Publication – PC Quest
Peripheral automation bridges the gap between clunky enterprise systems without ripping them apart. It smartly adds AI, agility, and seamless workflows—making your tech investments work harder, faster, and way smarter.
Workplace Automation: Connect, Agile, AI
Despite all the hype about digital transformation, most businesses are still struggling with an uncomfortable fact—systems do not communicate with each other as well as they could, and therefore the digital infrastructure does not propel the organization as a unified entity. Companies spend a lot on enterprise applications, but workers end up cobbling together workflows by hand, shuffling data between systems, and coping with duplicate tasks. This friction not only slows work, but it affects employee experience, decision-making, and ultimately business results.
The work today is so dynamic that organizations have to facilitate new interactions and process innovations at rapid speed. Most often, the inflexibility of information systems (and, therefore, effort and investment involved) holds back innovation and agility.
Peripheral automation is a realistic approach to resolving this challenge. In contrast to changing whole systems or waiting for costly full-scale automation projects, peripheral automation facilitates goal-oriented, high-intelligent intervention. This kind of intervention adds productivity, helps improve interactions among different platforms, and allows businesses to draw greater value out of their existing investment in technology.
Closing the integration gap without disrupting core systems
Companies rightly make investments in maintaining stability in core technology infrastructure—ERP, CRM, HRMS, and multiple industry-specific solutions. But these systems are not, by and large, engineered to work in perfect harmony. They are too expensive and disruptive to upgrade or replace so that they work in harmony with each other. Creating interaction and experiences with such underlying systems is extremely challenging particularly if the interaction involves multiple participating processes and underlying systems. Peripheral automation as an architectural style provides views enabling such innovation and integration more easily.
Peripheral automation strategy results in smart, context-aware automation in the intersection points of these systems and productive experiences where humans interact with processes and data.
For example, an employee onboarding process typically demands inputs in more than one application—HRMS, payroll, IT provisioning, and compliance. Peripheral automation views recognize tiers of experiences and interactions, process orchestration and core data and application logic. It can result in the design of seamless experiences without the need for drastic changes in current enterprise software. Each tier has a specific role to play, which makes this method extremely flexible and effective.
For instance, Peripheral Automation can energize a retail business and boost its online operations. At the center, the data layer has a structured and stable database of customers, products, inventory, and transactions, which provides stability and accuracy. This enables real-time updates of stock levels and customer purchases. The process layer automates core workflows, including order fulfillment, payment processing, and restocking of inventory.
When a customer orders a product online, this layer will ensure the order is authenticated, payment is initiated, and the warehouse is informed to ship the product. Last but not least, the experience layer materializes these processes via user interfaces—e.g., the company’s e-commerce site, mobile application, and in-store kiosks—where customers can shop products, buy them, and monitor their orders. Also, third-party logistics integrations facilitate real-time delivery tracking. By tapping peripheral automation throughout these layers, the retailer improves customer experience, optimizes operational efficiency, and facilitates smooth data transfer between systems.
A more intelligent way to AI implementation
Most firms want to implement AI but find it challenging to adopt. Peripheral automation can be a gateway to AI-driven transformation by embracing intelligent automation in managed, high-impact applications.
AI-fueled bots can forecast the requirement for purchases from historical purchase data and automate frequent purchase requests. In customer care, AI-fueled automation can sort tickets by priority and sentiment of customers to ensure quicker resolution times. These precise AI solutions instill faith in automation and generate quantifiable value, making wider AI penetration more possible.
Peripheral automation is no silver bullet, but it’s a pragmatic, high-impact solution that companies can adopt today. It takes companies where they are—operating with current investments while opening up new efficiencies. As the workplace continues to change, companies that adopt this layered, pragmatic approach to automation will be at the forefront of achieving real digital fluency.
