forward event in Las Vegas. Joining them were Jean Younger (center), vice president and Six Sigma leader at Security Benefit Life Insurance Co., and Amy Chandler (left), assistant vice president and director of internal controls at Security Benefit. They discussed the evolving role of automation and robotics process automation in business (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

User Ex end game

A little reverse engineering can help companies decide what to automate, according to Christopher. Put yourself in the role of an employee, customer or end user and ask: What experience do I want to have? Then consider how automation can help create it.

Automating controls is a good example of a smart use case, according to Younger. “You’re not going to have to test as much — from an associate process owner paying attention to their process to the internal auditors,” she said.

Younger’s company has cut 14,000 hours of drudgery via automation over the past year. The company also made the mistake of automating a poorly designed process and has paid for it in maintenance, she explained.

The “wing-to-wing” approach links one process to others to create a hyper-efficient chain of automation. This ultimately smooths hiccups in all directions.

“If you only focus on a little piece of it, you don’t know what’s happening to the data before it gets to you, and you don’t know what’s going to happen to it when it leaves you,” Chandler said. 

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath Forward. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath Forward event. Neither UiPath, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE