Who’s Your Automation Champion? (Spoiler Alert: It Should Be Everyone.)

In business today, automation is a strategic imperative that should be embedded as a core responsibility in a company’s culture. But who’s in charge of driving this shift? Ideally, everyone. The buy-in for automation must transcend departments and hierarchies, permeating the entire organization. 

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Do You Need a Chief Automation Officer?

Even though automation is a critical element for organizations who want to stay competitive in the age of digital transformation and AI, many organizations still treat it as a temporary initiative. Some still rely on a fragmented, siloed approach within specific departments. In fact, most big companies are working on digital and AI transformations, but they’ve only managed to capture around 31 percent of the expected revenue boost. 

According to a Forrester report, there’s been a lot of buzz around adding the role of Chief Automation Officer (CAO) into the mix as the point person for automation initiatives. But is a whole new C-suite role necessary to successfully implement AI and automation into your organization?

The desire to create a dedicated position to lead automation initiatives stems from the rapid widespread recognition of the pivotal role that automation plays in streamlining business operations and enhancing efficiency. According to Deloitte, process automation is recognized as a central element in the digital transformation strategies of 70 percent of organizations. Could a more collaborative C-suite approach lead to better implementation and adoption, however?

Instead of pouring resources and energy into creating new roles, organizations should turn to executive sponsorship and leadership of advanced automation programs at the highest and most influential levels. This type of initiative requires support from across the organization. IT and product teams, the C-suite, and even board members must play pivotal roles in scaling automation efforts. Executive leaders need the appropriate knowledge of the business, its architecture and network to be able to drive real change.

Who Leads the Automation Charge?

Tap senior leaders as your automation champions. These folks are tasked with driving digital transformation by optimizing resources. They must be able to keep pace with evolving customer demands and fluid market and technology dynamics. Using intelligent automation (IA), these leaders build a pathway to efficiency and agility, streamlining workflows, enabling the organization to allocate resources to focus on higher-value activities, while maintaining compliance according to internal and external policies. 

If, for instance, a global financial services firm wants to reduce manual, repetitive tasks like account changes and routine inquiries for its customer support operations, the COO could champion the use of AI, robotic process automation (RPA), natural language processing (NLP) and other cognitive technologies. The initiative to integrate digital workers would streamline workflows by automating routine processes such as data entry and ticket triage. Implementing IA can also incorporate compliance checks and automated audit trails.  

To succeed and unleash the full potential of IA, organizations need to foster collaborations with their sales, finance, compliance, legal and other functions, as they deploy automation to boost productivity and revenue opportunities across the enterprise. It demands strategic vision, cross-functional collaboration, and a deep understanding of the enterprise’s digital infrastructure.

For example, a financial services company automating its loan approval process should be able to rely on its sales team to identify customer pain points, such as approval delays. Sales can collaborate with the automation team to streamline tasks like data entry and credit checks to help improve the customer experience. The finance team could define financial metrics and integrate them into the automated decision-making process to help maintain accuracy. Compliance experts cloud validate workflows to align with regulatory standards and adjust as needed for changing regulations, while the legal team ensures that automated loan agreements are in compliance. This type of can help lead to faster processing times, improved accuracy, enhanced regulatory compliance and reduced legal risks.

Trickle Down Automation

This is where your product and IT support teams become indispensable as – with a top-down mandate from your CIO / CTO and CEO – everyone is laser-focused on faster tangible outcomes. 

Support teams can also capitalize on synergies as internal communication channels are more open and have fewer barriers to overcome. And suppose you’re working in a fast-moving market as you automate. In that case, you’re more flexible and better able to control and direct customer conversations based on outcomes when scaling digital workers. 

In the case of a financial services firm looking to streamline its loan processing, the IT team could partner with the product team to implement end-to-end automation. Suppose in this scenario the IT team uses optical character recognition (OCR) to extract key data from submitted documents, such as tax forms and pay stubs, then automatically inputs it into the firm’s loan processing system. The firm could also use RPA to handle mundane tasks and AI to assess credit risk by analyzing historical data and suggesting customized loan terms. The IT team ensures these automation components integrate seamlessly with existing systems, such as the customer relationship management (CRM) platform, enabling data to flow without manual intervention. 

Strategic automation, when backed by the C-suite, can transform a company’s growth trajectory because automation efforts can expand beyond isolated departments. This top-down approach not only speeds up the realization of automation's benefits but also drives growth at a much faster pace. Ultimately, the faster you can scale, the faster you can realize growth. To scale you need everyone in the C-suite onboard. 

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Building the ‘E-Suite’

Placing automation directly in the boardroom signals a paradigm shift in managerial leadership, but it also raises questions about the required skills and qualifications. 

Although a CAO sounds great in principle, you need a diverse skill set encompassing technology, business strategy, and change management gained from a process management and IT systems background and a diverse network and knowledge of the business and IT environment.

In most cases, your CIO and/or CTO is the orchestrator of automation initiatives, driving alignment between technology investments and business objectives, understanding of both the technical aspects of automation and the strategic imperatives driving business transformation. They may choose to identify a dedicated role within their leadership team, but will have the overall mandate, breadth of influence and knowledge to drive true transformational and cross departmental change.

Looking ahead, automation is poised to become an increasingly critical part of your organization as the technology driving it continues to evolve. With the proliferation of technologies such as AI, RPA, and process orchestration, the scope of automation initiatives will only expand. Organizations that invest in building automation capabilities and placing automation leadership within the primary C-suite will be best positioned to thrive in the digital age. 

With automation an integral part of business growth, it’s not a matter of who is your automation champion but rather asking how every member of your team can help lead the charge. Having strong leadership and support from the top is crucial for implementing and maintaining a successful digital transformation initiative. With this approach, companies can innovate faster, streamline their operations, and stay competitive in today’s fast-moving market.