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Customer Experience Artificial Intelligence Automation

The ad agency automation imperative

By Max Cheprasov, Chief executive

November 12, 2021 | 5 min read

Systematically infusing your entire business with AI-powered automation capabilities to improve operations, as well as employee experience, customer experience and partner experience, isn’t futurism or hype anymore, writes Max Cheprasov, chief executive of Ubersuggest by NP Digital. Here’s what you need to know about today’s automated realities.

Automation

How can AI-powered automation capabilities improve operations?

Most industries have been taking full advantage of intelligent automation for years and are now reaping the benefits from unprecedented levels of effectiveness and efficiency. Agencies less so.

At the beginning of 2020, a survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that companies applying intelligent automation across the enterprise expect that they will outperform peers in the next three years. After a year, the data supports this expectation; those with the greatest business performance during the pandemic invested in intelligent automation to eliminate processes held together by high-retention-risk manual labor across the business.

The media and advertising industry has largely been lagging in this area and is facing a number of additional challenges in the post-Covid world. But it’s not all bad news. In fact, I’d argue that there hasn’t been a better time to seize the opportunities from automation because there are now plenty of mature, proven technologies, hundreds of use cases and lessons learned that you can apply immediately – plus dozens of trusted implementation partners and seasoned experts, who can help you get started swiftly without a headache.

Four reasons agencies need automation now more than ever

  1. Agencies are scrambling to retain and attract talent amid the shortage. Creative and media agencies, which laid off thousands of people during the pandemic, are now desperate to fill openings as clients start to spend again. A drain on talent decreases agency value.

  2. The future of work is now and comprises a confluence of people and technologies working together to improve effectiveness. Yes, some situations will create job displacement. However, most others call for job augmentation. According to Forrester, there is a shift at agencies to the human/technology equivalent, which permanently couples people and technology to form a new dimension to services: talent = humans + technology.

  3. The ‘humans + machines’ approach is reshaping the agency career path. It’s important to drive intelligent automation capabilities/benefits/results through the lens of ‘humans + machines’ collaboration. Clients will select agencies based on the best algorithm and data. High-EX (employee experience) and high-RQ (robotics quotient) workplaces will attract the best talent.

  4. Automation is already in full throttle. In Forrester’s report ‘The Agency Workforce 2023: Automation and AI Will Reshape Media and Creative Agencies’ it’s estimated that agencies will automate as much as 11% of their workforce by 2023 and 30% through 2032. Genpact’s research ‘AI 360: Accelerating AI in the Enterprise’ estimates that by 2025, companies that have adopted AI will be 10 times more efficient and have twice the market share of companies that have not.

Using AI and automation to give back four hours a week

Every business should have a strategic plan to modernize their operations and weave AI and automation into every process, from back-office functions to front-office client services. It’s the modern way to go beyond efficiency gains and deliver superior experiences.

According to McKinsey: “While few occupations are fully automatable, 60% of all occupations have at least 30% technically automatable activities.” Over a third of those activities are currently considered to be highly automatable, while over three-quarters of tasks may become automatable as technologies mature.

In other words, an agency with 1,000 people has the addressable opportunity for automation (at a minimum) equivalent to 54 full-time employees (or 5.4% of the workforce). Or, another way to think about it is that you can give back four hours a week to half of your workforce to focus on more strategic, higher-value activities for the business and clients. Now, multiply that impact and benefits times two or three, which is still realistic to achieve using today’s automation capabilities.

And, as these technologies continue to evolve over time and get more intelligent, they’ll be able to tackle even more sophisticated use cases. In about five years, it’s reasonable to believe that we’ll start to see the first examples of semi-autonomous enterprises – those that will be mainly driven by AI and operated by digital bots with minimal human supervision. This is a surefire way to remain competitive, while also elevating people’s potential.

For every successful automation project there were 99 that failed before it. Based on my experience and observations, a business is more likely to fail with scaling automation if it is treated as an experiment, rather than a strategic imperative from the beginning.

Max Cheprasov is chief executive of Ubersuggest by NP Digital.

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