Process Automation In 2021 All Wrapped Up

As the year comes to an end, it is time for us to wrap up the 2021 process predictions from our FlowForma experts and gift them to you.

At the beginning of the year, our digitization experts outlined their top 4 predictions for process automation for 2021, lets take a closer look to see how accurate these predictions were and if our experts will be on the Naughty or Nice list this Christmas.

Rest assured, the FlowForma Experts will wake up to lots of goodies on Christmas morning as their first prediction turned out to be undeniably accurate. In 2020, the world was forced to adopt a work from home culture, almost overnight, and it seems like this might have been a good development for many businesses. The Forrester Research Centre predicts that by 2030 Hybrid Work will be a standard expectation, they also indicate that by the end of this year, 21% of information workers will work primarily from home*.

A more recent Forrester report indicates how this year 76% of businesses are actively working on process automation**, this is a significant change when compared to the rate of automation in previous years due to the increased interest in adopting process automation. Though the increased drive for adopting automation tools in 2020 developed out of necessity, in 2021 many businesspeople realized that these tools are much more efficient and beneficial - an inevitable and irreversible move should businesses want to keep up with competitors and even gain a competitive advantage.

Prediction 2: "Digital Transformation At More Than Three-Quarter Of Enterprises Will Focus On Automation"

The Experts have done it again! Though we predicted a 25% primary focus on automation from organizations, the number may actually be slightly higher than this (32%!)** The benefits of process automation have been widely realized in 2021, and that processes are a key focus for digital transformation. Many businesses have realized that automated processes have led to them achieving business goals at speed and generating quick ROI from digitizing.

Prediction 3: "Two-Thirds Of Enterprise Organizations Encountered Broken Processes During the Pandemic"

Though a number of organizations started their digital transformation journey in 2020 and 2021, some paper, email and excel based processes still remain and are still extremely problematic, inefficient and are 'broken'. These processes desperately need to change. 99% percent of people are dependent on email** to conduct tasks which is extremely unreliable and inefficient. 

FlowForma customer Morgan Construction operated in a similar manner before implementing the FlowForma tool. Director of Corporate at Morgan Construction, Carolynne McCaughey indicates the transformation that FlowForma has empowered them to achieve: “The digital workflow built with FlowForma has helped bring automation into the recruitment onboarding process, taking what was a giant excel spreadsheet with endless data entry that had outgrown its capabilities and combined it into a process flow that is very intuitive to use. My team is very excited to have this digital workflow solution in place! ROI gets sprinkled right through!"

Prediction 4: "Automation Will Advance To Support One In Four Remote Workers"

With 16% of organizations working entirely from home*** (such as Twitter, Shopify, Square etc.)  62% of employees aged 22 to 65 say they work remotely at least occasionally. Automation has advanced at a rapid pace to support even more than one in four workers to be able to work from their own homes (with a guesstimate of 1/10 doing so while wearing their Santa-shaped slippers).

*Forrester's 2021 Digital Process Survey Results. 
**Forrester report, 29.03.21 - 'Seize The Anywhere Work', J. P. Gownder.
***Findstack article, 27.10.21 - 'The Ultimate List Of Remote Work Statistics for 2021', J. Steward.

The FlowForma Expert Predictions For Process Automation in 2021 All Wrapped Up!

Get A Head Start With Our 2022 Predictions:

Join our live discussion with guest speaker John Bratincevic, Senior Analyst at Forrester, and Gerard Newman, CTO at FlowForma, on January 25, as they uncover their process automation predictions for 2022. Register for free here!

Try FlowForma Today

Why not take the first step in your digital transformation journey today by taking a free 14 day trial of the FlowForma Process Automation tool! Our process experts can offer you a glimpse of what your processes would look like in digital format and the time and cost savings expected by moving your business processes online.