In today’s fast-paced landscape, businesses are facing the challenge of striking a balance between automation and maintaining a personalized customer experience.

Meanwhile, the evolving business landscape and the concept of “automation” are widely implemented. Businesses, regardless of size, are increasingly adopting automation to streamline its processes, cut costs and boost efficiency. As a result, automation has not only increased workforce capacity, but also enhanced customer experience by avoiding negative interactions. For example, Eversource Energy started using automation tools, such as robotic process automation, process mining, chatbots and analytics, in 2018 to enhance the employee and customer experience.

“We took the voice of the employee in building that initial backlog of opportunities to automate and to look at understanding that automation was not necessarily the key for everything,” said Rockie Solomon (pictured, right), business intelligent automation lead at Eversource. “It wasn’t a silver bullet. What we needed to do was look at each process individually and determine which ones should be automated and which ones should actually be abolished. And the employees helped us with that.”

Solomon and Huzaifah Basrai (left), managing director of process AI and automation at Ernst & Young Global Ltd., spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at the UiPath FORWARD event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how to successfully implement automation tools to enhance the employee and customer experience. (* Disclosure below.)

Portfolio management for tracking changes in automation solutions

Organizations should consider portfolio management to address the changing value and aging of automation solutions, according to Basrai. These solutions now include chatbots, intelligent document processing and generative AI. The value of these technologies is determined by how much value they bring and for how long, with the constant retirement of automation that no longer provides the required value.

Determining the roadmap for implementing new innovations is based on the business needs and objectives, Basrai added. Organizations should consider portfolio management to address the changing value and aging of automated solutions.

“The way we look at it from a value perspective, is giving me x number of hours back or so much of revenue, whatever it might be, over time,” he said. “If your business process changes and you are not getting that value from it, you retire them. And we do that constant retiring automation so that we don’t have to run them all the time if it’s not bringing the value required.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the UiPath FORWARD event:

(* Disclosure: Accenture PLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Accenture nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE