Intelligent automation helps retailers find opportunity in a crisis

Over the last decade alone, we have seen companies across various industries turning to technology to cope with mounting pressure from competitors and customers, leading to growing interest in robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Between 2018 and 2019, RPA solutions rose to prominence among digitalizing companies as a way to automate the mundane, repetitive processes that form the foundation of every business, says Ronen Lamdan, the CEO for the international business of China-based intelligent automation provider Laiye. “Those early pilots with simple bot scripts laid the groundwork for the transformation that second-generation intelligent automation vendors are driving, using AI-powered automation to empower workers to focus on more productive cognitive tasks that drive business goals.”

Intelligent automation platforms can help just about any regulated industry that has some kind of document-heavy process – for example, banking and insurance, where companies manage high volumes of documents.

Ronen Lamdan, the CEO for the international business of Laiye / Photo credit: Laiye

At the height of its popularity in 2019, the RPA industry was estimated to be worth close to US$1.5 billion, drawing interest from startups that began offering niche RPA solutions like SMS and email monitoring and smart scanning.

Taking RPA to the next level

However, interest in standalone RPA technology has declined as companies look for more beyond this rules-based approach to automation. Businesses grappling with the changes brought on by Covid-19 are expressing a desire for more control over their processes, but also the flexibility and agility to address external disruptions, says Lamdan.

“RPA is a fantastic entry point into digital transformation but it isn’t capable of much more than managing small tasks or mundane copy-paste work. In order to have true, significant business impact, you really need that suite of other technologies, including AI, natural language understanding, chatbots, and intelligent document processing,” he explains.

A recent 2021 report by Gartner found that corporate spending has begun prioritizing “hyperautomation” solutions as standalone RPA cannot sustain long-term value. Also known as “intelligent automation,” hyperautomation blends RPA platforms with complementary technologies like AI, machine learning, and natural language processing.

Lamdan says the ultimate goal of intelligent automation isn’t purely cost reduction but rather the automation of manual, repetitive labor so employees can focus on tasks that grow the business or delight customers. In doing so, companies are baking “adaptive resilience” into their systems and operations to future-proof themselves against the uncertain realities of a post-pandemic world.

Laiye’s intelligent automation platform is composed of AI-powered RPA products such as conversational chatbots, smart document-processing capabilities, natural language processing, and automated decision-making software. For Lamdan, these are key tools in ensuring companies can balance the need to stay in control of their day-to-day operations while also remaining agile and responsive to changing customer demands.

Retail turns to intelligent automation

Intelligent automation has been especially important for digitally transforming business functions that follow set patterns, such as those in finance or HR. Lamdan says intelligent automation can take over as much as 80% of this busywork, freeing employees to work on “edge cases” where their expertise and emotional intelligence can make the most impact.

One industry that could stand to benefit from increased automation is the retail segment, which is struggling to balance everyday operations against the staggering 10 years’ worth of growth in ecommerce adoption that had occurred within the first three months of the pandemic.

Intelligent automation solutions can help retailers ably respond to the sudden influx of new and existing customers onto their digital platforms. This was the case when Laiye helped American mega-retailer Walmart respond to the sharp spikes in customer inquiries during intense periods of pandemic-fueled online shopping. Across 500,000 user interactions, Laiye’s chatbot ably resolved customer queries at a rate exceeding 80%, and in doing so, delivered excellent customer experience while freeing employees to work on tasks that needed more tailored, cognitive approaches.

Photo credit: Nattakorn Maneerat / 123RF

Lamdan notes that as more customers get used to shopping online, their expectations for great experiences have also risen: As many as 84% of consumers will now reject retailers who don’t get this right.

“Consumer pressure on ecommerce retailers has just been incredible, but that was there before the pandemic,” says Lamdan. “The low cost to switch [retailers] has been a big driver in the way that ecommerce vendors look at customer interactions, omnichannel customer servicing, as well as how the backend processes support the customers.”

Retailers need to have a robust strategy to manage both frontend and backend problems that arise due to external forces. Frontend issues are customer-facing and branding-related – for example, social media, buyer reviews, or omnichannel strategies – while the backend consists of the underlying systems that ensure a business can run efficiently, such as inventory and order management and finance and accounting.

These have to be balanced against each other in order to bring significant impact throughout the supply chain. Retailers can do this by introducing intelligent automation at strategic points in the process, eliminating repetitive tasks.

For example, Laiye customer Nike used the company’s intelligent automation platform to manage its regular interactions with its network of stockists, the middlemen between the brand and their customers. In automating these, Nike saw 50% less manpower focused on order fulfilment, freeing workers to deliver better customer service for their resellers.

Bridging the whole process

The incentive to adopt intelligent automation becomes even clearer when one realizes that the technology can improve customer experience and profit margins. According to Lamdan, customer experience leaders see 3x higher returns than their slower competitors – this is especially true in Asia where customers are 31% more likely to spend on businesses with excellent reviews, with 86% indicating that they’d refrain from buying from those with bad ones.

Luxury brand Dior faced the challenge of trying to deliver not just excellent omnichannel customer service but also personalized experiences to its VIP customers – which it had to be able to quickly identify. A difficult task in normal circumstances, it’s a monumental challenge when approached at scale. To solve the problem, the brand leveraged Laiye’s conversational AI chatbots to effectively and accurately respond to over 94% of the over 300,000 daily requests and interactions flooding the company’s communications channels.

As more and more of us become accustomed to engaging with retailers through a hybrid model that straddles the line between online and offline, Lamdan says retailers need to work on building that same resiliency in their own operations. Intelligent automation can support those efforts when it’s applied across the “most critical processes” in the front- and backends.

The firm intends to continue supporting companies not only through its suite of services and its partners but also with its community of over 400,000 AI and bot developers. These developers are trained by Laiye and support an open library of 1,000 pre-built industry-specific automation templates and use cases that companies can use to easily introduce automation into their processes.

“The spoils really go to the companies that take leadership positions by embracing omnichannel intelligent automation and how they apply to customer experience and operational excellence,” Lamdan says. “Any crisis is an incredible opportunity that can be seized if you figure out a different solution to the problem other than just adding people. Take away the mundane aspects that really should be executed by robots, but leave the cognitive or EQ parts to people to do what you do best.”

Laiye International’s intelligent automation platform bridges the gap between humans and machines by delivering user-intuitive RPA software enhanced by advanced AI/ML/NLP technologies, and a rich library of automation use cases supported by an experienced community of developers.

To learn more about how Laiye helps businesses and people realize their full potential through the power of intelligent automation, visit its website.

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.