The Automation Advantage

Picture this: you're a journalist at a traditional Italian newspaper, spending hours each day fact-checking stories, cross-referencing sources, and hunting down background information that could enrich your articles. What if you could focus entirely on the creative, investigative aspects of journalism while an intelligent assistant handled the routine verification tasks? This isn't a futuristic fantasy—it's already happening at newspapers like Il Secolo XIX, where virtual assistants are revolutionizing how journalists work, making them more productive while enhancing the quality of their output.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations worldwide are discovering that intelligent automation isn't just about replacing manual tasks—it's about unleashing human potential. The companies thriving today are those that have learned to combine the computational power of machines with the creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking that only humans possess. This transformation requires more than just implementing new technology; it demands a fundamental shift in how we think about work, strategy, and the future of our organizations.

The foundation of any successful automation journey begins with crystal-clear strategic intent. This isn't merely about having a mission statement hanging on the wall—it's about articulating a compelling vision that drives every automation decision your organization makes. Strategic intent, as management experts have discovered, serves as your North Star, establishing the criterion your organization will use to chart its progress and guide resource allocations.

Consider the telecommunications company that transformed its entire approach to innovation. Faced with intense competition and the need to bring new pricing strategies and subscriber benefits to market faster than ever, leadership recognized that their traditional waterfall methodology was holding them back. Projects that should have taken months were stretching into years, and by the time solutions reached customers, competitors had already captured market share. This realization sparked a fundamental question: How could automation support their strategic intent to out-innovate the competition?

The transformation began with a complete overhaul of their software development process. They moved away from rigid, sequential approaches and embraced Agile and DevOps methodologies, then applied intelligent automation throughout the entire development lifecycle. But the real breakthrough came when they aligned every automation decision with their strategic goal of accelerating innovation. Rather than automating for automation's sake, they focused on solutions that would enable them to bring new releases to market eight times faster than before, with greater reliability and success rates.

To implement this approach in your organization, start by articulating your strategic intent in clear, measurable terms. Ask yourself: Where does your organization want to be in three to five years, and how can automation help you get there? Next, ensure that every automation project directly supports this vision—whether through cost reduction, customer experience enhancement, or innovation acceleration. Finally, create mechanisms to regularly assess whether your automation efforts are moving you closer to your strategic goals, and be prepared to adjust course when necessary.

The magic happens when your entire organization understands not just what you're automating, but why. When strategic intent guides your automation journey, you move beyond isolated efficiency gains to transformational business impact that sets you apart from competitors.

The art of successful automation lies not in automating everything possible, but in choosing the right opportunities at the right time. This strategic selection process can make the difference between scattered improvements and transformative business impact. The key is understanding that automation opportunities exist at the intersection of what your business needs most and what your organization is prepared to handle.

A large enterprise's chief information officer discovered this principle firsthand when faced with the challenge of improving automation's impact across a decentralized organization. Through various acquisitions, the company operated as separate business units with little communication, leading to countless reinvented wheels and missed opportunities. The CIO initiated an automation assessment that revealed the potential for a 45 percent reduction in incident volume and up to 60 percent effort reduction in regular operations. However, the real breakthrough came when they looked beyond cost savings to business value creation.

The transformation followed a three-step approach: eradicate, optimize, then automate. First, they eliminated unnecessary work through root cause analysis, discovering that many repetitive problems could be prevented entirely by fixing underlying code issues. Rather than automating fixes for recurring failures, they addressed the source, reducing incidents by 46 percent before any automation was implemented. Next, they streamlined critical business processes, working with stakeholders across the enterprise to eliminate redundancies and boost value creation potential. Only then did they implement automation solutions, ultimately automating 40 percent of business operations.

To implement this strategic approach, begin by conducting a comprehensive assessment of your current processes and pain points. Use data analytics to identify where automation could have the greatest impact on your business objectives. Next, evaluate your organization's automation maturity level—understanding your current capabilities will help you choose projects that stretch your abilities without overwhelming your capacity. Create a prioritization matrix that weighs both the business impact and implementation complexity of potential projects.

Map out your automation journey as a series of building blocks, where each project prepares your organization for more sophisticated challenges ahead. Remember, the goal isn't to check boxes but to build capabilities that compound over time, creating an automation advantage that competitors will find difficult to replicate.

Building automation solutions that can adapt, scale, and evolve with your business requires architectural thinking that goes far beyond individual projects. The most successful organizations are those that design their automation infrastructure with six key principles in mind: adaptability, intelligent data fabric, AI at the core, cloud-native architecture, embedded security, and platform-centric design.

A large multinational energy company exemplified this approach when they designed their future vision with automation at the core. Rather than implementing isolated solutions, they took a platform-centric approach to accelerate innovations to market. With an open, plug-and-play architecture, the company could quickly adapt to technology changes without disruption. This future-proof design made their technology and automation solutions agile and responsive to market dynamics, enabling them to accelerate innovation while ensuring automation remained scalable and flexible.

The transformation required them to break away from the traditional approach of building monolithic applications that become increasingly complex and difficult to modify. Instead, they embraced a microservices architecture where automation functions operate independently but work together seamlessly. This meant that when one component needed updating or replacing, it could be modified without affecting the entire system. The result was a robust foundation that could support hundreds of automation applications across sales, production, logistics, and finance departments.

To architect your automation for the future, start by assessing your current technology foundation and identifying the gaps that could limit scalability. Design your automation with modularity in mind—each component should be able to evolve independently while maintaining integration with the broader system. Invest in cloud-native solutions that provide the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on demand, and ensure that security is built into the architecture from the ground up, not added as an afterthought.

Most importantly, adopt an AI-first mindset where machine learning and intelligence capabilities are core to your architecture rather than bolt-on additions. This approach positions your organization to take advantage of rapidly advancing AI capabilities while building solutions that can learn, adapt, and improve over time. When you architect for the future, you create the foundation for continuous innovation and sustainable competitive advantage.

The ultimate success of any automation initiative depends not on the sophistication of the technology, but on the enthusiasm and capability of the people who will use it. Organizations that thrive in the age of intelligent automation are those that put people at the center of their transformation, recognizing that human talent remains the source of competitive advantage even as machines take on more routine tasks.

At Royal Dutch Shell, the approach to automation exemplifies this people-first philosophy. Rather than viewing automation as a way to eliminate jobs, they see it as an opportunity to elevate human capabilities. Brent Kedzierski, head of Learning Strategy and Innovation at Shell, describes how automation is "redefining how our industry operates" by enabling workers to interact with data at higher intellectual levels and collaborate in more thoughtful ways. When Shell introduced RealWear head-mounted displays for remote maintenance workers, the emphasis wasn't on the high-tech wizardry but on how voice-controlled devices would help workers get real-time assistance when solving complex problems in challenging environments.

The transformation at Shell began with a comprehensive reskilling initiative that moved beyond technical training to culture change. They recognized that successful automation implementation requires people to shift from seeing change as disruptive to embracing it as energizing. This meant investing in structured learning paths, providing immersive experiences, and supporting microlearning that allowed people to master new skills flexibly. Crucially, they encouraged "learning through teaching," where people in the process of reskilling immediately shared their knowledge with others, accelerating cultural adoption throughout the organization.

To inspire transformation in your organization, start by conducting a simple exercise with your teams: have everyone write down their routine tasks and rate them with smiley or frowning faces based on how much they enjoy each activity. This reveals how much of their work they would gladly hand over to machines so they can focus on more fulfilling tasks. Next, invest in comprehensive training programs that go beyond technical skills to include change management, design thinking, and collaboration capabilities.

Create a culture where people are encouraged to identify automation opportunities rather than fear them. Celebrate personal initiatives that lead to successful automation projects, and ensure that the benefits of automation—whether in time savings, error reduction, or enhanced capabilities—are clearly communicated and attributed to the technology changes. When people see automation as empowering rather than threatening, they become your strongest advocates for continued transformation.

The most challenging aspect of automation isn't implementing solutions—it's sustaining their value over time while continuously pushing forward to stay ahead of the competition. Organizations that gain lasting advantage from automation are those that treat it not as a destination but as an ongoing journey of innovation and improvement.

A multinational energy company's IT organization provides a compelling example of this sustained approach. In 2017, they set ambitious goals to reduce development effort by 60 percent while slashing operating costs by half. But rather than declaring victory when they achieved these targets, they established mechanisms for continuous advancement. They hosted regular workshops and hackathons to generate new ideas, created a centralized automation framework to support ongoing innovation, and founded a center of excellence to guide the journey forward. Sixteen months later, they had saved millions of dollars and redeployed employees to higher-value work, but their road map extended through 2023 and beyond.

The company's success stemmed from their recognition that automation gains can quickly erode without active maintenance and continuous evolution. Technologies advance rapidly, business needs change, and competitors catch up if you remain static. They implemented robust tracking systems to monitor the business value generated by each automation solution, ensuring that investments continued to deliver returns. When solutions began to underperform, they quickly identified and addressed the issues rather than letting value deteriorate.

To sustain your automation gains, establish clear metrics for tracking the ongoing value of your solutions and review them regularly. Don't just measure initial results—monitor performance over time to identify when solutions need updates or replacement. Create a culture of continuous improvement where teams regularly ask "What can we automate next?" and provide mechanisms for harvesting ideas from throughout the organization.

Most importantly, maintain forward momentum by constantly scanning for new technologies and applications that could enhance your competitive position. Allocate resources specifically for innovation and experimentation, recognizing that some investments won't pay off immediately but are necessary to maintain your automation advantage. Remember that in the fast-moving world of technology, standing still means falling behind. The organizations that thrive are those that keep running, keep innovating, and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with human-machine collaboration.

The journey toward intelligent automation mastery is fundamentally about recognizing and acting on a simple truth: the future belongs to organizations that can seamlessly blend human creativity with machine capability. Throughout this exploration, we've seen how the most successful companies approach automation not as a technical challenge, but as a strategic imperative that touches every aspect of their operations—from the boardroom vision to the front lines of customer service.

As the authors powerfully state, "The real power of intelligent automation is its ability to fundamentally change traditional ways of operating, for businesses and individuals. Smart machines offer strengths and capabilities that are different from but highly complementary to people's talents." This isn't about replacing human workers; it's about creating an environment where people can do their best work while machines handle the routine, repetitive, and computationally intensive tasks that bog down productivity and creativity.

Your next step is both simple and transformative: identify one process in your organization that consumes significant time but adds limited value to your customers or strategic goals. Begin there, but think beyond just automating that single task—consider how solving this problem could build capabilities for bigger challenges ahead. The automation advantage awaits those bold enough to start and persistent enough to sustain the journey forward.