A mature automation solution understands the complex business scenarios and provides appropriate solutions through in-built intelligence

Mature systems keep learning from different scenarios and demands and create new capabilities to handle them

India is home to software developers. The software export market is approximately $100 billion market. Does that mean we have achieved automation maturity? The truth is Indian software companies have always invested their time and skill on international clients and in servicing their execution requirements. In this process, they earned easy money, but lost the art and science of creating intelligent automation solutions. There is a dire need of automation experts who can create solutions to fit the complex Indian scenarios while achieving best global practices. People often ask “Companies have migrated from desktop solutions to web-based and now to Cloud. Is that not automation maturity?” We say, “No, this is a technology tools shift and not automation maturity.” The scenario is not completely bleak. A few Indian automation companies understand the difference and are continuously upgrading themselves on the maturity scale.

What is automation maturity?

The real distinction here is intelligence. A mature automation solution understands the complex business scenarios and provides appropriate solutions through in-built intelligence. It joins all the dots and eliminates or minimizes the manual intervention. In a layman’s language, it integrates all solutions from biometric devices for attendance capture to intranet for ESS, from payroll platform of the outsourced vendor to performance review, from social media to mobile platform. We are talking about user experience at its peak. A smart software that can help making critical decisions, software that can generate just not trending MIS, but analytics as well. A platform that helps managers to see the emerging trends and deviations clearly. It saves up to 30 per cent of their time and effort and improve the top and bottom line for companies.

What does a mature HR automation tool offer?

Today’s mature software’s are designed to configure and run the services on preventive mode. They provide forecasts and warning for break down, and even suggestions, which is quite a leap when we compare it to traditional services of resolving problems post occurrence. These mature automation solutions have built-in intelligence as they are designed by the domain experts. These mature solutions also have the capacity to grow on a continuous basis as they get more and more complex scenarios and data coming in.

Let us look at a real-life scenario. Consider the T&A scenarios for a retail organisation with 100+ store locations pan-India, headquartered at Kolkata.

• The HR and senior managers at Kolkata would like to know the real-time staff on the floor for Kanyakumari store at 9.00 AM – This can now be easily achieved with the help of ADIS [Access device interface services] enabled biometric solutions. • The store logistics manager, always on the move, need to know the shift plans for all the stores in his region for the upcoming week. This can be easily viewed on his Tablet/ iPad. • IT/Infra management team gets an automated alert on Biometric connectivity failure – With Biometric on Cloud • Device failure & re-registration of figure template can be easily done – Central template management system over the cloud pushes the data on the replaced device. Mature systems keep learning from all these scenarios and demands and use this to create new capabilities to handle them. To recognize a mature automation solution in the clutter of look-alike offerings, one should evaluate these three factors: • What is the level of HR domain knowledge of the service provider? • Software development skills & delivery process Most immature solutions will break down when put to test with complex scenarios. • Is the solution provider having a maturity mindset and are they ready to provide service during extreme scenarios & critical business timelines?

The way ahead

The need is to evaluate solution providers on maturity scale. It will help homegrown companies to create better solutions for India. The need is to see beyond hyped up feature lists and to look into the depth of solution. It will help the whole HR community and also the organisations to save money and increase productivity.

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