Enhance Business Outcomes by Reducing Technical Debt and Accelerating Growth through AI-led Automation

Part of our Insight series: Tackle Business Transformation Challenges in the Age of AI

I have worked with organizations long enough to see how automation has evolved from simple digital workflows to today’s AI-driven hyper-automation. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems became the backbone of enterprise workflow automation.

About a decade later, robotic process automation (RPA) emerged as the next frontier and streamlined repetitive tasks, enabling incredible operational efficiencies. Some of the early notable use cases were fraud detection and customer service inquiries. Then, the rapid rise of cloud computing and AI enhanced these capabilities further, while low-code/no-code platforms empowered teams to improve processes without much coding knowledge.

Now, the rise of hyper-automation and advanced AI technologies is revolutionizing end-to-end business processes. Coupled with swift innovation, this rise is enabling organizations to stay a step ahead of the curve by anticipating and addressing client challenges proactively.

Also, among the clients I talk to, a clear trend is emerging. Our clients are no longer satisfied with mere proof of concepts. They are increasingly seeking scalable execution at the production level, especially those that can generate tangible business outcomes. According to our Global GenAI Report, nearly 90% of IT and business leaders are focusing on areas where AI solutions have already shown a proven impact on business performance.

But what is most critical for organizations, is the ability to move at pace while balancing legacy and modern technology. Automation, especially with the recent progress of GenAI and agentic AI, can fast-track that process, and render key benefits, including faster product deployments, improved quality and reliability and above all, reduced technical debt and cost savings. But more importantly it can build resilience and agility while accelerating profits and customer experiences.

Accelerating go-to-market

Automating end-to-end business processes accelerates product launches by streamlining workflows and reducing manual bottlenecks. And we did just that for ALN Medical Management, a revenue cycle management company. We used automation and scripting for their denial posting. This greatly reduced the number of times each claim was touched, which made it faster and more accurate to process denials. Further, we streamlined the electronic remittance advice (ERA) process; this accelerated the turnaround time for AR tickets as well as increased the productivity and quality of the AR team’s output.

Beyond speed, automation equips organizations to pivot swiftly to meet today’s dynamic market. For example, manufacturers can integrate customer feedback loops into their product development, helping them quickly respond to new market trends and consumer demands. At NTT DATA, we have added GenAI to voice mining.

This accelerates transcriptions and seamlessly integrates them back into workflows, enhancing customer insights, and enabling our clients to deliver superior customer experiences. We’ve also built new accelerators for automatic code generation that automatically translate legacy code into modern languages and even leverage cloud. Learn more about App and Business Process Integration for greater business advantage.

Improving product and process quality and reliability

Automating end-to-end processes improves application quality and reliability, too, while eliminating inefficiencies and driving precision at scale. We partnered with Integra to streamline their workflows and increase business agility by automating their testing process. This cut down testing time by 98%, ensuring their platform stays always-on for clients worldwide. We also combined forms digitization with low- and no-code tools to collect user signatures, reducing the workload by half.

Because automation enforces a standardized workflow, it minimizes variations; the latter are often the reason behind defects or inconsistencies. For financial services, this can make transactions more accurate and compliant, thus enhancing reliability for a customer, while reducing risks for the organization. To remain competitive and maintain customer loyalty, a leader in retirement and wealth investment wanted to modernize and migrate its application. The migration to AWS shrank the time to market of newly migrated customer-facing applications and improved its efficiency by 19% year-on-year. And a 70% automation of their application delivery management pipelines reduced datacenter costs, too.

Optimizing costs and reducing technical debt

One of the biggest benefits of automation is reduced cost, because it eliminates the risk of data entry errors or compliance violations. It also allows organizations to allocate resources toward activities that drive growth. A U.S.-based IT solutions provider was bogged down by error-riddled, manual processes for their human resource (HR) function. We created a fully automated system for their critical payroll data and invoices. Now the company can focus more on HR strategy rather than entering data.

Among several automation tools, RPA is often used for quick results. It is great at automating shorter or tactical tasks and yields quick value. However, it’s not a catch-all solution. Leaders should look beyond a siloed RPA approach and consider the right combination of technologies and tactics, such as low-code, iPaaS and other tools, based on the specific outcomes they aim to achieve.

Many clients I work with want to take advantage of the latest technology but are weighed down by legacy applications that increase their technical debt. Like paying down a high-interest loan, technical debt puts enterprises under pressure and slows development, increases maintenance costs and creates system fragility and instability.

Automation tools can help reduce technical debt by adhering to best practices for testing, coding and managing security vulnerabilities while building more resilience. Rapid growth for Vision Graphics  had resulted in technical debt. However, by modernizing their systems with cloud solutions and automated processes, we helped them open new revenue streams.

Guidelines for end-to-end process automation

As mentioned before, clients I talk to want most to balance legacy and modern technology and apply automation to their business processes to reduce costs and technical debt. With rapid advancements in AI-led automation, these solutions, when rightly applied, can accelerate profits for organizations while enabling them to provide better customer experiences. Here are five best practices to help you on your business process automation journey:

1. Identify and prioritize the right processes to gain business agility, speed to market and a modern portfolio: Automating specific processes, such as order processing or customer support, can enhance business agility by reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction. It can also accelerate time-to-market, providing a modern portfolio, aligned with current market demands, and greater competitive advantage.
2. Integrate across business processes to reduce technical debt while increasing stakeholder engagement: Integrating automation tools with ERPs and CRMs has proven to reduce technical debt and improve user experiences, and streamline processes to increase stakeholder engagement for customers, partners and employees.
3. Use AI and advanced analytics to create adaptable and responsive technology and improve enterprise efficiencies: Specific AI technologies, such as machine learning algorithms, can optimize operations, reduce errors, and improve decision-making, while providing adaptable and responsive technology that helps you meet changing business needs successfully.
4. Use scalable automation to control costs and meet growing business needs effectively: Scalable automation solutions can control costs by reducing manual interventions and optimize resource utilization. It can also support growing business needs without requiring significant reconfiguration, ensuring that your technology scales with your business.
5. Monitor and optimize continuously to deliver value: Using the right metrics and KPIs, monitor and optimize automated processes to ensure they remain sustainable and efficient, this is a crucial step that ensures your processes continue to deliver value and meet evolving business needs.

Dive deeper into the world of app development by reading our comprehensive paper, Revitalizing Application Development: A Proactive Strategy to Reduce Technical Debt.