Shaping the future of business operations through intelligent automation

Welcome Adam. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself?

Adam Bujak: Absolutely. I joined Capgemini in 2007 and am responsible for helping our multinational clients implement an augmented workforce through applying intelligent automation to operations, combining core processes in their back, middle, and front office. I lead a team that delivers intelligent automation solutions – consisting of artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA) and smart analytics – at scale to our global clients.

I also have the pleasure of changing my perspective for five days a year in my role as an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management at Reutlingen University in Germany.

Recently you’ve been busy leading development of a new offer called Intelligent Process Automation. Could you tell us a little more about it?

Yes, these are really exciting times! Our Intelligent Process Automation offer is part of the Capgemini Group’s Perform AI portfolio, which has the ambition of becoming the premier AI-infused IT services and consulting company in the world.

Our research shows that less than a third of organizations currently promote data-driven decision-making, apply AI to improve their customer experience, or use AI in their operations. We can achieve this by embedding AI across all dimensions of our offering, not only augmenting our clients’ business processes or redesigning them with cognitive components, but also infusing AI into our business applications play, boosting our existing data and analytics services by turning them into mission-critical data and AI powerhouses, and further fuelling business model innovation opportunities for our clients.

Coming back to the Intelligent Process Automation offer we are building at Capgemini, our vision is to put the client at the heart of all activities and stimulate the erosion of organizational silos around front, middle, and back-office processes, resulting in the emergence of a new, borderless, highly-automated client-centric organization that benefits from cost optimization, quality improvement, and high operational efficiency.

What would you say is unique about Capgemini’s Intelligent Process Automation offer?

That’s a very good question. Our ambition is to help every one of our clients create an augmented workforce, keeping in mind their varying maturity levels. In order to do this, our offer is built on five key services – IPA Advice, Transform, Deliver, Operate, and Innovate. As an organization, you can also move all of these aspects under our roof and benefit from our Augmented Delivery Platform, which combines our talents, profound process expertise, and Intelligent Automation Platform to focus on fast outcomes without the hassle of developing, managing, and operating critical components yourself.

We are realistic, pragmatic, and aligned with where most clients are with intelligent automation today. Our added value is built on our strong reputation as a trusted partner with focus on the transparency of our solutions. I should also say that we’re walking the talk and have adopted our Intelligent Process Automation portfolio across our own business, including our delivery, human resources, finance and accounting, and supply chain functions.

You’ve already touched on it earlier, but could you talk more about the benefits and business outcomes of implementing Intelligent Process Automation?

Yes, absolutely. The execution of intelligent automation requires a combination of modern transformation consulting driven by design thinking and strong transformation methodology such as Capgemini’s ESOAR (Eliminate, Standardize, Optimize, Automate, Robotize) approach and our “Five Senses of Intelligent Automation.” Building on both, we embed our deep industry and domain expertise into our Digital Global Enterprise Model to combine the people, process, and technology dimension under one outcome-focused digital umbrella.

As organizations look to drive benefits, we’ve examined which use cases are among the most frequently automated. We looked at 64 use cases across seven functions and segmented them on two dimensions – complexity of implementation and benefit realized. The figure below shows that only around a third (32%) have implemented “quick wins” at scale – those use cases that are not only easy to implement, but also have a high benefit upside. In contrast, over a third (36%) have implemented “case-by-case” use cases, which are difficult to implement and don’t necessarily deliver a huge return. There’s often the perception that if a use case is complex to implement, it must deliver great benefits, regardless of whether this is the case or not. You can easily draw your own conclusions.

Finally, could you give us your views on the future of intelligent automation?

That’s a fascinating topic! How long have we got? Predictions beyond 2019 all point in the same direction – a client-centric organization built on intelligent processes that can plug into broader ecosystems – driven by blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) – resulting in a hyper-connected enterprise that creates new sources of value through collaboration of multiple organizations.

Of course, organizations that embrace emerging technologies around intelligent automation and combine them with a deep understanding of their processes will certainly succeed in eroding these organizational silos to achieve a single, aligned office in a shorter space of time.

We will also witness a greater emergence of digital talent that has completed nanodegrees and attended intelligent automation academies offered by some of the world’s top employers. This will help organizations embrace the technology-related complexity on their journey towards a client-focused, aligned office able to successfully operate and compete in a hyper-connected world. Seeing the human at the center of this exciting transformation, we’re already working on AI algorithms that can better distribute work between humans and machines (see Taoufik Amri’s article “Intelligent orchestration”), taking into consideration their core strengths.

Intelligent automation focused change management will continue to help drive adoption and mitigate the risk of exponential expectations hampered by linear execution.

At Capgemini we’re really excited to contribute to the creation of an augmented workforce of the future. Putting people at the center of all these activities at the same time, we have an ambition to be recognized as a responsible and sustainable leader that uses our expertise to create a positive impact.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Intelligent Process Automation offering can stimulate the erosion of organizational silos around your front, middle and back-office processes, resulting in the emergence of a new, borderless, highly automated client-centric organization, contact: adam.bujak@capgemini.com 

Dr. Adam Bujak  is an expert in intelligent automation, business process transformation and strategic management. He heads Capgemini’s Business Services’ Intelligent Automation Practice, helping multinational clients to embrace the future of an augmented workforce in front, middle, and back office.