By Manish Godha Founder & CEO, Advaiya
Businesses face constant challenges to not only survive but thrive. To gain a significant edge over their competition, businesses need to address both key aspects of their business: operational efficiency and strategic differentiation. While a robust digital infrastructure ensures reliable and secure operations, it is strategic differentiation that sets a company apart by establishing a unique value proposition. To achieve sustained success, enterprises must ensure both of these two elements, and this is where peripheral automation emerges as a powerful ally.
It has become an accepted wisdom that businesses should leverage standard and reliable solutions to build their core infrastructure. That includes essential services like communication, office productivity, data infrastructure, and business applications like ERP or CRM. Most businesses gain benefits like standardization, rapid deployment, security and reliability by adopting the prominent off-the-shelf software and platforms. These form the core of any business’s information infrastructure and are essential for running operations efficiently. However, they cater to common needs and generic processes, and strategic differentiation can only be achieved by enabling interactions and experiences which are novel, innovative, and at times, disruptive.
Peripheral automation refers to a set of digital initiatives that intelligently leverage core enterprise records to enable unique interactions within and outside the organization. It recognizes the value and permanence of essential business data, such as customer information, product data, transactions, employee records, assets, and more. The key lies in accessing, exposing, managing, and updating these records to align with the specific contexts of the organisation, its purpose, and its users.
By automating processes around core records, businesses can significantly improve their overall efficiency and productivity. The peripheral automation approach creates a growing set of capable and tailored systems on the periphery of core records, enabling fulfilment of specific digital needs which propel the strategy forward. This grants businesses a first-mover advantage, providing them with an edge over their competitors.
1. Data automation: Data is the lifeblood of the digital effectiveness for any organization. To achieve better decision-making and gain actionable insights, businesses must ensure the smooth flow of data across various systems of records. Peripheral automation encompasses technologies for data collection, collation, cleansing, organisation, warehousing, and modeling. These solutions not only facilitate visibility and insights but also pave the way for more informed decision-making.
2. Process automation: An efficient peripheral automation system surfaces relevant information at the right time, empowering employees, partners, and customers to act swiftly and confidently. Technologies such as intranets, document management, and business intelligence play a pivotal role in providing quick access to the most pertinent content based on an intelligent analysis of the context. For instance, Advaiya recently deployed a system that allowed project management offices to access technical checklists, standard operating procedures, and operational data seamlessly in a single workflow, facilitating timely and effective actions.
3. Intelligent automation: Leveraging advanced technologies like machine learning, AI, and generative technologies can revolutionise complex and decision-intensive tasks. Peripheral automation opens the door for businesses to create custom and unique interactions that enhance operational efficiency and deliver transformative experiences.
In the quest for sustained success and gaining advantage over the competition, businesses must recognize the significance of using digital systems for purposes beyond operational efficiency and accomplish strategic differentiation. Peripheral automation emerges as a powerful means of achieving this, offering businesses a competitive advantage through its smart utilization of core enterprise records. By focusing on automation of data management, action, and intelligence, businesses can elevate their performance to a level that sets them apart from their competitors. With peripheral automation, enterprises can position themselves as market leaders, operating efficiently, making informed decisions, and delivering exceptional experiences to their customers, partners, and employees.
In conclusion, peripheral automation is not just an option; it is a necessity for businesses that seek not only survival but also sustained success in today’s dynamic and demanding business landscape. Embracing this approach will empower enterprises to stay ahead of the curve and thrive in an increasingly competitive world.