How Digitally Modern
Processes Make Great
Experiences
At a time when experiences are everything, automatingprocesses for speed, intelligence and fluidity will constitutea significant competitive advantage.

PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

September 2021

Executive Summary
Businesses are in a time of great — and unanticipated —change. For the past several years, whether it was throughanalytics, artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation(RPA) or work-from-home capabilities, companies were alreadyshifting quickly into new ways of getting process work done.
Then, in the wake of the prolonged pandemic, immediate priorities (e.g., “Everything thatcan go online, must go online!”) necessitated business interactions and transactions to be
more connected, more simple — more “human.” Operating a business in these times ofcontagion has thrown into sharp relief the importance of establishing digital value chains
between employees, partners, customers and suppliers that allow process work to happen
effortlessly, flowing around any obstacles that get in the way and gaining intelligence over time.
The great challenge now is to hyperscale this type of “being digital” to the scores ofprocesses that rely on the uber-critical systems, applications and operations at the heart ofmost big businesses — from processing insurance claims, to approving mortgages, to caring
for patients, to growing personal wealth, to ordering a utility or new streaming service.
In short, the business climate of the 2020s has made it plain that without significant digitalprocess improvement, there’s no way to deliver exceptional experience improvement.
Case in point: Digital natives like Lemonade and Shopify and large disruptors like Amazon,
Google, Apple and Microsoft have all built great experiences with increasingly sophisticateddigital technologies that erase frustrating interaction points from formerly cumbersome andlengthy processes. Behind the “great experience” are processes conditioned for simplicity —processes that are intelligent and seamless, and that minimize how work gets done in the
background, to the point that the work becomes nearly invisible. With this deceptively simple
formula, these experience leaders have been able to accelerate growth even through timesof great change.

2 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

In short, the business climate of
the 2020s has made it plain thatwithout significant digital process
improvement, there’s no way todeliver exceptional experience
improvement.
Offering frictionless processes is now a critical competitive necessity. It’s become unsustainable
for organizations to maintain expensive and sclerotic legacy silos, where antiquatedapproaches cause clunky, flawed, frustrating experiences.
Going forward, businesses need to rethink how work gets done so that the starts, stops,
handoffs and run-arounds are eliminated (or at least made virtually unseen) for thoseinteracting with them. In doing so, the notion of a “process” needs to be rewired into
dynamic, fluid, always evolving, scalable, predictable and proactive human experiences that
employees, partners and customers value most.
The following insights, gleaned from our research and conversations with organizations
seeking to optimize operations work, underscore the strategic imperatives that are shaping
the future of processes for the modern business.

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 3

Key findings❙ Your unconnected, broken processes need integration — now. By applying precision
automation within the process value chain, businesses can significantly boost the impact of
cost reduction and speed-to-market improvement while eliminating friction points.
❙ Cumbersome, disconnected processes will increase your “experience debt.” Whilejourney-mapping exercises have yielded some insights, most initiatives don’t tie front-end
experiences to the processes — and digital fabric — that deliver these experiences. This
“experience debt” is a strategic risk that’s detrimental to effective outcomes. It needs to be
remedied — and fast.
❙ Intelligent process automation (IPA) and AI are powerful accelerants — and won’t
require invasive surgery. Applied astutely, IPA and AI can help break inertia quickly on
existing processes and step-change quick wins by effectively reducing rote-and-repetitive
process steps. This augments free time for imagination, empathy and critical thinking,making human interactions more meaningful.
❙ The data generated by automation will radically improve process outcomes. The yieldof process data generated by intelligent automation is its most profound benefit. By using
the next-generation technologies of IPA, companies can completely re-imagine customer,
supplier and partner interactions to realize business process insights in far greater fidelity
than has ever been possible before.
❙ The future of work needs business operations in which processes are largely invisible.
Next-generation business process services and solutions like intelligent automation
offer ways to reshape the way work gets done — today — so that yesterday’s antiquatedapproaches are history. Tomorrow’s successful digital business operations might even feel“process free” by being dynamic, frictionless and intuitive.
This report highlights the key impacts and attributes of digital process models that sharpen
organizational agility, resilience and competitive fitness. By applying these new approaches,businesses can shift from legacy to digital thinking that delivers lasting business processchange and experiences that resonate for customers, employees and ecosystem partners.

4 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 5

Legacy debt leads to experience debt
For the last few decades, most Fortune 500 companies have grown —rapidly — through rampant merger and acquisition activities. All thisM&A has left a growing assortment of rigid, disconnected, legacy-based
systems and processes in place across scores of isolated functional silos.
Even worse, it’s led to choppy, uneven and downright bad customer
experiences.
Breaking these monolithic, centralized legacy systems is challenging. It’s also creating piles of process debt1
that are dragging down the efficacy of business optimization investments — and even worse, leading to“experience debt.”
Meanwhile, while many organizations engage in journey-mapping exercises with an eye toward improving
the customer experience, most initiatives stop at the user interface, and fail to tie the desired experiences tothe processes that underpin them. While the journey map may look “clean,” underneath it there’s a jumbled
tangle of processes that can’t support it.
Understanding the connection between “processes” and “experiences” — and getting these work links
connected — is proving difficult for many companies. In recent research from Forrester (commissioned by
Cognizant), more than one-third of respondents say their organization fails to view “experience” — whether
that of customers, employees or partners — as part of an interconnected ecosystem (and over one-quartersay they still haven’t fully mapped it out for their customer journeys).2 At a time when nothing short of digital“everything” is required, this is a shocking admission that requires urgent attention.

Simply put, businesses will see
diminishing returns from a balingwired kludge of legacy processes
daisy-chained together with
software “robots.”
6 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

Unpack the baggage of process debt
and experience debt.

The question is, how can companies slice through the Gordian knot of bad interactions — for customers,
partners, suppliers and employees alike? While it’s easy for CEOs and senior executives to proclaim, “Legacy
is poison,” the hard part comes next: discarding the old way of doing things and unpacking the baggage ofprocess debt and experience debt.

From RPA to intelligent automation
As seen in our recent Work Ahead research, automation has emerged as a key component of digitalbusiness process strategies over the last decade because of its ability to eliminate bottlenecks and boost
process feedback as a force-multiplier to new business outcomes. 3 This is especially true of RPA, whose
software automates rote-and-repetitive process work. As businesses from retailers to oil and gas giants
rapidly deploy RPA as a mainstay of driving quick wins, this form of automation will remain a criticaloperational elixir.
Inside nearly all companies, business processes need to become digitally instrumented, analyzed andincreasingly operated by software “robots” that complement humans to deliver an easier, simpler experience
for users inside and outside the organization.
But RPA can also result in fragmented efforts that pile multiple, unwieldy automation scripts on top ofeach other or produce one-off automations that don’t connect across tasks. For years, business process
reengineering acolytes of Michael Hammer have reiterated his proclamation, “Don’t automate. Obliterate!”4
The mantra was to deliver more with less — way less. What’s happened instead is that in service of faster,incremental improvements, shortcuts are sometimes taken — and without returning to rewire the work, thepatches and workarounds become very expensive to sustain.
Over time, the tactical improvements gained from these labyrinthine processes simply decay. As cloud
migration and data stacks become increasingly important, these process deficiencies become ever more
exposed, resulting in so-called “process deflation” — the sudden devaluation of systems and processes thatwere previously relied on to get work done, due to the application of revolutionary digital innovations (or,existentially, the emergence of competitors whose processes are faster and more streamlined).5
Simply put, businesses will see diminishing returns from a baling-wired kludge of legacy processes daisychained together with software “robots.”Your organization may already be on this path, especially if it’s already embarked on RPA initiatives. It’s truethat RPA can help break inertia and step-change quick wins, as it’s sometimes speedier to add smart robots
to an existing process, even if redundant, manual handoffs, interfaces or approvals persist.
However, while these types of initiatives can provide an on-ramp to heightened efficiency and quality
thresholds for routine, stepwise work, they can only take you so far. Why? Because one of RPA’s great
advantages — that it can be overlaid onto existing systems — is also one of its hindrances: The processes it
automates can only go as fast as the capabilities of the legacy systems that underpin them.6

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 7

IPA delivers processes that think
To evolve beyond simply automating “swivel-chair” work (e.g., staff
toggling between multiple systems and screens to achieve “lastmile” integration of data checking, inputting, searching or collating),
businesses need to add an intelligence layer consisting of data, Internetof Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), platforms and state-of-the-art
data architectures (what Forrester Research calls “automation fabric”).7
That’s where IPA comes in: by helping businesses stitch together disparate silos and legacy platforms withdata feedback and applied intelligence for “processes that think” — so they can generate insights, see aroundcorners, predict customer behavior, prevent unintended consequences and enable employees to focus on
higher value work.
Businesses that do so pave the way for AI, machine learning and neural networks — effectively, processes thatlearn (and adapt) — freeing employees to achieve their full potential.
That’s why IPA in service of predictive analytics is the real endgame for process excellence. Any process withthe potential for generating lots of data — particularly customer data but also on suppliers, partners andemployees — should be automated with IPA for the sole purpose of collecting that data: proprietary raw
material that will serve as a feedback loop of analytics for continuous process performance improvement toderive insights that enable quicker, faster and better decisions.
Beyond automating routine work, these combined technologies fuel digitally instrumented processes thatcan, for instance, instruct an employee on the next best action (e.g., a customer service agent knowing
the precise pricing that will most likely close the sale) or recognize market trends that will lead to the next
breakthrough product and enable fast response to changes in the market.

Technologies fuel digitally instrumented processes
that can instruct an employee on the next best action
or recognize market trends that will lead to the next
breakthrough product.

8 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great ExperiencesAI signals automation maturity
Mature enterprises were more likely to adopt AI in their automation initiatives. (Percent of respondents)
Mature enterprises

Typical enterprises

58%

42%

45%

24%
18%

Standalone RPA

RPA with AI and/or
analytics solutions

13%

Standalone AI-based
solutions

Response base: 50 senior executives
Source: Everest Group
Figure 1

Making better financial decisions is also part of the equation. Businesses can improve working capital byapplying intelligent automation to invoicing and collections and using the AI-driven insights gleaned fromanalytics across functions such as order-to-cash and record-to-report.
Consider: A leading sports medicine provider was having trouble getting full payment for the products it soldto patients during medical consultations because of the insurance reimbursement process. The business
implemented a system that used two years’ worth of patient collection data to predict which invoices wereleast likely to be paid within 90 days, based on variables including the product, price, patient service center,
territory, patient age and patient state. The operations team could then prioritize these patients for follow-up,
which increased payment collection by 13%.8
Recent research by Everest Group reveals where “mature” enterprises are ahead.9 While “typical enterprises”
were still at the stage of implementing pilots of process automation for low-complexity processes, moremature adopters were moving from stand-alone RPA programs to applying AI and analytics or even
deploying standalone AI-based solutions (see Figure 1).

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 9

Blending intelligent systems and humans
With process automation and cognitive technologies, intelligent robots complement humans and help
redirect people to use creativity and ingenuity on important projects that will move the needle for thebusiness. Advanced technology lifts people out of processes that don’t require strategic thinking and directs
their time toward work they do better than machines — like serving customers, handling exceptions andcreating new products or improving experiences.
With scalability built into the code and architecture of these processes, the need for people-based processdelivery is further reduced with rule- and value-based logic of machine learning and AI or, in some cases,
subjective judgment — that is, smart people working in tandem with intelligent automation.
James Loo, head of human resources at DBS Bank in Taiwan, who we recently wrote about in the Harvard
Business Review, describes this type of human-machine collaboration, using chatbots for creating a greatcandidate experience. According to Loo, “A chatbot coach would work with the DBS Bank recruiting team,to train the chatbot to handle the routine tasks of screening candidates and answering frequently asked
questions of candidates, while the human recruiters have more time to focus on strategic areas such as
engaging with hiring managers to better understand the need for a new job and the changing needs of thebusiness for new hires.”10
As companies work through the pandemic and prepare for a digital-first world, executives are making IPA
a top priority. According to our Work Ahead research, the ratio of process work performed by humans
vs. machines continues to tip in favor of machines, particularly in the areas of data organization, complex
decision support and rules-based decision making (see Figure 2, next page).11
It’s not surprising to see the data underscore how intelligent automation can increasingly help businesses
overcome the operational hurdles created by crisis and uncertainty, as well as a world awash in data atvolumes far beyond human scale.
In the future of work, the collaboration of humans and intelligent machines will increasingly be relied on toaccomplish the mission of all businesses. In the words of Professor Leslie Willcocks of the London School of
Economics, automation and AI will finally let us “take the robot out of the human.”12With process automation and cognitive technologies,
intelligent robots complement humans and help redirect
people to use creativity and ingenuity on important
projects that will move the needle for the business.
10 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

The march of machines continues
Respondents were asked to what extent the following activities would be executed by machines vs. employees, today and by 2023.
(Percent of work done by machines)
Today

26%
17%

16%

Sifting large data sets
to filter and identify errors
or actionable items

Execution ofcomplex decisions

23%
16%

16%

Physical actions
to implement
decisions

24%
16%

16%

Feedback,
assessment andprocess improvement

23%

Mining and analysisof data to diagnose
problems, make predictions,recommendations

24%

23%

2023

Collection, curationand managementof data

23%

23%
16%

Evaluation of options/recommendations
to make decisions

15%

Execution of routine,rules-based decisions
based on data inputs

Response base: 4,000 senior business leaders
Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work
Figure 2

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 11

12 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

The catalytic benefits of IPA
As more businesses apply IPA technologies to their core business
operations, the benefits are clear to see. In a study we recently
conducted with research organization ThoughtLab, customer andemployee experience improvements are among the top expected
benefits of IPA deployments, followed by greater market share,productivity, innovation, revenue and profitability (see Figure 3).
Customer experience tops list of benefits from IPA
Respondents were asked about the benefits of IPA, now and in two years’ time. (Percent of respondents)
Now

65%

36%

35%

Improved
customer experience

64%

63%

35%

Improved employee
productivity

63%

34%

Greaterinnovation

62%

59%

In two years

Increased
revenue/profitability

58%

33%

32%

32%

Streamlined
operations

Greater ability
to scale

Highermarket share

55%
28%

Accelerated digitaltransformation

Response base: 1,000 senior executives
Source: Cognizant
Figure 3

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 13

Other expected benefits include a greater ability to scale and more efficient use of working capital, since
IPA can drastically improve financial processes, particularly cash flow and treasury management. According
to a senior IT leader at a Japanese technology vendor in the study, “Our IPA investment has improved theemployee experience, which has resulted in an improvement in the organization’s productivity.”
The more that businesses use AI, analytics and automation to augment processes, the greater the benefits.
In our Work Ahead research, companies that have augmented two or more business processes withtechnology (“high augmenters”) reported significantly higher business benefits across the board (see Figure4), with outcomes at least four percentage points higher (in some cases, much more) than those of other
respondents. These high augmenters are achieving greater improvements in decision-making, operational
efficiency, risk management, customer experience and more.

High augmenters get outsized results
Respondents were asked to rate the improvements they’ve achieved in the following areas as a result of augmenting processes withtechnology. (Mean percent improvement)
High augmenters

17%

16%
10%

10%

Operational
efficiency

13%

Decisionmaking

12%
7%

Brand
reputation

14%

14%

12%

Sales

11%
7%

6%

Organizational
agility

Response base: 425 high augmenters; 3,575 all others
Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work
Figure 4

14 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

Risk management,
securityand regulatorycompliance

13%
8%

8%

7%
Operational
effectiveness13%

Customerexperience

10%
5%Sustainability

Others6%Innovation

7%
EmployeeexperienceAnd it’s not just use of automation tools like IPA. Whether it’s drones, IoT, sensors or augmented reality, othernext-gen digital technologies are also re-making process flows that are more fluid, with much better outcomes.
Human-machine collaboration is another factor in improving customer experience, according to our Work
Ahead research, with a near-doubling in the percent of respondents from 2016 to today expecting to see
increased progress in the next three years (see Figure 5). Other areas expected to surge via human/machineteaming are employee experience, organizational agility, brand reputation, innovation and sales, all of which
are connected and interdependent.

Workforce augmentation improves outputs across multiple dimensions
Respondents were asked about the progress they expect to make by 2023 in the following areas.
(The mean percent increase today and in 2023)

17%
11%

Today

17%

15%

8%

Operational
efficiency

Decisionmaking13%
7%

Organizational
agility

13%
7%

Brand
reputation

8%

Customerexperience

Sales

8%

Risk management,
securityand regulatorycompliance

13%
7%

14%

13%

11%

2023

7%

Operational
effectiveness

12%

13%

Employeeexperience

10%

6%

6%

Innovation

Sustainability

Response base: 4,000 senior executives
Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work
Figure 5

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 15

Making the digital business (process) case for great
experiences
While current process inefficiencies may hurt, these friction points
expose where innovations stemming from IPA can create value. The fintech space is rife with examples. Witness Stripe, whose founders spottedstruggles with legacy payment platforms, especially in the form ofcoding and design issues. That’s when the company decided to build adeveloper-focused instant-setup payment platform any company could
use and scale.13
Then there’s Chime, where starting an online account takes less than two minutes compared with a traditionalbank, which could take a day or two. CEO Chris Britt told CNBC: “We’re more like a consumer software
company than a bank . . . It’s more a transaction-based, processing-based business model that is highly
predictable, highly recurring and highly profitable.”14
These businesses have flattened the processes required to deliver the optimal experience. In short, they’ve
made processes intelligent and nearly invisible, and hence the experience simple and easy for consumers.
Until now, most work processes have been too complex to be placed on “simple” supply/demand matching
platforms (like DoorDash or Task Rabbit, etc.) But if this can happen at scale, in a sustained and adaptableway, it will allow processes to come out of the shadows and — dare we say — gain visibility and glamor.

How the old guard can compete with digital natives
How will the change be brought about for traditional companies that don’t have the luxury of being “borndigital”? In other words, how could a slow and costly insurance policy management process be digitally
reinvigorated like those of Lemonade’s Policy 2.0, which is open-sourced on GitHub,15 or the mortgage
processes using AI such as Blend and Better.com?
To enact similarly real and enduring change in strategy, underlying processes and business approach, CEOs,
COOs, chief analytics officers, shared services leads, process owners and IT leaders have to work collectively
to confront the surly legacy of those sclerotic “as-is” processes from yesteryear. Using digital approaches
where platforms become the process, and processes become experiences — great experiences — is essential.

16 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

Real change means not just automating processes but also applying digital tools to totally obliterate
legacy sub-processes that get in the way of re-thinking better ways of working — from “then Margaretin procurement does this” to “Beep. Done.” Digitizing processes begins with a commitment to data
modernization, reimagining how employees work, as well as putting a (merciful) bullet in technical debtridden applications.
The lessons to learn (especially in the face of the pandemic) from those doing it right are: Investments ininfrastructure that enable processes to scale elastically to handle millions of remote employees and/or
customers reliably pay off.
Take the value chain of healthcare: At hospitals, the pandemic is removing the constraints of geography anddiminishing the need for brick-and-mortar physical visits, while also threading in the undeniable benefits of
having “a Fitbit for your physiology.” Diagnostics, intelligent routing to specialists and triaging — at home —in service of a better healthcare experience might become commonplace, while also relieving beleaguered
doctors and nurses.
We already see today’s manual work processes becoming digitized, allowing for better doctor-to-doctor
communications, and helping to eliminate the need for expensive, repeat testing (perhaps allowing — at longlast — the industry to obliterate the phrase “fax me the patient’s documents” from physicians’ vocabulary).
To move forward, many innovative leaders begin with a simple, digital precision twist that’s yielded great
experiences across an entire value chain. Simply put, in every case of successful automation we’ve seen, acreative business leader looked at how a process was executed and concluded “We really stink at this,” andthen found a better way of using automation, AI and algorithms to improve the speed, accuracy and costprofile of the process.

Digitizing processes begins with a commitment to data
modernization, reimagining how employees work, aswell as putting a (merciful) bullet in technical debt-ridden
applications.

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 17

Quick Take
Taking the first data-driven stepwith process mining
Across the scores of use cases out there, the success of all digital process improvement
initiatives hinges on a holistic audit of specific steps, functions and tasks for which
automation and platforms can rapidly take over most of the work effort.
One of the most important pre-automation decisions is to use a process mining tool(e.g., Celonis, QPR, ABBYY, etc.) as a “plumb bob” of sorts that brings coherence to allinteractions for a given process.16 Additionally, these tools can help achieve straight-throughprocessing, interaction history and necessary context for process interactions with people,
places and things.
Applying process mining, organizations can pull event-related data from customer
relationship management (CRM), ERP and other applications to model how businessprocesses work in actuality. By capturing how work really happens, including who did it,
how long it takes and any deviations from average, process mining ruthlessly exposes
bottlenecks, non-compliant paths and other impediments often unseen.
Case in point: We recently helped a large healthcare provider identify solutions for thehigher-than-normal cycle times required for configuring member benefits. The company
sought to identify levers to drastically reduce the baseline cycle time of 26 days while
ensuring critical access for all members.

18 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great ExperiencesWe used process mining to run what-if scenarios and simulations that identified process
bottlenecks, as well as ways to improve processes and reduce cycle times. One improvement
was to automatically route cases of family members with disabled dependents to an agent
with specific knowledge in that area to ensure more effective handling, improving customer
service.
Using time-and-motion studies, in which screen activity was recorded, the client’s businessprocess team identified thousands of the same clicks being made each day — identifying amanual, necessary process that added time to an already convoluted system.
By applying AI to these time-consuming processes, we helped the client reduce cycle timeby 70% — resulting in a target of under seven days.
The changes introduced by process mining improved customer experience, reduced
human error and created processes that are more efficient and assured. The organization
was able to redeploy employees to focus on more complex, challenging projects that
directly created value for the business.
Applied properly, process mining precedes IPA initiatives as these tools can be used tocreate automation templates and gauge the health of existing processes — identifying
which ones are efficient and which require an overhaul.
Given the value of automation, it is no surprise that companies are beginning to invest inprocess mining to optimize how work gets done.

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 19

Is the future of work ‘process free’?
The future of business process operations is in many ways the futureof work. We already use Siri, Alexa and GPS tools today — they’re all
essentially robotic personal assistants. Imagine going from LaGuardia
Airport to Newark and crossing midtown Manhattan during rush hour tocatch a connecting flight. Would you ever try this (and catch your flight,
on-time) without using GPS?
As these “bots” gather momentum, we foresee these software layers — with voice as the default interface —emerging as the dominant model. Already, robotic assistants like Google’s Duplex voice bot (for reservations)and x.ai’s Amy Ingram (for scheduling meetings) are yielding huge productivity and creativity gains.
Do people think of next-gen platforms like these as “processes” at all? Of course not! To the people who
use them, they “just work.” So, if current trends continue, might all the work tasks we have to do in the futureessentially manifest themselves as being “process-free”?
It’s a strategic vision that might be happening faster than we realize, as today’s employees seek the samehigh-quality experience as a consumer using the best software. Watch how your younger workers message,
text and multitask around the process bottlenecks that work throws at them and see how quickly they
resolve them. Harness those learnings and identify — quickly — pilots that capture them within appropriate
process functions.
We also expect the future of friction-free processes to pivot around low/no-code tools that will quickly createand scale intuitive and meaningful experiences across the board. With technology central to almost every
aspect of business, this is about looking for the next “positive deviation” vs. “the way we’ve always done it.”20 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 21

Pick your spots for using intelligent process
automation to build intelligent experience automation
Digitizing a process doesn’t need to start as a radical, invasive
undertaking. The key is to ask how the increasingly sophisticatedtechnologies of digital business processes can add value.
When organizations understand “how the knee bone is connected to the hip bone” in their extended
processes and value chains, good things can happen. If you change the work process, you can change
the business process, which in turn allows operating models to modernize in support of executing on thecorporate strategy — not obsessing over the number of people “doing the process.”
Armed with new and powerful levers to create real process change, there’s nowhere to hide in the darkcorners of the back office anymore. Through targeted approaches and a thorough understanding of how
processes interconnect and interact, businesses can use digital technologies to remove the rocks and roots ofolder legacy approaches and enable processes to flow smoothly into the calm waters of experiences.
To get started, we recommend organizations incorporate the following into their intelligent automation
strategies:❙ Map the customer journey and modernize how you deliver. While it’s a good first step to do the hardyards of process-by-process change with established practices like process mining, the real journey is todigitally change the DNA of work and work processes that sprawl across disparate business units. Now is
the time to map customer journeys and evaluate every process to deliver the best experience and optimize
people, processes and technology to remove every friction point possible.
❙ Write off your “experience debt” by humanizing and connecting workflows. For digital processes
to really change an organization, companies need to create vastly more humanized transactions andexperiences. That means taking the time to really observe customers, partners, suppliers and employees —their motivations, their pain points, their frustrations and experiences with your organization’s products
and services — and what it means to their lives.
❙ Optimize the workforce for a new way of work. Free employees from the tyranny of the tedious byaugmenting them with technology to unleash their full potential and business value. The people, talentand structure behind IPA is as important as the technology, so involve employees in the journey and allow
them to experience firsthand the benefits of a new way of working, which in turn accelerates IPA adoption.
Look for highly repetitive tasks occurring at great scale within your organization, like processing an invoice,proofreading documentation, “picking and packing,” reconciling, etc.

22 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences❙ Orchestrate IPA at scale. To realize the full benefits of automation, it is vital not only to create a roadmap
for automating processes across the enterprise but also, in some cases, to integrate isolated processes.
The first step is a complete process audit to understand which processes make the most sense to fix, whichshould be left alone and which can be eliminated. Doing so can eliminate bottlenecks, manual handoffs and siloed data. This is particularly true when connecting customer-facing processes to back-end
operations.
❙ Prioritize data —it’s the real process prize. Look for areas in which processes and workflows canbe digitally instrumented via mobile platforms, sensors, telematics and IoT, where processes are “bornautomated” and from which transaction data, previously unavailable, can be generated and managed.
The delivery of clean, believable, real-time insights into your operations is the real prize of digital process
initiatives.
❙ Relying on internal capabilities alone won’t be an option for most. Most businesses will need partners
to help design, build, deliver, scale and curate ideas based on processes, newly invented digital tools ordevelopments in wearables, sensors and 3D printing, let alone the latest in process mining approaches,data ingestion, analytics, UX and machine learning, etc. That’s where service providers that deliver outcomes(over transactions) are critical.

Helping business operations plan today for the journey ahead
The processes of tomorrow will look, feel and act very differently than they do today. Rather than enduring thetwists, turns and delays of buying life insurance, taking out a loan or signing up for a new streaming service,
we will soon forget that these activities are processes at all.
As the bumps, hairpin turns and awkward intersections are removed from the core business operations that
support these transactions, all that will be left is the experience itself. And the resulting process intelligence
will imbue businesses with the agility and real-time insights they need to keep those experiences relevant
through the ever-changing times ahead.
Given the massive change wrought by both the pandemic and the decade-long imperative for digital
innovation to benefit customers, suppliers and employees (not to mention society at large), the stakes oftaking a false step may seem terrifyingly high. But by identifying processes that can yield more satisfying andmeaningful experiences through next-generation digital approaches, businesses will ensure they won’t justbe a spectator to the opportunities ahead.

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 23

Endnotes
1

Analyst Phil Wainwright has discussed process debt as a concept by building on computing pioneer Ward Cunningham’s ideaof technical debt https://diginomica.com/the-spectre-of-process-deflation-haunting-us-enterprise.

2“Activate a Holistic Customer Experience Ecosystem to Become a Market Leader,” Cognizant commissioned research
conducted by Forrester Consulting, www.design-exceptional-experiences.com/forrester/.

3“The Work Ahead in Intelligent Automation: Coping with Complexity in a Post-Pandemic World,” Cognizant, 2021,
www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/the-work-ahead-in-intelligent-automation-coping-with-complexity-in-a-post-pandemicworld-codex6633.pdf.

4Michael Hammer, “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 1990, https://hbr.
org/1990/07/reengineering-work-dont-automate-obliterate.

5Phil Wainewright, “The Spectre of Process Deflation Haunting US Enterprises,” Diginomica, Dec. 22, 2015, https://diginomica.
com/the-spectre-of-process-deflation-haunting-us-enterprise.

6

Robert H. Brown, “Moore’s Law, Speed and Robotic Process Automation,” Cognizant Center for the Future of Work, Aug. 10,
2015, www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/archived-sites/article/moores-law-speed-and-robotic-process-automation.

7

Leslie Joseph, “Automation Is the New Fabric for Digital Business,” Forrester Research, Inc., June 16, 2021, www.forrester.com/
report/Automation+Is+The+New+Fabric+For+Digital+Business/-/E-RES164798.

8“Intelligent Automation: A New Business Basic for Our Time,” Digitally Cognizant, April 21, 2020, https://digitally.cognizant.
com/intelligent-automation-a-new-business-basic-for-our-times-codex5580.

9“Scaling Up Intelligent Automation: What Can We Learn from the Best?” Everest Group, 2021, www.cognizant.com/us/en/
documents/everest-group-scaling-up-intelligent-automation.pdf.

10Jeanne C. Meister and Robert H. Brown, “21 HR Jobs of the Future,” Harvard Business Review, Aug 12, 2020, https://hbr.
org/2020/08/21-hr-jobs-of-the-future.

11“The Work Ahead in Intelligent Automation: Coping with Complexity in a Post-Pandemic World,” Cognizant, 2021,
www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/the-work-ahead-in-intelligent-automation-coping-with-complexity-in-a-post-pandemicworld-codex6633.pdf.

12Leslie P. Willcocks, “Why We Should Learn to Love the Robot,” Forbes, Sept. 25, 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/
londonschoolofeconomics/2018/09/25/why-we-should-learn-to-love-the-robot/?sh=c19e60aad3b7.

13

Derek Anderson, “The Story Behind Payment Disruptor Stripe.com and Its Founder Patrick Collison,” Tech Crunch, May 20,
2012, https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/20/the-story-behind-payment-disruptor-stripe-com-and-its-founder-patrickcollison/.

14

Hugh Son, “Chime Is Now Worth $14.5 Billion, Surging Past Robinhood as Most Valuable US Consumer Fintech,” CNBC, Sept.
18, 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/09/18/chime-is-now-worth-14point5-billion-surging-past-robinhood-as-the-most-valuableus-consumer-fintech-.html.

15

Scott McGee, Lemonade Launches Policy 2.0,” Insurance Times, June 6, 2018, www.insurancetimes.co.uk/lemonadelaunches-policy-20/1427327.article.

16

Process Mining Software Comparison: www.processmining-software.com/tools/.

24 / How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences

Acknowledgments
Also contributing to this report were Andreea Roberts, Chief Marketing Officer for Cognizant’s
Digital Business Operations practice, and Corey Olfert, Global Messaging and Portfolio Marketing Leadfor Cognizant Digital Business Operations.

How Digitally Modern Processes Make Great Experiences / 25

About the Center for the Future of Work
Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work™ is chartered to examine how work is changing, and will change, in response to the emergence of newtechnologies, new business practices and new workers. The Center provides original research and analysis of work trends and dynamics, and collaborates
with a wide range of business, technology and academic thinkers about what the future of work will look like as technology changes so many aspects of ourworking lives. For more information, visit Cognizant.com/futureofwork or email CenterforFutureofWork@cognizant.com.

About Digital Business Operations
Cognizant Digital Business Operations helps clients create and scale exceptional, human-centered experiences. By tying desired outcomes to operations
and building flexibility, intelligence and creativity into processes, Cognizant Digital Business Operations enables modern businesses to confidently embracecontinuous change.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq-100: CTSH) engineers modern businesses. We help our clients modernize technology, reimagine processes and transform experiences
so they can stay ahead in our fast-changing world. Together, we’re improving everyday life. See how at www.cognizant.com or @Cognizant.

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