Automation Has Not Increased Productivity for Many Organizations: Study

Around 58% of companies that automate their business processes are not seeing their productivity increase as much as they had expected, a recent study by Capgemini has found.

A mere deployment of technology will not increase productivity, businesses have to up-skill and retrain their workforce, says the French IT consultancy in its report.

Most of the companies that could not see an increase in output are based in the United States and China.

The report is based on a survey of 800 executives and 1,200 employees from over 400 large organizations globally.

A company with 50,000 workers who are fully trained in handling new technologies can expect to save about US$90 million more per year than companies that do not up-skill or are yet to up-skill their employees, the report noted.

Capgemini says businesses can certainly see positive results if they combine automation efforts with an up-skilling program. “In these cases, most employees (52%) and a high proportion of executives (46%) said that automation was improving productivity,” the report added.

The report concludes that companies cannot unlock the benefits of automation unless they retrain their employees. The up-skilling, the authors of the report argue, boosts the morale of employees.

“In organizations midway through an up-skilling program, employees were more positive than those in the initial phase of up-skilling”.

While 91% of organizations surveyed had either completed or started working on a skilling program, 35% are yet to begin putting in place relevant infrastructure and partnerships, 73% have not started a pilot run, and just 10% have begun a full-scale run of up-skilling programs for their workforce.