Study Reveals Companies’ Automation Priorities in the Race to Digital Transformation

When virtually any business workflow can be automated, which do enterprise executives say are the most important and deliver the greatest value? That’s the focus of the Kofax 2022 Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study just published by Kofax, a leading supplier of intelligent automation software for digital workflow transformation. First published in 2019, the annual global report has become the insider study by detailing companies’ intelligent automation ambitions, challenges and outcomes.

“This year, as companies navigate a drastically altered business landscape, they face myriad new challenges, from supply chain disruptions to workforce shortages. Yet the ‘New Normal’ is old news—customers, prospects and other constituents are not accepting excuses for falling short of objectives,” says Kathleen Delaney, Chief Marketing Officer at Kofax. “At a moment when virtually all companies agree digital workflow transformation is key, we wanted to understand where they’re focusing their priorities, and what types of automation yield the greatest benefit. Having these insights will help executives apply their limited time and resources more intelligently.”

According to the study, organizations are focused on the following high-value customer, operational and financial workflows:

85% – Accounts payable automation
84% – Transaction processing
83% – Bank statement processing
83% – Document security management
82% – Invoice processing automation
78% – Onboarding
78% – Other
77% – Digital mailroom automation
77% – Claims processing

“One of our early projects was related to the transfer of patients between facilities and then documenting it,” says Robert Duber, Process Automation Manager at University Hospitals, headquartered in Shaker Heights, Ohio. “Patient transfer was a manual activity and we saved quite a bit of time by automating it. As the pandemic took hold, we started to look into capacity issues and found that automation freed up staff and yielded the time needed to improve the quality of patient care.”

Enterprises are prioritizing these workflows for a variety of reasons, from improving the customer experience to driving better decision making. Specifically, executives say automating these functions are providing the greatest benefits:

94% – Optimizing customer acquisition and retention
93% – Running the business
93% – Maximizing the value of IT investments
93% – Improving customer engagement across multiple channels
83% – Ensuring compliance, data management and security
82% – Enhancing employee productivity and satisfaction
77% – Transforming back-office operations
77% – Gaining customer insights through data analysis

The study also details the high-value workflows that yield the greatest ROI, the challenges organizations need to overcome to automate these high-value processes, and the progress enterprises are making in their digital transformation efforts.

“The digital-first business environment has exposed a chasm between companies that have transformed through automation and AI and those companies that have underinvested and find themselves weighed down by an analog business culture,” says Chris Huff, Chief Strategy Officer at Kofax. “Leveraging intelligent automation to digitally transform how work gets done is the opportunity of our generation. Companies across every industry are winning by focusing on delivering frictionless and delightful experiences for their customers, while at the same time creating productive and purposeful experiences for their employees so they can engage in more meaningful activities.”