Success factors for automation in small and medium businesses

Here are five trends we see driving intelligent legal automation:

1. Technology: The foundation for growth
‍From e-discovery solutions to automation in contract drafting and trademark search, intelligent automation can help law firms become more efficient and productive. By 2025, legal technology budgets would have increased three times, according to a report published by Gartner. Specialised legal tech vendors will build legal applications on top of business application platforms exploiting RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning (ML), advanced analytics, process automation, and other emerging technologies.

‍2. Automation to simplify corporate transactions
‍Corporate transaction workload, including M&As, has soared in the past few years. Advances in natural language processing and machine learning technology have opened the door for handling these fluctuating workloads more efficiently and accurately. Legal departments have reported that almost 55% of work on corporate transactions is automatable.

Automation entices and scares many business owners. Those who choose to automate must make the brave leap of faith that puts their heart’s work in the hands of a robot—a decision that has taken many businesses to new heights while others crash and burn.

Only 12% of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are fully automated, with just 2% using intelligent technology like artificial intelligence or IoT, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

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There are many reasons for it, including financial constraints and the impact of unsuccessful automation. Below are often-seen issues SMBs face while deciding their automation strategy.

1. Automation is a strategic investment: Many firms view automation as a temporary solution, but its true potential is realised in the long term. For SMBs, making smart decisions on their automation plans can help realise a greater ROI within the first year.

• Portfolio view of automation: Businesses need to build a pipeline of processes to get started. Many organisations pick a use case they are familiar with, but often the process is very complex, variable, or runs infrequently. Automating such a process generates little to no ROI at the beginning, and the business is left with complex automation that causes confusion and revenue loss.
• Estimate the true cost of automation ownership: The cost of setting up infrastructure and licencing sometimes fails to justify itself. Most business owners are accountable for licence utilisation for themselves. Without a proper roadmap, these licences remain unutilized or underutilised, diminishing the returns from automation programmes.
• Is your business ready for automation? Many firms start with proof of concepts and pilots, but it is important to see whether the business has standardised processes and what the documentation culture is. It is important to know if the process or business is ready for automation, rather than the other way around.
• Consider benefits beyond cost savings: automation is often considered a cost-cutting exercise. SMBs need to see the larger picture where automating tedious tasks helps firms reduce risks and improve employee morale, an attribute that drives decisions in growing organisations.

2. Business-driven automation programmes: Automation is usually more successful when it is driven by business needs and process owners, as they know exactly what problem needs solving.

• Process documentation: Process owners are aware of the tiniest aspects of the activities involved and can provide detailed documentation.
• Process assessment: By using the right tools, they can create a detailed empirical analysis of automation's impact on the business.
• Automation scope: As bots are digital workforce members, a process owner is best placed to identify roles and tasks to be done.

3. Reward innovation through an inside-out approach: Stakeholders within the business are well-positioned to propose automation ideas. Finding the appropriate processes along with relevant business cases strengthens the automation strategy within an organisation.

• Technology in capable hands: Enable access to automation assessment techniques and knowledge for stakeholders to build their business case.
• Proposal reviews: Encourage the creation of a peer-review process to handle automation proposals on a common platform and support its adoption.

Many of these issues can be resolved using the right process assessment tool. Our non-intrusive, rapid automation assessment platform for small and medium businesses helps quickly build an automation pipeline, identify ROI-driven processes that are easy to automate, and generate a business case with automation costs and business value projects over 3 years.

Create your automation roadmap by simply letting your process owners answer a few simple questions. Try it today with LatentBridge experts and write an email to contact@latentbridge.com and ask your queries.