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RESEARCH REPORT

The automation edge for High Tech

5-MINUTE READ

May 8, 2023

In brief

  • High Tech companies are especially well positioned to capitalize on advanced automation to make their businesses strong and more competitive.

  • When considering automation, High Tech companies should look to Finance and IT as good places to accelerate their deployment of automation solutions.

  • Building trust in automation throughout the enterprise is key to adoption and the return-on-investment automation generates.

The automation edge for High Tech

We discuss the full automation potential within internal business functions in the High Tech industry.

It’s no secret that automation is increasingly the engine behind better enterprise performance. In fact, it’s a critical part of a digital core which, in turn, is at the heart of what we call Total Enterprise Reinvention. Total Enterprise Reinvention is a deliberate strategy that aims to set a new performance frontier for High Tech companies to help drive growth and optimize operations.

Automation’s potential is especially promising in High Tech. High Tech companies have many repetitive operations that require extremely low margins of error. They match the profile of companies ripe for enterprise automation—namely, large, older companies built through M&A and consolidation. And their highly educated and skilled workers are more likely to feel comfortable with automation.

Whilst their highly educated and skilled workers are more likely to feel comfortable with automation. the High Tech industry is in a fierce war for talent which increases the incentive to embrace scalable solutions that serve as workforce multipliers, simplify operations, and improve employee experiences. A recent Accenture semiconductor industry research has identified the talent gap as an emerging obstacle to growth and recommends embedded automation as a key lever in alleviating demand for hard-to-reach engineering talent.

High Tech companies are well prepared for automation and are uniquely positioned to adopt advances quickly, for three key reasons:

  1. Repetitive operations need extremely low margins of error.
  2. Highly educated and skilled workers are comfortable with automation.
  3. Continuous change has created a strong understanding of complex integration processes.

In particular, High Tech companies’ Finance and IT organizations are ripe for automation due to their relative maturity in digitized business processes and cloud infrastructure. Many processes in these organizations are areas in which companies can get quick wins and capture value that can be reinvested in additional enterprise-wide automation initiatives.

Two great places to start:

Two great places to start
Two great places to start

But none of this is possible without trust, which is critical to the adoption of automation. Leaders must understand the drivers of trust and actively measure trust levels within their organizations to drive adoption and capture the full value potential. After all, the adage holds true: What gets measured gets fixed. It is important to have relevant metrics to measure success. Proven frameworks and methodologies are available to help High Tech companies measure trust so they can create a strong foundation on which they can build their automation efforts. This enables them to bring the same kind of innovation to their business processes as they do to the innovative, automation-enabled products High Tech companies’ chips make possible.

WRITTEN BY

Diana Bersohn

Managing Director – Accenture Strategy, Technology Strategy

Alex Olea

Managing Director, Strategy

Wole Adefemi

Senior Manager – Strategy & Consulting, High Tech

Maggy Ibrahim

Manager – Strategy & Consulting, High Tech

Jeff Johnson

Manager – Strategy & Consulting, High Tech

Jack Dickinson

Consultant – Strategy & Consulting, High Tech