Education institutions and universities are discovering that automation is solving most of their pressure points associated with budget constraints, an aging workforce, data protection, and more.
By Paula P. Carneiro
How automation is changing the workforce
- Analytics and Program Diversity
- Enrollment Management
- Future of Higher Ed
- Technology (Evertrue, Marketsmart, etc.)
- Shaping the next Workforce
With the immense burden of preparing tomorrow’s workforce, it is no wonder that Higher Education Institutions and leading universities are looking to automation as a starting point for their modernization efforts. By 2022, no less than 54% of all employees will require significant reskilling and upskilling. In the world of RPA and adjacent hyperautomation technologies, pressure points comprised of high-volume and repetitive tasks often make for a great place to start. It is no different with our university clients, who have found that automation solves for most of the pressure points:
- Budget and FTE Constraints in the back office
- Departmental Demands are siloed
- Aging Workforce and Process/Data capture risk
- Attracting new staff while retaining quality employees
- Supporting Legacy and New Systems with Minimal Cross Platform Communication
- Security and Data protection for staff and students
Organizations and Fortune 500 companies are already finding places to add value using RPA, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Some of the places universally “valid” for the application of RPA include:
Once the functional understanding of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is clear, the industries, use-cases and value creation opportunities are as big as your imagination and process engineering alignment capabilities. Often, there are small processes that can be agreed upon by many departments within a higher education institution.
Most clients begin to narrow their focus on projects that could have the biggest impact by area, or could imply a collaboration across departments to solve for the siloed nature of most business processes at universities. Adding a digital transformation mindset is difficult. However, the more synergistic automation wins realized early on, the more likely momentum is to build. WonderBotz has experience helping companies find new ways to automate.
To combat the change management components that come with the application of robots, we looked to our partners UiPath. Their Academic Alliance program focuses on curriculum offerings around RPA and supporting the workforce within these institutions that is tasked with leading their digital transformation efforts. This success has been seen at many universities to date, and several more are on the rise, including Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with their start last year. The progress has been such a success, the program leader at VCU participated in a webinar and shared additional insight about their ongoing automation journey.
As Universities begin to hire talent around data and analytics and place a larger emphasis on assessing and upgrading technology in-house, the beginnings of a truly impactful approach to automation is emerging. Covid-19 impacted the healthcare and higher education industries in a way that will change the future forever; WonderBotz is committed to supporting our partners at UiPath in their mission to bring a robot to every student and every desktop and help the industries traditionally behind, in implementing modernization efforts that are sustainable and scalable.
Take a peek at a recent interview we did with the head of data and analytics from Syracuse if you are interested in these or more stories, subscribe to our YouTube channel for more automation stories and the application of them in exciting, new places.
