Sustainability Impact of Intelligent Automation

Headlines in recent years have spoken scathingly of the impact IT in business is having on our environment. From Cambridge University’s research finding that Bitcoin mining’s annual global carbon footprint is the equivalent to that of Argentina, to the worlds data centers combined reportedly consuming more electricity than the UK. As our countries and economies continue to become more data centered and digital, it is clear the industry must find ways to become more sustainable. 

Creative efforts are being made to reduce the carbon footprint of business technology. Recently, Microsoft successfully trialed an underwater datacenter off the shore of Orkney, and companies such as AtNorth are building datacenters in Iceland to cool servers naturally reducing energy consumption. 

The stark truth, however, is the same with any conversation around our changing climate: more needs to be done, and at a faster rate. Intelligent Automation has proven its ability to enable businesses to achieve more, more efficiently and with greater accuracy; can the technology therefore be harnessed to help businesses hit their sustainability targets?  

Intelligent Automation combines the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), business process management and robotic process automation (RPA) to improve operational efficiency and productivity across an organisation.  

Kainos utilises all these capabilities to provide time, money, and ultimately value back to clients. For example, the AI and Machine Learning capabilities of Intelligent Automation are used to analyse structured and unstructured data sets, to provide insights into business operations and predict future outcomes. Business process management ensures processes are optimised and streamlined prior to automation; there’s little value in automating a broken process. Finally, RPA is the software that simulates the actions that a human manually makes, such as a click or a key stroke. These are the software robots which sit on a computer or server and automatically execute the repetitive steps which used to be manual.

It is true that automations typically carry out the tasks their human counterparts previously completed, but a misconception is often that automations will replace the human. UiPath, a Kainos Intelligent Automation partner, states that automation won’t shrink the human workforce; it will help the workforce do more with the same number of people. Moreover, the technology will create new jobs and opportunities; especially for those people whose mundane, repetitive, and labor-intensive activities have been removed through automation.  

Ingenuity and innovation are key drivers to becoming more sustainable. By removing the robotic element of employee’s work, they’re given the cognitive space to think, problem solve and potentially devise the businesses next green breakthrough. Crucially, in most instances, employees with administrative and repetitive workloads are also the people closest to the operations of a business. By automating the robotic elements of these jobs, those employees at the beating heart of the business can then be retained, retrained, and redeployed onto sustainable initiatives. They can provide invaluable insight into how to cut waste and operate more sustainably; insights which senior executives may never be aware of. 

Ultimately, an enterprises most valuable asset is time, and how that time is managed. Intelligent Automation gives that time back, it’s up to business leaders to allocate the time effectively to support their sustainability objectives. 

One example of how Intelligent Automation could make an organization significantly more sustainable is by completely removing paper intensive processes. 

Following a processes paper trail, often uncovers a process which is broken and ripe for automation. The productivity efficiencies gained by optimising these are not the only benefit either; digitising paper reliant tasks can also significantly cut unnecessary waste and resource consumption. 

The Kainos Intelligent Automation practice has a wealth of experience deploying automations which completely remove a processes reliance on printing and paper. Most recently, the practice deployed an Intelligent Invoice processing solution using UiPath’s Document Understanding which automated the processing of (on average) 320,000 invoices per annum.

After reengineering the process and deploying the solution, the process is now completely digital. No printing, no ink, no scanning and most importantly, no paper.  

Ribble estimate that a single tree yields 10,000 pieces of paper. By conservatively estimating that one sheet of paper per invoice is saved through automating this process, it can be assumed that in this scenario Intelligent Automation has saved 32 trees per annum from being cut down for paper production.  

It’s worth reminding that this is one isolated scenario, at a relatively small business (less than 1,000 employees). When scaling the problem, the facts are staggering: 4 billion trees are cut down every year worldwide for paper production (1% of the Amazon Rainforest). Business process is of course not the only contributor, but when considering other paper intensive processes inherent to business operations such as employee onboarding, physical signatures, compliance workflows or bank reconciliations, it is quickly apparent the impact Intelligent Automation could have in making organisations less paper reliant and more sustainable.

One of the biggest technology trends over the past decade has been the adoption of cloud in place of on-premise solutions. Popularity has soared predominantly due to cloud’s ease of access, lower investment risk, and the reduced cost of maintenance, but moving to the cloud can also be a quick and effective way for organisations to reduce their carbon footprint. 

In terms of carbon emissions, moving to the cloud isn’t just passing the buck; a commercial cloud service can operate far more efficiently than a local, smaller scale solution. Microsoft proved this by measuring various factors including the impact of raw material extraction, assembling equipment, transportation, and energy consumption. They found their cloud solution was up to 93% more energy efficient and generated up to 98% less carbon emissions than traditional data centres. 

Using Microsoft, UiPath or Bizagi, Kainos can deliver intelligent automation solutions completely in the cloud. Deploying automation’s using cloud services can be a quick win for organisation in the fight to meet sustainability targets, but that’s not the only benefit. Barriers to scale automation programs are also reduced, as infrastructure can easily be scaled up and down to keep pace with the changing appetite for automation. Deployment is also streamlined with collaboration across devices made simple, and the movement of solutions between environments being possible in a matter of clicks. Of course there is also the reduction in the total cost of ownership, but not at the hinderance of quality and support.  

One challenge business’ face when tackling their carbon emissions, is how to manage a problem that is invisible and has few metrics to track. Before action can be taken, or even before sustainability can be put at the forefront of the agenda, leaders need to understand the full impact business operations and their processes are having on the environment. 

Process Mining can be the solution to turn an invisible, conceptual problem into one with hard hitting, real-time, fact-based insights. Process Mining follows the digital footprints left behind in our systems and applications and uses them to visualise every step of every digital process. These insights highlight paint points, bottlenecks, and provide an understanding of where intelligent automation can deliver the most value. 

If an organisation can then provide carbon emission data associated with these digital footprints, the environmental impact of each activity and step carried out within a process can be visualised in real terms. These activities could be anything from transport, to server running costs, to the use of raw materials, to printing paper. It is worth noting that insights are only as strong as the raw data that underly them, in this scenario if an organisation provided their carbon emissions data, using process mining Kainos could then uncover powerful, actionable, sustainability insights using process mining. 

Once the current state is visualised, with Process Mining process changes can be simulated to analyse the impact of what a future process would look like. Using simulation, the sustainability impact of these tweaks to a workflow can be accurately predicted before the business makes any real investment into change. This could be simulating changing petrol vehicles to electric to predict the reduction in CO2 emissions, or it could be demonstrating how optimising the supply chain could result in a reduction in energy consumption. 

With the level of transparency Process Mining creates, business leaders are provided with complete visibility of the problem. They now have the ammunition to act, and the knowledge of where to start to strive toward making a more sustainable business.  

Like any Intelligent Automation program, the value and benefits realised depend on: the processes being automated, how business leaders decide to spend the return on investment, and how time saved is reallocated.  

If sustainability goals are positioned as the main drivers of an Intelligent Automation program, if businesses utilise time savings to focus on green initiatives, if Intelligent Automation is used to digitise paper intensive processes, and if tools like Process Mining are harnessed with the aim to reduce carbon emissions, then Intelligent Automation can be an invaluable technology to scale a businesses sustainability objectives.