Use Of Office Automation Tools To Improve Efficiency In

Offices
Timeless Learning Technologies
(Summer Internship Project Report)
AS A PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE CURRICULUM
FOR THE DEGREE

MASTERS IN MANAGEMENT STUDIES (MMS)

Submitted to

SIES COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

NERUL, NAVI MUMBAI
Submitted by
Nikhil P. Tavase
MMS 55
SpecializationInformation Technology
2015-17

Declaration
I, Mr. Nikhil Prabhakar Tavase, studying in the second year of MASTERS OF
MANAGEMENT STUDIES (MMS) at SIES College of Management Studies, Nerul,
Navi Mumbai, hereby declare that I have completed the Summer Internship Project
titled Use Of Office Automation Tools To Improve Efficiency In Offices as a part
of the course requirements for Masters of Management Studies (MMS) Program.

I also declare that the work undertaken by me is original and has not been copied from
any sources. I further declare that the information presented in this project is true and
original knowledge and has not been submitted to SIESCOMS or any other Institute
for any other examination.

Signature of the Student

Date:

Name of the Student: Nikhil P. Tavase

Roll No.: 55

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Certificate by Company guide

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Certificate by Faulty Guide

This is to certify that Mr. Nikhil Tavase, studying in the second year of Masters in
Management Studies (MMS) program at SIES College of Management Studies, Nerul,
Navi Mumbai, has completed the Summer Internship Project titled Use of Office
Automation to Improve Efficiency in Offices. as a part of the curriculum requirement
for Masters in Management Studies (MMS).

Signature of the Faculty Guide

Name: Prof Roshna Raveendran
Date:

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Acknowledgements
I, the student of SIES College of Management Studies would like to thank my project
guide, Mrs. Geetanjali Kulkarni, Business Development Manager and Mr. Aniruddha
Shrotri Co-Founder and CTO, for their involvement in my project work and timely
assessment that provided me inspiration and valued guidance throughout my study.

I would like to thank our Systems & I.T. Dean Mrs. Ela Goyal and my Academic
Mentor Mrs. Roshna Ravindran for their timely guidance and evaluation of my ongoing project work which helped me in making my project brief and knowledgeable.

I would like to thank Mr. Ravindra Ambegaonkar for his constant insights at every step.
I am thankful to him for having dedicated his time and energy for helping me with the
entire project.

I am also thankful to all seen and unseen hands and heads, which have been direct or
indirect help, in the completion of this project.

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Executive Summary
CareersUnbound is a start-up providing Cognitive hiring solutions to organizations with
the help of its advanced algorithms and a tie-up with IBM Supercomputer WATSON.
It is also a provider of other HR automation products like PDF Esigner, Form 16 Signer
and another digital signature solutions provider.
Firstly, being a start-up, the company image in the market was something that we
needed to build. We had to take into consideration multiple factors like our competitors
product, our capabilities and how well can we match and exceed the expectations of
our clients. Along with my mentor, we devised a plan on how to proceed with the
marketing of the product and listed down everything stage by stage. We did a weekly
review of how well have we achieved our targets and started working to bridge the gaps
that had to be filled. All this way we were assisted by our own HR software which
helped us acquire the best possible talent that there is for the available job positions.
Brand Building was the major objectives that had to be achieved and Marketing
Automation tool like Act-on is the thing that helped us achieve it and that too keeping
up with the client needs and fulfil our commitments to our clients.
Our organization used tools like SendBlaster 3.16, instaTalent, Hyperion for the
specialized features that they have on offer. Along with Act-On, SendBlaster was used
to send multiple emails at one go. The tool had customizability to a great extent. We
customized emails for every prospective client with their names and also different
salutations. It also had an option of saving a draft for future uses.
instaTalent was used for our own hiring purposes. instaTalent helped the company
recruit 3 Software professions out of which one was recruited as Team Lead. The new
hires have proven beneficial in their first month itself which proves the worth of our
indigenously developed software instaTalent.
Hyperion helped the company in its monthly financial closing and proved useful for
other jobs which were to be linked with company financials.

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Table of Contents
1.

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................... 1
1.1

COMPANY OVERVIEW ................................................................................................ 1

1.2

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT .............................................................................................. 7

1.3

LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT ................................................................................... 8

1.4

OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................ 9

LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................... 10

2.1

STATE-OF-MARKETING-AUTOMATION-................................................................... 10

2.2

HR AUTOMATION TO ENHANCE EFFICIENCY OF HR PROFESSIONALS................... 14

2.3

INVESTIGATING OFFICE AUTOMATION EFFECTS ....................................................... 15

AUTOMATION IN HR ........................................................................................................ 20
3.1

INSTATALENT ........................................................................................................... 23

3.2

E-LOCK ................................................................................................................... 28

AUTOMATION IN MARKETING ......................................................................................... 33

4.1

CATEGORIES OF AUTOMATION SOFTWARE ............................................................. 35

4.2

FEATURES OF MARKETING AUTOMATION TOOL ..................................................... 36

4.3

MARKETING AUTOMATION AT PRESENT ................................................................. 39

4.4

LEVERAGING MARKETING AUTOMATION................................................................ 41

AUTOMATION IN FINANCE ............................................................................................... 44

5.1

CHALLENGES FACED / WHILE IMPLEMENTING AUTOMATION ................................. 46

5.2

REVOLUTIONIZED IT SOLUTION .............................................................................. 47

5.3

FOR SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATION PROCESSES: ......................................................... 48

5.4

THE CASE FOR TRANSFORMATION ........................................................................... 51

5.5

FUTURE OF AUTOMATION IN FINANCE .................................................................... 51

5.6

HYPERION ................................................................................................................ 53

SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ........................................................................ 55

6.1

SUGGESTIONS: .......................................................................................................... 55

6.2

RECOMMENDATIONS: ............................................................................................... 55

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 56

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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 COMPANY OVERVIEW
Timeless Learning Technologies (TLT) is one of the market leaders for providing
Education Process Outsourcing services globally. Companys end to end E-Learning
offers LMS- Learning Management Systems and Employee Training Portal (E-Three),
SCORM compliant Content Digitization and Creation services etc. The newest venture
of the Management is Careers Unbound which promises candidate recruitment
simplicity with its advanced algorithms, taxonomies and other such things. Careers
Unbound offers recruitment across many domains like BFSI, IT, ITES, Healthcare and
fields like Education and Manufacturing are in pipeline. Timeless Learning
Technologies is a premier provider of online and blended learning solutions and
services. By combining eLearning development, learning management, collaboration
technologies and career oriented approach we deliver solutions that help organizations
to create high performing culture.

CareersUnbound
Employee hiring is always a tedious job for companies. Most of the times the HR
manager has to go through a long hiring process which includes posting job openings
on job portals, contacting interested candidates, collecting resumes, sorting resumes
manually, conducting rounds of interview with selected candidates, hiring the selected
candidate etc. It is a tedious and time-consuming process.
To address this issue Dr. Prakash Ambegaonkar and Aniruddha Shrotri came up with
an online solution, and launched CareersUnbound. Since Employee hiring and training
are two major activities in every organization, they also decided to launch online
solution for corporate employee training and skill development. instaTalent was
launched to reduce the issue of employee recruitment, since it is a very critical and time
& resource consuming process, and could take weeks or months to hire desired best-fit
candidate. If an employer is hiring candidates from five different recruitment portals,
then it would be more expensive. It would be better if employer can access data from
all recruitment portals within one recruitment software. The Company has implemented
the same technical functionality within our recruitment software instaTalent.
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INTRODUCTION TO OFFICE AUTOMATION.

When asked to cut costs and do more with lesser quantity of resources, process
improvement and process automation are the 2 most essentials things that help the
business stay alive and meet its strategic objectives. Process Automation facilitates
process implementations and process improvements, it also provides consistency in
carrying out the jobs and ensures compliance of rules and standards making it more
transparent. A well implemented automation system provides ways to automate
processes, co-ordinate tasks and transfer data from one business place to the other. It
also provides Agility and Flexibility to support an ever changing environment.
Activities or procedures which are carried out automatically with machines or software
or other mechanical systems with ZERO or MINIMAL human intervention is called as
automated process. Automation increases the speed and accuracy with which a
particular job is done. When implemented in offices, it improves the efficiency of jobs
which are automated and that too without any difficulty. Any attendants used to do
these jobs may panic looking at the speed and accuracy but it is all taken care of in case
of automated systems.
Automation started with small gadgets like typewriter and the copy machine which
mechanized the manual tasks. In the past few years, automation has increased at a very
drastic speed. Information is being converted to electronic form at a great speed.
Automation has evolved a lot in the past decade and has grown into one of the most
important parts of organizations or offices. The advent of the personal computers
revolutionized automation and with the ever increasing usage of computers, automation
has become an integral part of organizations.

Office automation may include simple things like a computer, copier, calculator or even
a printer for that matter. All these instruments help in faster processing of work. But
automation these days has moved light years ahead in terms of speed and simplicity of
use. Automation helps in decreasing manual work and save time for businesses to a
great extent.
Office automation refers to the varied computer machinery and software used to
digitally create, collect, store, manipulate, and relay office information needed for
accomplishing basic tasks and goals. Raw data storage, electronic transfer, and the
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management of electronic business information comprise the basic activities of an

office automation system. Automation equipments are tools that enhance productivity
in offices and make sure that processes are running smoothly without any interruption
and with highest efficiency without overspending of the resources. Most of the jobs
relating to automation depends on the Computer. But the Computer by itself cannot
help in automating majority of the processes. It has to take help of other equipments to
speed things up. Speed, convenience, accuracy, and innovation are some of the primary
benefits a business can derive from installing automation in their offices or work areas.
Using computers or allied machines to run some of the mundane tasks can also be a
cost cutting activity that a company or an organization or an office undertake to increase
profitability.

Office Automation can also be called as business process automation which is pretty
easy to be implemented in offices given the long run benefits and the ROI being so
huge for so less an investment. Most of the business processes these days can be
automated using Computer Software. There is some or the other tool for automating
your jobs in the organization, its just that you have to have your eyes open, so that you
can find the perfect automation tool for your office or your jobs. Automation
streamlines the business processes, reduces workload on humans along with increasing
the efficiency, reduces expenses incurred on the specific jobs, it also helps in
automating the supply chain management of the organization all of which adds to
organizations profits in some way or the other. Process automation systems can capture
and collect critical key performance indicators and make that data available to facilitate
optimization of the process.

Manual efforts, poor handing off between different departments or partners and the
inability to monitor the overall progress results in significant waste of time money and
other resources. Automation in creation of shorter cycle times for processes. In the age
where Time is Money, automating processes helps in keeping the process going making
the hand-offs seamlessly easy, consistency is assured and the cycle times are shortened
drastically. It assures Consistent Process Implementation. Corporate Governance and
Compliance is another aspect for which Automation helps in. The systems cannot be
biased or you cannot corrupt the machine as you can corrupt a person by offering bribe.
Everything becomes documented and hence there is no chance to escape any wrong
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doing. The organizations become financially accountable for whatever they are doing
in their organization due to the well documented proof. It leads to eradication of Frauds
and scams which can easily happen if there is human intervention. Implementing
automation gives you the ability to change and adapt quickly which provides an obvious
business advantage and improved customer satisfaction.
Employees these days have higher expectations in regards to what their office space
has to be. They want their offices to be smart and not just a place where they come to
work daily. Employees do not want to maintain their systems and waste valuable time,
instead they want to automate their surroundings in order to increase efficiency.
Automation techniques have been very helpful in many ways for organizations. Basics
like storage of information, data exchange and data management have formed the
backbone of the organizations.
These three factors extend not only to the technical systems running the office, but also
to, building access, people management and other internal systems of the office or
organization.

When put in practice, office automation might look different for different types of
offices.
Automated processes and software assist you in creating the flow of the office, not force
a different workflow for the employees. It also helps define your own access controls
and to streamline approval processes, all from the cloud.
Defining this workflow gets difficult as more businesses become flexible with their
office time some businesses may want a smartphone access control system to allow
employees to come and go, while others might need digital video software to connect
with co-workers on the web.
For me, technology has brought the concept of work outside of the office,
Madhusudan Thakur, Regional Vice president of South Asia, Regus says.
What this means is that work isnt somewhere you go, its something you do. All of
this is enabled through the adoption and implementation of new technology platforms.
For me, a smart office is a physical and technological platform that allows you to work
anywhere.

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The idea of office automation is to offer the employees of the organization the
flexibility and reliability to work. If the office systems arent automated, consider
getting it done as it is the need of the hour.

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CURRENT SCENARIO
The world is plagued with slower efficiency and low productivity in many
fields. To get the best out of technology, and generate profits for the organization is the
main motive of all the higher level management executives. Age of machines has
brought about a drastic change in the field of manufacturing and other related fields.
But the core functions still suffer from lower productivity due to lack of automation in
their day to day processes. With the mindset of people changing and with JOB SWITCH
becoming more and more important for employees, the companies are facing huge
financial losses dealing with their employee hiring. Not just in the field of HR, this is a
scenario which is existing in fields of Marketing and Finance especially banking sector.
Lack of automation and lesser use of machines the finance domain suffers from loads
and loads of paperwork and processing such huge amounts of paperwork, instead of
progressing. is dragging the financial sector down.

Automation is the thing that can improve the condition of these 3 major sectors
of any organization, but it has to be taken into consideration that if not done properly,
the automation concept can backfire and lead to complete disaster within an
organization.

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1.2 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The Project Office Automation System is generalized software and can be easily
used in any office with little or no modification to the existing computer systems. The
addition and deletion of the modules in software can be easily adjusted. The software
can be enhanced up to any legal extent depending upon users requirement. The
Changes in software can be easily accommodated. It will be able to serve the
organization even if it increases or modify its services.

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1.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT

One of the main issues is the Hiring Managers are still not very technology
favouring. They are hesitant to use a Software for the jobs that they are used to
doing for so many years.

Marketing Automation is a complete package on offer from multiple vendors.

Selection of the perfect product is major issue for companies.

Cost Feature is something that cannot be overlooked keeping in mind the

budget constraint.

Finance Automation is not easy to implement.

Threat to data is always going to be there, considering the fact that hackers are
always on the prowl.

Back office automation will face stern opposition in India.

India is a country which provides employment to lakhs of people who work in

BPOs and if BPOs are automated then all these jobs are at risk.

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1.4 OBJECTIVES
To study the effectiveness of Office Automation tools on 3 major domains of any
organization: HR, Marketing, Finance.
To understand current trends in the market about automation and how can it be

improved using advanced levels of automation.

To simplify operations and minimize computational errors in organizations pertaining
to 3 major fields.
To improve quality of output in terms of presentation and reduction in processing time
in organizations.

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 STATE-OF-MARKETING-AUTOMATIONMarketing automation technology is being used by more and more marketing teams to
get messages to the right recipients at the right time, find qualified leads and get detailed
information on how customers are engaging with brands. With the help of marketing
automation, campaigns can be deployed more quickly, targeting the most relevant
recipients and saving huge amounts of time for marketing teams. And more time a good
thing, because the market landscape is constantly shifting, and consumers are moving
faster than marketers. This technology is not just an enabler or commodity the way it
has been historically, its inspiring creativity and creating stories, says Mayur Gupta,
global head of marketing technology & operations for Kimberly-Clark, who spoke at
the recent MarTech conference in Boston. The exciting part of this evolution lies in the
fact that marketing automation is now creating new business models for marketers,
allowing them to sort through data and find leads in new ways, and get immediate
feedback on whats working and what isnt.
A NEW LANDSCAPE
Technologies such as marketing automation are changing the way marketers are doing
business, says Laura McLellan, vice president, marketing strategies for Gartner
Research, who also presented at MarTech. Marketings focus is still on the customer,
but companies are now turning their focus to the web, e-business opportunities and
digital marketing. The future is digital business and automation. Business
opportunities without people in between will become the norm, McLellan says.
Marketing is about disruption and getting peoples attention, she says, and disruption
at a technology level is already happening and will only proliferate. The big impacts
this shift is having on the marketing world is that the customer is now in charge of the
sales process, as online research and price comparisons have put them in the drivers
seat. McLellan says this has affected the traditional sales funnel, as many customers are
more than halfway to a purchasing decision before talking to a sales representative.
Data is the driver of decisions and innovative technology underlies it all, McLellan
says, adding that research indicates that spending on marketing automation and other
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tech solutions is on the rise across the board. McLellan says that Gartners research
shows that two-thirds of companies will increase expenditures on marketing tech in the
coming year, including automation solutions.
Everything we see points to increased spending very few people are staying flat.
Among CEOs, digital marketing technology is the number one most important area of
investment to improve business over the next five years, McLellan says. The budget
for the marketing funding increase will likely be coming out of sales budgets, she says.
Were seeing a reduction in selling expenses, McLellan says.
CUTTING EDGE SOLUTIONS
Some marketing automation suppliers are now expanding their business offerings in an
effort to help clients get the most out of their tech solutions. Weve expanded our
services to include strategic services, strategy content management. We call it revenue
marketing. This allows clients to get up and running quickly and transition their team
into the lead role in automation, says Scott Benedetti, vice president of sales and
revenue marketing, The Pedowitz Group.
Pedowitz is now putting marketing automation programs and plans in place for clients
across multiple channels. Were executing in that regard for clients now and were
proposing for folks to outsource to us, just like they would a traditional marketing
agency. We set up the marketing automation system, run the system, put the content
into the system and they use us as the subject matter expert to help them achieve
success, says Benedetti.
The Pedowitz Group sees that as a viable strategy for clients who are new to the
marketing automation space as their ramp-up plan, as marketing automation is a big
investment in marketing automation, and they can help get new systems up and running
very quickly. The Pedowitz services team gets things going at the beginning of the
process, then client team members are slowly plugged in and the knowledge is
transferred over to them, so they can take over ownership of the entire program in the
future.
Thats become a viable option for marketers from an onboarding standpoint, as
opposed to doing some training, building a nurture program, figuring out a content plan,

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then a year or two later theyre fully executing all of the functions that are available in
marketing automation, Benedetti says.
COMMUNICATING WITH SALES
One problem Benedetti regularly sees when newcomers adopt automation systems is
marketers getting excited about the latest tech solutions and getting funding for
marketing automation, but then falling short in implementing the solutions properly.
That includes getting the sales team on board with the Marketing automation
companies are masters at selling their products and selling the upside of what can
happen with those products. When you get that new technology, it doesnt mean you
know exactly where to go with it. If the sales team is not on board with it, its just
another lead gen source. So if you dont actually put the processes in place to bring
those two groups together, then you are inevitably not going to see as much success,
Benedetti says. A third party can help facilitate that communication, and suppliers can
work with marketers to put a change management plan in place and educate team
members on new processes. That set of strategies can include lead management, lead
management processes, technology dataflow processes, reporting plans and
dashboards, content management and audience engagement.
When you integrate marketing automation and CRM, youre able to see that digital
interaction, and you can leverage those in a strategic pursuit for the entire process, from
awareness, when you first get that prospect all the way through to the close, and
thereafter, advocacy, Benedetti says.
AUTOMATION REQUIRES NEW SKILLSETS
With new advancements in marketing tech come new skillsets that marketers need to
get the most out of it. Companies bring in these technologies and if they dont have
the skillsets that you need to build, execute, analyze in a continuous fashion, then youre
not taking full advantage of it. And if you do have some of those skillsets, companies
are often resource-constrained by the number of people they have in those skillsets,
Bendetti says.
If marketing teams dont have the strategies, the content pieces, the communication
plans and the reporting to make sure that it all works together, then it can take up to
nine months to two years before you have it all up and running properly.
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PR 20/20 CEO and author Paul Roetzer says the talent war for tech-savvy hybrid
marketers who are fluent in the language of automation has already begun, and that its
up to marketing teams to train their own marketing technology specialists.
This new breed of marketers is capable of building, managing and executing fullyintegrated campaigns that produce results, and are the types that execs want to build
their teams around, says Roetzer, who spoke at the MarTech conference.
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC
While marketing automation and other tech solutions can make life easier for a
marketing department, its important to remember to keep the customers needs at the
forefront.
We tend to get obsessed with technologies or channels and we end up creating ideas
that make you wonder whos going to use them. Keep your focus on the customers and
what problems your solutions will solve for them, Gupta says.
The flexibility and speed of marketing automation provides value in many ways
including learning about which programs and tactics arent working. The moment you
accept failure; youre lowering the bar. Remember, Failure is getting one step closer to
finding which solution will work.

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2.2 HR AUTOMATION TO ENHANCE EFFICIENCY

OF HR PROFESSIONALS
Its a global wide trend that has been under way for nearly a decade, the role and
responsibilities of human resource managers shifting from administrative to strategic.
That's why most of the organizations implementing Information Technology into
human resources for the controlling of human capital and their potential usage for their
business excellence in the competitive knowledge economy.
In todays business environment always demand success at any circumstances.
Therefore, HR managers have to access all sort of data, whether it is related to the
finance, sales, marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, customer relation and human
resources data. Most of the companies are spending large amount of time for
administrative purpose to cater the recruitment process to retirement process and so on.
This administrative burden keeps away from the core business and its impact on the
organization development. In general, many SME (Small Medium Enterprises) have to
use their human resources in productive purpose but paper work process delays the
effectiveness; for example, late payroll process, error in payroll process will cost the
organization and hurt the employee morale. Because of this reason organization need
better tools to track important employee information, day to day transactions, employee
relations, fostering a good work environment and facilitating employees with training
and career opportunities.
HR automation is the process of transitioning paper based HR processes into
streamlined computer based online system. It is based on the concept of self service.
Self service enables business owners, managers and employees to perform HR related
functions on their own at their convenience from their computer desktops. Employee
self-service put information directly into their hands those who need it most, this
develops better relations with their workers because of this companies can catch their
returns on investment (ROI). For example, employee self-service enables an employee
to view pay slips, manage benefits elections, sign up for direct deposit and update their
personal information, leave data, incentive data and so on. Self-service gives benefits
like salary submission, rate changes, processing new hires and terminations for the
managers. It also enables managers to create, track and manage a variety of employee
attributes, salary, performance, competencies, absences and paid time off. Most of the
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studies show that HR automation helps in achieving primarily four objectives i.e reduce
on time spent on administrative work, cost reduction, self-services and morale.
Another piece of study of Cedar (formerly The Hunter Group) found that HR
automation reduce cost by an average of 60 per cent in HR administrative processes.
The GIGA Information Group clarified that HR automation can reduce the time spend
on administrative work from 40 per cent to 50 per cent by the HR managers.
In a study of University of Southern California's Center concluded that HR automation
benefits the organizations as follows 20 per cent higher return on investment, 20 per
cent higher return on assets and 13 per cent higher return on equity. The piece of
remarkable study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found
that 60 per cent to 80 per cent of an HR staff time is tied to repetitive administrative
tasks. Much of this time is spent answering employee and manager questions and
gathering information for reports.
A survey conducted by IOMAs on HR management and cost control took the sample
size of 149 respondents (HR professionals) from different areas of HR processes and
procedures of recruitment and hiring through web based applications and intranet and
they concluded that HR professional reducing cost control via web based applications
and intranet 62.8 per cent and 54.7 per cent respectively.
Keil Colchester has given notable suggestion to the organizations to go with
implementation of web-based / cloud solutions rather than software based hardware.
You can choose any new software solutions for not only to streamline your HR
processes, but also to enhance your company role as a leader by establishing your
company as a workplace of choice that put the value of people at its core.

2.3 Investigating office automation effects

In this modern age, organizations have no choice than implementing computer systems,
information technology, and advanced media. The future belongs to ones who consider
and analyze advantages and disadvantages of these systems through accurate
recognition as well as learn from the experience of others, without having to bear the
costs of that experience again. Having access to computer systems, information
technology, and advanced media leads to an increasing acceleration; the acceleration
makes each saved unit of time more valuable than previous unit. Thus, there will be a
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positive feedback loop that accelerates the acceleration. The extension of computers in
recent decades has been created the most important change in knowledge system since
the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, or even the invention of writing.
Parallel to these extraordinary changes is the expansion of networks and new media
which was equally amazing; their function is handling knowledge and its elements; i.e.
data and information (Curtin et al., 1998). Regardless of the used technology, human
factor has always played a decisive role in performing organizational activities for
former and today's organizations. This means that the organization is not just a merely
technical unit or a social system; but this is a system requiring the combination and
integration of human activities in the field of different technologies which affect the
improvement of organizational performance. Office automation is also a product of
technology which undoubtedly has had and will have a significant effect on
organizational performance. This effect can be positive or negative; because each new
technology has its own consequences and can reduce or improve performance,
depending on the technology type as well as training, (Hammer, 1982).
Office Automation
Since 1960s, due to expansion of more aspects in functions and activities of business
and offices, the need for an appropriate integrated office system which involves huge
amount of information, communications, and correspondence has been considered.
These systems have been called with different names; but the most popular ones,
especially for highest level of automation systems, are called office automation. There
is no clear and exact definition for these systems; they are limited to determining the
user's perspective. This means that office automation system has many definitions
(Habibie, 2004, p. 40).
Office automation is the use of electronic devices in order to increase performance.
Enhanced performance results from the evolution of information exchange within and
between offices and their environment; thus, it can benefit manager by providing better
information for decision-making (Beheshtian & Abolhassani, 1994, p. 297). Office
automation

systems

are

information

systems

which

create

administrative

correspondence in written, oral, or visual form and transfer them after storing,
modifying, and displaying (Sarafizadeh, 2007, p. 167). In other words, office
automation includes all formal and informal electronic systems relating the

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communication between individuals within and outside of organization, and vice versa.
Office automation facilitates communication in both oral and written forms (Mac Loid,
1999, p. 48). Office automation system refers to the systematic use of computer and
communication systems in order to support administrative procedures in office
environment (Olson et al., 1982, p. 838).
Currently, all units in Zahedan University of Medical Sciences use office automation
online. All correspondence including internal, external, outgoing and incoming are
performed through this system. It should be said that the letter for outside of the
university are sent in print with original signature.
One of the main reasons for applying information technology in the office environment
is to enhance productivity of people and employees. As researches show, while
increasing productivity in different organizational areas has increasingly been
considered and improved, but the productivity in the field of office affairs has been
neglected. Since then, office automation has been considered (Nowruz & Mousavi
madam, 2006, p. 6).
If mechanizing office affairs actually leads to increase productivity, its effect on
organization will be as follows:

Better use of workforce coupled with reduction in staff numbers or

personal productivity of personnel;

Better use of time for more efficiency;

Better quality in management for making better decisions;

Increase in productivity through individuals' better performance;

The most important condition for applying automation in most organizations relates to
the speed and accuracy in their work. It is because of development in operation domain
of organizations that relationship channels with more speed are required. Office
automation will facilitate availability of short relationship channels and required
communication for managers. Generally, the benefits of applying office automation
systems can be classified into two categories:
A) Direct benefits: These benefits include increased products or productivity and
savings in Tim and labor. Such benefits are usually measurable and may have direct
and short-term effect on cash flow.
Page | 17

B)

Indirect benefits:

These benefits are non-quantitative and may enrich the

organization through long-term profitability and growth.

Organizational Excellence Model
Organizational Excellence Model is based on nine criteria. Five criteria are the enablers
and four ones are results. Enablers include "leadership", "strategy", "people",
"partnerships and resources", and "processes, products, and services". Results include
"customer results", "people results", "society results", and "key performance results".
Enablers cover what an organization is doing; results indicate what the organization
obtains. "Results" are achieved though implementing "enablers"; and "enablers" are
improved though getting feedback from "results". Each of the nine criteria in
organizational excellence model includes several components that determine different
aspects of the criteria.
Martinson et al. (2005) believe that financial criteria such as return rate on investment,
net present value, and payback period are not suitable for performance measurement of
information systems, because information systems bring a wide range of resources to
the company; many of them are intangible and their value and benefits cannot be easily
estimated by financial criteria in measurable and quantitative form.
Stewart (2007) in his research seeks to provide a structured framework for lifecycle
management of information technology projects. This framework includes three steps
of lifecycle in IT projects: "IT project selection, strategic implementation
of IT, and "performance evaluation of IT". The study provides a definition of each
step and ultimately seeks to develop a software package for it.
Richards (2007) believes if Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is used within a company, the
manager can work with a group of corporate objectives, identify strategies to achieve
them, and develop vision, operational objectives, and key performance indicators
related to Balanced Scorecard perspectives.

He concluded that BSC with its

multifaceted approach can help managers involved in e-commerce to consider financial

and non- financial issues, long-term and short- term subjects, and also internal and
external environment, simultaneously.

Page | 18

Hintz et al. (2000) investigated the effect of information technology on organizational

performance, organizational structure and its dimensions. They expressed four
equations as follows:

Structure: A function of internal environment, external environment, task-based

environment, the acceptance of information technology;

Managerial attitudes: a function of managerial objectives for IT, manager's

familiarity with information technology, structure performance;

Acceptance of information technology: a function of managerial objectives for

IT, external environment, managerial attitudes.

Page | 19

3 AUTOMATION IN HR

Human Resource Management as other processes of an organization depends on paper

based work. Right from hiring an employee and getting his form signed till the time he
/ she leaves the organization, all these and other allied processes are paper based in
almost all traditional organizations. These jobs can be made easier using multiple
automation tools in turn making the life of a HR professional easier and helping them
become more efficient in whatever they do.
ECM- Enterprise Content Management (ECM) softwares reduces the time taken by HR
professionals in completing their tasks, and that too without sacrificing the quality of
work. Business Process Automation (BPA) facilitates the document based processes
and is an integral part of the ECM solution. BPA helps in automating these tasks which
slowdown an employee affecting his / her productivity on job. It helps in the processes
becoming paperless in turn saving time and money for the organisation with an added
benefit of increased employee productivity.
According to Aberdeen Study on THE FUTURE OF CORE HR- From a compliance
standpoint, having a core HR system for securing data is vital for privacy and employee
data security. From a Workflow perspective, automating the payroll reduces the time
required by a manual process each pay period and frees up HR Staff to focus on more
strategic elements of HR.
Automation of processes has been a relevant concept since many years. But the major
technological shifts have started in the last decade or so. In a recent survey, that is in
the year 2013 Towers Watson- a HR Consulting firm which performs annual surveys
for global organizations HR Goals and practices noticed that organizations globally
had replaced talent management with reengineering business processes.
Processes which can be automated in any given organization include:

Timesheets.

Employee recruitment.

Employee on-boarding

Tax forms
Page | 20

Employee records management etc.

There are tools available for automating the above given processes as well as some
other processes that an HR undertakes.
One such Tool for automating the Employee recruiting is: instaTalent and the one for
Tax Forms is PDF E-signer by E-Lock.

Source: www.e-lock.com, www.careersunbound.com

Page | 21

Employee recruitment is an extremely time-consuming and costly process involving a

substantial amount of human effort. Although 30 50% of the working-age population
is inactive, unemployed or working part time and employers receive, on average, 144
applications per job opening, hiring managers still say they cannot find the right
candidate (McKinsey & Co., 2015). The estimated 40 days it takes to hire someone
leads to huge losses in revenue and time, which could push employers to hire more
quickly. However, although fast is good, accuracy is more important. Otherwise, the
mismatch between an employee and his or her position leads to global losses of $150
million annually. In order to combat this problem, employers have been turning to
online hiring platforms and job boards to find qualified candidates. However, top talent
is often overlooked due to keyword stuffing and the lack of time and resources
necessary to vet large stacks of resumes. instaTalent provides a cognitive
recommendation platform that compliments these services while taking hiring to the
next level through advanced technologies that can overcome the limitation of keywords.
The most common reasons for which the top talents are overlooked while recruitment
process of an organization is going on are Lack of Time and the resources to go through
each and every application received. instaTalent PRO as well as CULTURE-FIT handle
this quiet efficiently and in a unique way. It searches beyond basic keywords to find the
best fit candidates for your organizational needs. instaTalent gives equal opportunities
to every candidate thus giving you bias free results.

Page | 22

3.1 INSTATALENT
The cognitive talent discovery and recommendation
platform of the century

Source: wwwo.careersunbound.com

The product instaTalent comes from a company called CareersUnbound.

CareersUnbound is a software technology company offers several solutions for
connecting job seekers and employers globally. Careers Unbound uses big data and
cognitive talent discovery applications that are designed to get the right talent instantly.
Our technology is designed so that companies can stop wasting time and money on
people that dont fit.
It is headed by well-known entrepreneur and technology enthusiast Dr Prakash
Ambegaonkar. Careers Unbound is Dr Prakash Ambegaonkars latest entrepreneurial
venture after a successful stint of companies like E-Lock, Timeless Learning
Technologies, Frontier Technologies Corp etc.
The Technological brain behind CareersUnbound is of Mr. Aniruddha Shrotri who has
been Dr Prakash Ambegaonkars entrepreneurial partner since E-Lock and Frontier
Technologies Corp.

Page | 23

Employee recruiting is a hefty task. It requires lot of efforts and costly processes
involving lot of human engrossment. Many companies follow the tedious process of
posting jo on multiple job sites, subscribing to various job boards, collecting referrals
and yet they are unable to fill up the positions without running into problems.
instaTalent directly addresses these problems and provides industry specific
recommendations of talent.
Launched in Nov 2014, their office is located in Pune, India. With a team of 20-25
employees, we get 5-10 registrations per day for our software. Some of our major
customers till date are Kirloskar group of industries, Collage Media solutions, Synonym
HR Solution and Singapore based Entstrat Consulting
instaTalent is a web based SaaS which is highly intellectual talent acquisition platform
that shortens your hiring cycle from a few days down to just few minutes. Instead of
going through hundreds and hundreds of applications that you get on job portals and
then selecting one specific candidate is a thing of the past. All you have to do is upload
your available JOB DESCRIPTION or fill out the form manually and let instaTalent
work its magic.
instaTalent is a web based Cognitive Talent Recommendation Platform. It is the one
and only one talent recommendation platform which has the capacity to give candidate
recommendations which are both Skill Fit as well as Culture Fit for the organization.
It comes in 2 versions: instaTalent PRO and instaTalent Culture Fit.
instaTalent PRO has the ability to give candidate recommendations which are SKILL
FIT for the required job and instaTalent Culture Fit gives you candidate
recommendations which have the required personality traits for the available job
positions. It is a talent acquisition platform that offers an instant online employee hiring
solution. instaTalent understands your JOB DESCRIPTION and searches through
multiple sources like job portals, job boards, private databases etc. for the best fit
candidates. The process which runs in background is as follows:

Page | 24

instaTalent CULTURE FIT

source: www.careersunbound.com

CareersUnbound has tied up with IBM to use their Super Computer WATSON. Unlike
other computing systems, Watson takes any sort of unstructured data from reports to
tweets, blogs, etc. in seconds to save time and effort. Next it will process all the
unstructured data to evaluate and interpret them. The system provides results in a faster
and more accurate manner than any other industry expert. Watson is revolutionizing the
decision making process. Big data is a growing trend in the industry, CareersUnbound
takes it a step further. As a technology company, we take pride in our patent pending
cognitive talent discovery engine. Careers Unbound uses its proprietary Cognitive
Talent Discovery Engine in order to process job descriptions and in turn filter out top
candidates. Our Cognitive Talent Discovery Engine uses big data, social web
extraction, taxonomies and our algorithms to ensure the best-fit candidates. InstaTalent
is currently available on Google play and the IOS app stores. The mobile app makes it
easy to upload a job description, submit your criteria and find candidates on the go.
From keeping better retention rate to improving organizational productivity, culture- fit
has become vital part. CareersUnbound is developing Culture fit add on by becoming
eco system partner of IBM Watson, which is one of its kind.
With instaTalent Culture-Fit companies know their candidates personality attributes
better. Talent acquisition is not only for attracting and hiring top talent but to retain the
top talent also. With instaTalent, hiring managers can hire candidates who are best fir
for the job and Culture-Fit for the job and Culture-Fit for the organization. The main
goal of instaTalent Culture-Fit powered by IBM Watson is to provide the employer
more comprehensive understanding of the candidates personality attributes.
Page | 25

Culture-Fit is based on an idea of hiring a synchronous workforce who shares the same
thought process as the company and the same culture to create a more successful and
productive team. A good culture fit employee gels in quickly and works well above par
in the work environment.
Culture-Fit powered by IBM Watson is a package that enables the Hiring Managers to
hire candidates on the basis of their Cognitive Analysis. Culture-Fit enables the hiring
managers to know the candidate as never before without even having to interview them.
As a result of this the employers receive Best-Fit candidates for their job positions in
the organizations.

Source: www.careersunbound.com

This is the Graph of instaTalent Culture-Fit in which Scoring is done from 1 to 100
with 100 being the highest level of being most desired quality. Higher the greens better
are those qualities in that person.

Page | 26

How is instaTalent different than other hiring solutions?

Technology: Core components of instaTalents cognitive talent discovery platform
are web data extraction, text analytics, graph modelling, hierarchical taxonomies, and
cognitive behavioural analytics to make employee recruitment more effective and
efficient.
Equal Opportunity: instaTalent believes in equal opportunity for all employers and
job seekers. The hierarchical taxonomies used by instaTalent Pro elevate the platform
beyond a basic keyword search, allowing for a broader range of candidates to be
discovered and recommended in minutes. Additionally, no organizations are paying to
be prioritized over others, assuring that candidates are being equally considered for
each opening and that instaTalents best-fit recommendations are the natural fit.
Speed and Accuracy: Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything (Wyatt Earp).
instaTalent Pro saves recruiters and HR managers time spent on reviewing resumes by
discovering and recommending candidates. All they have to do is hire! The advanced
technologies used make the recommendations are more specific to the open position.

Page | 27

3.2 E-LOCK
E-commerce. A lot is being talked about e-commerce in the past 5 years or so, the
growth the scalability and its advantages. The statistics are overwhelming and the
advantages are such that every shop owner these days is looking to enter into Online
Trading of his or her goods. But the speed at which the E-commerce boom is going, a
handful of the businessmen have managed to keep pace with it and others have left far
behind.
E-business has helped businessmen break multiple barriers like Geographical, Physical
and more importantly the barriers of Timely delivery. E-commerce has brought with it
multiple benefits like the ones belonging to time, cost and efficiency etc. Till recent
times the E-commerce transactions were majorly for the B2C kind of transactions
because the organizations felt that E-commerce transactions are not secure and may
lead to losses if implemented in their businesses.
This has changed a lot in the past few years with the arrival Digital Signatures and their
acceptance by Governments all over the world. Legalization of Digital Signatures has
led businesses all over the world to accept the Digital Signatures and implement it in
their organizations as well. Digital Signatures have made transacting over the internet
a lot safer and very much secured for businesses and also for the consumers.

What is a Digital Signature?

Digital Signatures are based on PKT- Public Key Technologies which uses
ASYMMETRIC CRYPTOGRAPHY. Each persons identity is linked to a pairPUBLIC KEY & a PRIVATE KEY. The Keys are nothing but a mathematical Code
generated by your own computer.
The Private Key of every owner is under his own control and the pair of it i.e. the Public
Key is distributed to everyone without the risk of compromising your data. Private key
is used for signing and the pair of it, i.e. the Public key is used for verification. The
Certifying authority identifies and verifies individuals before issuing a Digital
certificate to the user.

Page | 28

This process is pretty similar to the ones used while using Credit Card for performing
transactions. Your Identity is verified before being issued a credit card. The places
where we use this card are trusting the Card issuer and not us directly. These cards are
valid only for a limited period of time and are renewed by the Credit card issuing
Authority after that time expires. This is exactly the same principle on which Digital
Certificates work. For Digital Certificates The owner of the Digital Certificate uses
his/her Private key for a Transaction and the others who want the job done use their
public key.
The significance of having two different keys in a PKI based transaction is that the
public key, which is freely distributed, cannot be used for participating in a transaction,
it can only be used for identification and verification. Only the private key, which is
under the sole control of the owner can be used for participation in transactions.
A digital certificate establishes your credentials when doing business or other
transactions on the Web. In simple words Digital Certificate is the attachment to an
electronic message used for security purposes. The common use of a digital certificate
is to verify that a user sending a message is who he or she claims to be, and to provide
the receiver with the means to encode a reply. Digital Certificate provides a means of
proving your identity in electronic transactions; just like a drivers license or a passport
does. You can present a Digital Certificate electronically to prove your identity or your
right to access information or services online.
A Digital Signature Typically Contains:
1. Owner's public key
2. Owner's name
3. Expiration date of the public
4. Name of the issuer (the CA that issued the Digital Certificate)
5. Serial number of the Digital Certificate
6. Digital signature of the issuer

Page | 29

Characteristics of Digital Signatures.

Digital Certificates serve 3 business purposes like: Authentication, Data Integrity, And
Non-Repudiation.

Authentication: It refers to establishing a persons identity in any given electronic

transaction. Since Digital Certification involves thorough background check and
verification of the person to whom it is provided, it undoubtedly identifies the person
as who he claims to be.

Data integrity: In an electronic transaction, data flows through open networks. It is

essential to ensure that data remains intact, and is not tampered with while it passes
from the sender to the recipient. Data integrity refers to ensuring that data is in its
original form and is not altered in any way enroute to the recipient. When digital
signatures are applied to data, they are glued in particular manner to the data. Any
change in data will remove this binding and render the signature invalid.

Non Repudiation: Now that authentication and data integrity are established, the
only thing that remains is to bind signers to the information that they sign. This is
exactly like in a real-world business process where once your signature is on a
document, you are legally bound to it and its content. Even at a later date, none of the
participants in the transaction can deny their involvement.

Page | 30

Implementation of Digital Signatures

The main reason for the implementation of Digital Signatures is not for their application
during transactions. Rather it is for the level of Security and trust it provides to the
parties involved in the transactions. It has to be able to provide the authentication of the
parties involved in the transactions and the Non repudiation which means that some one
cannot deny the authenticity of their signatures involved in the transaction.
In addition to signing and verification there are various other factors that need to be
considered in order to establish business trust.
The other things include:

Validating Digital Identities:

Digital Identities have a finite lifespan or they can at times be revoked by the Certifying
authorities therefore it becomes very important to Validate the Digital ID that is used
to sign the data in addition to verifying the integrity of the content. Certifying
authorities regularly publish the records of people whose Digital Certificates have
expired or have been revoked. Thus one has to verify with these lists before going ahead
with it. Online tools have also become handy these days as you just have to enter the
Key to make sure whether it has been revoked or expired or is still in use.

Time Stamping:
These signatures are time bound i.e they have specific validity with respect to time.
What this means is if a document has been signed today, but if the signature expires in
a year or two the tool used must be able to identify that the signature was valid when
the document was signed. Otherwise future validations of the documents will not be
possible.

Signing with Valid Digital IDs:

Revoked IDs cannot be used to sign documents. This helps by allowing only the ones
who have the Valid signatures to send and receive the data.

Page | 31

Multiple Signatures:
If there are multiple parties which have to be a part of any agreement or other such
things like the NDA etc., All the parties involved have to sign the document and each
of the digital signature has to be verified independently.

Policy Based Digital Signing:

Organizations should have the flexibility to centrally control and manage the use of
digital signatures to ensure that their usage is in compliance with organizational policy.
This signing sequence needs to be enforced, so that all signatures needed on the
document are received and also to ensure that no one signs out of turn.

Confidentiality of high-value transactions:

Certain high value documents such as financial reports or technical design documents
need to kept confidential and their access should be restricted to only authorized people.
Digital Signatures allow for the encryption of such sensitive documents so that only
authorized and intended recipients can decrypt and view them. This allows for sensitive
documents to be part of the workflow process while limiting and defining their
accessibility.
These Digital Signatures offer great many advantages for business processes. However,
these organizations need to carefully consider what features are going to best suit their
individual requirements and then go for the implementation of the digital signature
solution Digital signatures offer a wide range of advantages for business processes.
However, organizations need to carefully consider what features are best suited to their
individual business needs and then work towards implementing a complete digital
signature solution rather than buying different products in a piecemeal manner to
address various issues. A complete solution should address application interoperability,
browser independence and ease of use. It is important to distinguish between an
electronic signature and a digital signature. An electronic signature is a very loosely
defined term and is usually associated with a graphical image of a handwritten
signature. Various technologies like biometrics, retinal scans, voice recognition, and
hardware tokens also provide electronic signatures. However, PKI based digital
signatures are the most popular and the most accepted form of electronic signatures.
Most of the electronic signatures provide authentication but PKI based digital
signatures provide other features that are essential for conducting business over the net.
Page | 32

4 AUTOMATION IN MARKETING
Marketing Automation is a platform that marketers use to plan, coordinate, manage and
measure all of their marketing campaigns, both online and offline.
Marketing Automation is the use of software and technology designed for marketing
departments and organizations to effectively market products on various channels
online such as via Websites, Social Media, Email etc. and automate some tasks which
are repetitive in nature.
Marketing professionals, consultants and the part timers benefit largely by specifying
the criteria and the outcomes for tasks and different processes which are stored,
executed and interpreted by different software tools in turn increasing efficiency and
reducing human dependency and also human errors. Marketing traditionally focussed
only on email marketing automation, but it has now widened its scope with many
different tools for marketing which provide analytical features which are especially
used for inbound marketing. These automation platforms are used as web-based
solutions or as a hosted solution but no software installation is required by a customer.
The use of a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing
organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated
solutions.

53%

OF

MARKETERS

COMMUNICATION

AND

SAY

NURTURING

CONTINUED
OF

THEIR

EXISTING CUSTOMERS RESULTS IN MODERATE TO

SIGNIFICANT REVENUE IMPACT."
---DEMANDGEN, CUSTOMER MARKETING:
"80% OF MARKETING AUTOMATION USERS SAW THEIR
NUMBER OF LEADS INCREASE, AND 77% SAW THE
NUMBER OF CONVERSIONS INCREASE."
-VB INSIGHT, 2015
Page | 33

HOW CAN MARKETING AUTOMATION HELP YOU?

To make the best use of marketing automation, the sales and marketing teams can work
as a single cohesive unit to automate and optimize leads as they move from top of the
funnel to the bottom where the sales are actually made.
Marketing Automation helps you:

Generate more leads

Qualify and prioritize your leads

Nurture those leads to a sales-ready state

Manage all of your email marketing campaigns

Report on the success of your campaigns

Marketing department saves time and resources with one easy to use platform that
makes it very easy to manage all the campaigns in a single solution. Campaigns run
with Autopilot mode while the marketing team can focus its time on other important
things to do to transform into a more successful unit. The tool gives you a 360-degree
view of how the prospects are interacting with you and the tools to turn these prospects
to your customers.

Page | 34

4.1 CATEGORIES OF AUTOMATION SOFTWARE

Marketing intelligence
Uses tracking codes in social media, email and webpages to track the behaviour of
anyone interested in a product or service to gain a measure of intent. It can record which
social media group or thread they followed, which link was clicked on in an email or
which search term was used to access a website. Multiple link analysis can then track
buyer behaviour - following links and multiple threads related to product A but not B
will show an interest only in A. This allows more accurately targeted response and the
development of a nurturing program specifically targeted towards their interest and
vertical market. Due to its interactive nature this has been described as Marketing
Automation 2.0.
Marketing automation
Has a focus on moving leads from the top of the marketing funnel through to becoming
sales-ready leads at the bottom of the funnel. Prospects are scored, based on their
activities, and then presented drip campaign messaging via email and social channels,
thus nurturing them from first interest through to sale. Commonly used in business-tobusiness (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), or longer sales cycle business-toconsumer (B2C) sales cycles, Marketing Automation involves multiple areas of
marketing and is really the marriage of email marketing technology coupled with a
structured sales process.
Advanced workflow automation
Encompasses automation of internal marketing processes. These include budgeting and
planning, workflow and approvals, the marketing calendar, internal collaboration,
digital asset creation and management and essentially everything that supports the
operational efficiency of the internal marketing function. Typically, these systems
require a CRM or COM administrator to set up a complex series of rules to trigger
action items for internal sales and marketing professionals to manually process
(designing files, sending letters, sending email campaigns). This type of system
increases marketer's ability to deliver relevant content to relevant individuals at relevant
times. Limitations may apply, based on the human resource capacity of an organization
and their level of commitment to the tasks as they are assigned.
Page | 35

4.2 FEATURES OF MARKETING AUTOMATION TOOL

The following features define the composition of a good marketing
automation tool:
Email distribution:
This feature enables marketers to create and manage automated email campaigns.
Messages can be tailored to customer segments, and the lead responses can trigger
subsequent events in the marketing or sales process.

CRM software integration:

Most systems include built-in integrations to so that campaign and prospect data can be
shared with a CRM system. Some tools have third party integration in order to connect
the CRM and their platform.

Real-time alerts:
Alerts indicate to sales representatives the changing readiness of potential buyers. They
can also indicate which campaigns are generating positive or negative responses,
enabling quick changes to underperforming campaigns.

Lead management and scoring:

Tools that perform lead scoring enable marketers to apply values to different prospects
according to their readiness to buy and to apply sales efforts to the most promising
leads. When a lead enters the marketing automation platform, it receives a score based
on activities browsing behavior, email clicks, etc.
Lead scoring enables better communication between marketing and sales and an
automated communication thread: When a lead score reaches a threshold value, the lead
is considered sales-ready and is automatically forwarded to a sales representative for
immediate

follow-up.

Page | 36

Lead segmentation:
Segmentation helps carve up your prospects and assign leads to groups with common
characteristics,

including

customer

demographics

and

buying

behavior.

Lead nurturing:
Most leads need to be nurtured before they are ready to make a purchase, and a
marketing automation system needs automated methods for cultivating these leads.
Nurture marketing campaigns allow marketers to create content distribution based on
buyer profiles and to send messages to prompt leads at the right times. Nurture
campaigns also use lead scoring to identify leads that are closer to buying.

Content marketing and management tools:

The tools enable you to create content and reuse it in multiple campaigns or different
channels. They also help create landing pages for website visitors who arrive at your
site and help you customize and personalize content to various segments of your
audience or prospects.

Website activity tracking:

Browser cookies and tracking technology can identify visitors to your company
website, correlate browsing behavior to past visits, and flag actions as triggers for
sales. Many applications deliver real-time alerts to sales reps when a lead, prospect or
customer visits the website.

Landing page management:

A good marketing automation application enables marketing staff to create and
modify landing pages and conduct A/B or multivariate testing to determine how
changes to messages affect conversion rates.

Page | 37

Analytics for campaigns:

Also crucial are built-in analytics technologies that enable you to evaluate the success
of your campaigns in email, on the Web or in other channels. Analyzing various
campaigns and the ability to look at them in tandem is also important.

Forms:
These tools allow prospects to submit information into your marketing system when
registering on a form, subscribing to a newsletter or completing a survey. This data
populates the system and doesn't have to be input from paper forms or ported from
another application.

Analytics capabilities:
Analytics capabilities are immensely important to get information about customers
and prospects. Analytics enable you to track online visitor behavior on websites, in
email campaigns, and even data from phone calls and other non-digital channels.
Analytics help marketers measure the success of their campaigns and can work in
tandem with lead scoring to identify prospects and tune campaigns to particular
audience segments based on demographics.

Data management:
Most marketing automation applications include the ability to scrub data before it
comes into the system to remove duplicate, partial, bogus or otherwise inaccurate data.
Data hygiene is critical to analytics; if you have bad data coming in to the system, it
can affect the accuracy of your analytics.

Page | 38

4.3 MARKETING AUTOMATION AT PRESENT

Marketing Automation systems are sophisticated platforms that allow marketers to
manage and nurture prospects across channels, using customer intelligence churned
from these systems. However, not all marketers use Marketing Automation and some
do not use it beyond some basic features such as Email Marketing.
Regalix conducted survey interviews with business leaders, senior marketing
executives and practitioners from around the world to analyze the state of Marketing
Automation as it stands today and provide actionable tips and recommendations
essential to marketing product or solutions in todays environment.
This report is designed to help marketers understand how to unleash the true
potential of Marketing Automation. It explores the manner in which Marketing
Automation platforms are used by marketers today, including the challenges faced and
the benefits reaped post-implementation. Most importantly, it equips marketers with all
the information theyll need to implement or evaluate investing in an automation
system. If you want to find out more about how to maximize your ROI from Marketing
Automation, you have come to the right place.

Page | 39

Page | 40

4.4 LEVERAGING MARKETING AUTOMATION

Marketing automation technology is being used by more and more marketing teams
to get messages to the right recipients at the right time, find qualified leads and get
detailed information on how customers are engaging with brands.
With the help of marketing automation, campaigns can be deployed more quickly,
targeting the most relevant recipients and saving huge amounts of time for marketing
teams. And more time a good thing, because the market landscape is constantly shifting,
and consumers are moving faster than marketers.
This technology is not just an enabler or commodity the way it has been
historically, its inspiring creativity and creating stories, says Mayur Gupta, global
head of marketing technology & operations for Kimberly-Clark, who spoke at the
recent MarTech conference in Boston.
The exciting part of this evolution lies in the fact that marketing automation is now
creating new business models for marketers, allowing them to sort through data and
find leads in new ways, and get immediate feedback on whats working and what isnt.
A NEW LANDSCAPE
Technologies such as marketing automation are changing the way marketers are
doing business, says Laura McLellan, vice president, marketing strategies for Gartner
Research, who also presented at MarTech. Marketings focus is still on the customer,
but companies are now turning their focus to the web, e-business opportunities and
digital marketing.
The future is digital business and automation. Business opportunities without
people in between will become the norm, McLellan says.
Marketing is about disruption and getting peoples attention, she says, and
disruption at a technology level is already happening and will only proliferate. The big
impacts this shift is having on the marketing world is that the customer is now in charge
of the sales process, as online research and price comparisons have put them in the
drivers seat. McLellan says this has affected the traditional sales funnel, as many
customers are more than halfway to a purchasing decision before talking to a sales
representative.
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Data is the driver of decisions and innovative technology underlies it all,

McLellan says, adding that research indicates that spending on marketing automation
and other tech solutions is on the rise across the board. McLellan says that Gartners
research shows that two-thirds of companies will increase expenditures on marketing
tech in the coming year, including automation solutions.
Everything we see points to increased spendingvery few people are staying flat.
Among CEOs, digital marketing technology is the number one most important area of
investment to improve business over the next five years, McLellan says. The budget
for the marketing funding increase will likely be coming out of sales budgets, she says.
Were seeing a reduction in selling expenses, McLellan says.
FIGURING OUT WHO NEEDS WHAT, AND WHEN
Marketing automation can be a big help to salespeople and marketers sorting
through data and leads from social media. The recent 25 Marketing Automation Tips
study on the topic from Salesforce/ Pardot indicates most marketing automation tools
provide prospect tracking to give marketers real-time insight into prospects activities
(Pardots real-time sales dashboard is called Lead Deck). By customizing these realtime notifications to the actions that are most important sales teams, reps can be notified
the moment that one of their prospects downloads a piece of content, views the pricing
page, submits a form, and more.
Theres nothing quite like working away during the day and seeing what your
customers are doing behind the scenes, all using real-time prospect activity alerts. Its
incredibly useful to be able to know their engagement levels Ive even reopened and
won closed opportunities from these real-time notifications, says Pardot account
executive Annie Jensen.
The notifications signal to sales reps that appropriate action is needed, and arms
them with the information they need to reach out to their individual prospects.
Marketing automation can also help marketers handle social data. According to the
Salesforce / Pardot report, a survey by International Data Corporation shows that B2B
technology buyers receive an average of six phone calls and fourteen emails per day
from vendors.

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Using the social profile lookups available in a marketing automation platform, sales
reps can tap into the wealth of social data that their prospects are sharing, see where
their prospects are engaging online, develop valuable one-to-one relationships, and
jump into conversations with targeted, relevant information.
Which mediums and platforms are for personal use, and which are for business?
Sales reps are conducting business engagements, so they should be responding via
business mediums. Dont comment on your prospects Facebook statusinstead, shoot
them an email or reach out over Twitter. Its all about mutual respect, says Salesforce.
com marketing evangelist Mathew Sweezey.

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5 AUTOMATION IN FINANCE
Some of the prominent Banks of the world have managed to achieve rapid and large
scale process automation. This is possible due to their sheer size and power that they
command in the market. Looking at this the competitors are trying to cash in on the
opportunity and are trying to automate their own back offices for improved efficiency
and growth as of the bigger banks.
Now-a-days banks are in process of automating many of their customer facing front
end operations with digital solutions. Online banking as an example, offers enormous
convenience to consumers and with the advent of mobile payments and NFC mode of
payment, need for cash is slowly being eliminated.
All that said, banks still have many processes that are reliant on humans and on paper.
Back offices are the major places where all the manual processing is being done for all
the processes of the banks and handling customer requests. High amount of manual
processing is costly as well as slow, and it often leads to inconsistent results and has a
high error rate.
IT has done wonders to whatever field it has touched. And this is one of fields which
IT can automate and hence help the banks to eliminate such problems and errors which
exist in the back offices etc.
Research has indicated that a huge opportunity exists to improve the levels of
automation in back offices of banks. Just by reworking their IT architecture, banks can
have much smaller and operational units running value-adding tasks, which includes
complex processes, such as deal origination, and activities that require human
intervention, such as financial reviews.
IT-enabling operations takes into consideration both automating processes that is
preventing customers from using paper, digitizing work flows, and automating or
supporting decision making and using IT solutions to manage residual operations that
must be carried out manually for example, using software for resource planning. Taking
full advantage of this approach, banks can often generate an improvement of more than
50 percent in productivity and customer service.

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Many banks are already taking bold steps towards harnessing the huge potential of this
opportunity. They are trying to grab this opportunity with both hands in order to take
full advantage of it. As per one finding, one of the major banks categorized its more
than 900 end to end processes into 3 categories, which are FULLY AUTOMATED,
PARTIALLY AUTOMATED. LEAN MANUAL.
The findings of this were, around 85% of the jobs are performed by 80% of the FULL
TIME EMPLOYEES can be partially automated. If things are implemented as required,
then almost 50% of the back office staff could be relieved of their tasks.
This scenario sounds promising, but achieving it is easier said than done. This bank
then did some due diligence to determine whether there was a viable business case to
automate each process within a reasonable time frame. It concluded that only half the
opportunity (measured by the automation business cases completed on each manual
process) could actually be captured. Several barriers led to this conclusion.

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5.1 CHALLENGES

FACED

WHILE

IMPLEMENTING

AUTOMATION
Banks have rarely given their procedures a thought. Enabling growth and launching
new products is what banks have kept as their priority and done traditionally. They have
achieved this by adding new layers of product features and procedural requirements.
Lack of procedural rigor has made the processes highly complex which become very
difficult to automate.
Mergers and acquisitions, different product launches and regulatory changes have made
the IT architecture of banks a complicated one. Redesigning entrenched systems may
take in upwards of half a decade and can cost hundreds of millions of Dollars. For doing
this, banks have to invest substantial amounts of capital and run the risk that, if at all
the solution misses the mark or takes too long to implement in the market, the market
may have moved on even before the new system goes live.
IT departments have different agendas and lack the required understanding of business
priorities. The IT department usually discusses IT changes happening all over the world
and therefore they fail to grasp the full spectrum of integration options. On one hand
the IT architects and Solution designers are inclined to use legacy techniques or select
the most technically exciting solutions, while on the other hand IT vendors and system
integrators are not that enthusiastic as they do not get any incentive to reduce the
complexity of the integration or the effort it requires.
Banks often lack the internal capabilities to introduce more automated processes. IT
departments have historically been trained to use waterfall methodologies1 when
developing big projects. These methodologies1are appropriate for developing and
maintaining the traditional mainframe environments in which banks still run their core
banking systems, but they are not optimally suited to automating business processes
rapidly.
Faced with the above challenges, very few banks have felt the need for reengineering
their operations-related IT systems. Given the relatively strong growth, that the banks
experienced before the recession, most did not have to change their business processes.
But scenarios have changed and changed for the good, the new economics of banking
requires much lower back-office costs. With regulators and consumers pressuring
banks for greater transparency, and heavily expedited data processing for customer
accounts, bank leaders are realizing they must take a different approach.
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5.2 REVOLUTIONIZED IT SOLUTION

Banks are experimenting with automation approaches at a very rapid speed and have
been achieving promising results. Traditionally the jobs which took around 12-18
months are taking only 6 months to automate end-to-end processes and all this with half
the initial investment.
To take an example here, one of the banks in Europe recently decided to automate its
account switching process. For this activity, a team of IT, Operations and experts in
business processes analysed existing processes from customer, risk perspectives and
also from efficiency perspectives. The Analysis gave results which said, bank has 70%
of their applications in paper based form and out of those 30-40% contained errors and
required reworking them. It was also observed that applications often got stuck in one
of the data verification process for almost 5 days before being processed and passed on
to the next stage and due to lacking of IT integration, the banks back office staff and
the branch staff had to enter data manually from several different systems into the work
flow.
This team that identified all these errors and problems, defined a plan as to how the
process should look like, in which they gave priority to operational and business impact
for e.g. how much labour can be saved if automation is implemented and
FEASIBILITY as how many interfaces or changes to legacy systems would be required.
The teams major focus was on simplifying the process steps and procedural
requirements at each and every stage from streamlining the info. Required from the
customers and eliminating the unwanted verification steps to reduce the complexity of
the IT solutions.
Using this design, the team carefully evaluated the possible integration options. It
decided to use a combination of business-process-management software and electronic
forms, in addition to the legacy systems, to create an automated and digitized work flow
that did not significantly change existing IT systems. Daily huddles and weekly builds,
which were immediately tested by users, ensured that the solution met the requirements
and kept users engaged.
As a result, the amount of time back-office staff spent handling account changeovers
fell by 70 percent; the time customers needed to adjust to the switch was reduced by
more than 25 percent. The cost-benefit ratio for this project was also significantly better
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than it had been in previous automation efforts: the project generated a return on
investment of 75 percent and payback in just 15 months.

5.3 FOR SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATION PROCESSES:

Business priorities are to be considered to simplify the processes. It is pointless to
automate inefficiencies or unnecessary features embedded in any historical process.
Define the best and the most required processes from customer, risk and business
perspectives taking a lean approach to process designs and this will help bank cut costs,
lessen risk and implementation time also reduces. For the best end-to-end solution, a
completely cross-functional team consisting of persons from Operations, IT, and
business professional experts, as well as strong project governance is required. It is also
essential for the top management of all the above sectors to be actively involved in the
implementation of such processes.
Use multiple integration technologies and approaches. The perfect mix of integration
solutions, backed by a solid fool-proof evaluation of each solutions time to market and
contribution to the complexities in architecture which enables banks to automate most
of their human interventions without rewriting without or substituting legacy
architectural building blocks. Banks are successfully creating work flows by covering
the business process management tools that connect separate legacy systems, which
eliminates the manual process of data entry and similar errors across these end-to-end
processes. It requires a thorough understanding of what the market for integration
solutions has to offer and hence the evaluation is not straightforward.
Prepare the IT shop for agile-development methods. To achieve rapid development
cycles and use off-the-shelf solutions successfully, IT departments must build skills
beyond their traditional capabilities. In particular, they should hire or train people who
can assess the software market and apply the right solutions, as well as develop systems
in-house; who can run agile or iterative development projects; and who are capable of
working seamlessly with business and operations counterparts.

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As some banks experiment with this rapid-automation approach, and the impact of
initial pilots resounds throughout the organization, IT and operations teams will feel
pressured to integrate all end-to-end and back-office processes. All too often, however,
efforts to scale up these initiatives are short lived. IT architecture teams, concerned that
they will not master unfamiliar integration solutions, or that additional efforts will make
the IT landscape even more complex, may react warily. Meanwhile, operations and
business personnel push to automate everything everywhere as soon as possible,
without proper planning and evaluation. These pressures spread IT teams too thin,
diverting their attention from the largest areas of opportunity. Because such projects are
carried out much more quickly than traditional development efforts, IT departments
struggle to set up the necessary infrastructure on time, and the teams are not focused on
the value or necessity of additional features.
To overcome these obstacles, banks must design and orchestrate automationtransformation programs that prioritize and sequence initiatives for maximum impact
on business and operations. They also need to define a target IT architecture (both
applications and infrastructure) that uses a variety of integration solutions while
maintaining a systems integrity.
Successful large-scale automation programs need much more than a few successful
pilots. They require a deep understanding of where value originates when processes are
IT enabled; careful design of the high-level target operating model and IT architecture;
and a concrete plan of attack, supported by a business case for investment.
Another European bank launched a strategic initiative to shrink its cost base and
increase competitiveness through superior customer service. Upon completion of the
first successful pilots, the banks automation program consisted of three phases.
In phase one, the bank examined ten macro end-to-end business processes, including
retail-account opening and wholesale customer service requests, to identify the
automation potential and to prioritize efforts.

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In phase two, the architecture was designed and a plan of attack formulated. The bank
took three critical actions:

It decided which processes would be fully automated, partially automated, or fully

manual, based on four key tests. The tests determined whether a process was too
complex to automate (for example, deal origination and structuring), whether regulation
required human intervention (for instance, the financial-review process), whether or not
the process was self-contained (that is, dependent on multiple customer or third-party
interactions), and whether manual touch points added value to the customer relationship
(for example, product inquiries).

It designed the building blocks of the target application architecture, which consisted
of legacy systems and off-the-shelf applications, as well as the IT infrastructure
requirements, to provide timely and necessary computing and storage.

It derived a design-based holistic business case for the automation program and defined
the rollout plan.
In phase three, the bank implemented the new processes in three- to six-month waves,
which included a detailed diagnostic and solution design for each process, as well as
the rollout of the new automated solution.
This approach helped the bank to deliver business and operational benefits rapidly and
successfully. The program paid for itself by the second year and kept implementation
risks under control.
Rapid process automation in banking used to be a fantasy. But in a world marked by
financial and economic woes, banks need to find faster, more economical, and lowerrisk approaches to reducing costs and improving customer service. Fortunately, the
market for integration support solutions and alternative IT-development approaches has
become more reliable over the past ten years, unlocking the key to rapid, large-scale
automation of business processes. Banks cannot afford to miss the opportunity to
automate now.

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5.4 THE CASE FOR TRANSFORMATION

In recent times, banks have tried hot-wiring aging systems prevalent in their systems to
improve their performance, but thats becoming an uphill struggle. Many a banks feel
replacing these systems may be the best way to reduce the complexity and thus support
their business grow. Many CIOs have put to test their experience in the past few years
as the magnitude of the change translated into huge costs and similarly huge risks.
Processes and tools for CBS replacements have improved considerably and research
has shown that banks which have rebuilt CBS partly or wholly have achieved
measurable performance improvement as compared to their competitors or peers.
During recent years, merger activity and a changing operating environment have
brought complexity to the breaking point. To keep up with it, banks tacked on many
new applications to address regulatory requirements, bridge system incompatibilities,
and serve the customers they acquired through mergers. Meanwhile, the Internet has
increased demands to deliver banking services over new channels, such as mobile
phones, tablets and portable PCs. Elsewhere, rapidly growing banks dedicated to
serving emerging markets of the world fell behind its rivals in delivering online banking
services.

5.5 FUTURE OF AUTOMATION IN FINANCE

The finance domain has been always a function that is up for automation, but the
emerging wave of machine learning have proven especially disruptive in the past few
years.
A team of researchers comprising of Oxford University and Consultants from Deloitte
have given finance professionals something to think about carefully. Their team found
that, based on the number of their work and the expected advance of machine
intelligence, it is 95% likely that Charted accountants will be Replaced by some kind
of automation over a period of 20 Years.
This is an eye popping figure, but it shouldnt come as a surprise that the work of the
finance department is up for automation. Since 2004, there has been a decline of 40%
of Full-Time Employees working in the finance department to about 71 people for every
US$ 1Billion of revenue, down from 119. This is due to the increased use of automation
within the finance department.
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In a survey conducted on business leaders in US and western Europe by the Economist,

it was found that out of all the departments in the organization, finance department was
the most eager department to implement automation in the organization. A staggering
62% of Finance executives plan to launch or oversee an initiative which would increase
automation in their department of work.
Finance leaders are also relatively confident in their ability to identify opportunities for
automation within their departments and implementing them, with seven out of ten
describing themselves as somewhat or very confident.
The challenge that finance leaders face is to preserve visibility and oversight in financial
processes while reaping the benefits from automation. The ACCA is of the opinion that
CFOs need to see an operating structure that ensures that the right levels of checks and
balances are in place,.
In many cases, however, a lack of automation has been a hindrance to effective
governance. According to accounting firm KPMG, an absence of automation at the last
mile of financial reportingthe final steps in the process of compiling company
reportsstands in the way of standardisation and agility.
Automation is not new in the field of Finance, but machine-learning techniques that are
currently in use and the ones that are emerging will certainly have new, unprecedented
consequences for Financial oversight and processing. Its the Finance Leaders task in
the upcoming years to understand what are those capabilities and what do they mean
for their organization and how well can they deploy those in their firms for the progress
of the firm.
Core banking systems have laid a solid foundation for nearly every major process in
banks. The scenario today is like IT being the central nervous system of the bank and
the software. These are the main processes that drive the banks day-to-day operations
while serving as the core IT platform for upcoming growth and capabilities. Despite the
fact that CBS has been around for a decade or two, there are many banks which are
underperforming due to their outdated systems and architecture which barely supports
the major processes, and that too at a time when institutions face new pressure to cut
down on costs and adjust to volatile conditions in a turbulent financial system.

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5.6

HYPERION

This is one example of how financial closing software can help any organization in
speedy processes. Hyperion by Atomic helps in this process and gives your organization
the much wanted lead over the competitors.
Oracle Hyperion Financial Management is a financial consolidation and reporting
application built with advanced web technology. It provides financial managers with
the ability to rapidly consolidate and report financial results, meet global regulatory
requirements, reduce the cost of compliance and deliver confidence in their numbers.
Most of the times, multiple manual as well as automated processes have to be executed
in order to transfer financial data into Hyperion Applications. Information can be fed
regularly but it doesnt provide readiness of information at all times.
Calculations and consolidations can be scheduled without any prior knowledge
concerning the relevance of the state of financial data meaning the results are of an
unknown quality.
Slow, manual and reliable is usually the state of most of the Oracle financial closing
process in most of the organizations. Subsidiary closing is often late or incomplete also
consolidation is too slow and departmental managers frequently point out errors in
reports owing to the slow Oracle financial implementation process.
Its very difficult to escape these challenges. The financial period close process is a one
of the most vital, non-negotiable business process, but completing that close process is
tough. It usually involves many manual steps, owing to the multiple dependencies
between processes. Hyperion Oracle Financial Close solution removes the whole
manual input required by the Oracle financial period close process. By automating
Oracle financial close functions that typically require manual input, Hyperion increases
the efficiency of the financial period close process, resulting in much shorter periodend closings.
It results in giving employees more time for analysis, leads to faster feedback to the
Board and has a lesser risk of a poor audit statement. Moreover, it facilitates your
interim financial reporting and moves your business from historical performance
reporting to time to time analysis that helps in anticipating future trends.

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Hyperion also provides full documentation of all the process flows and procedures,
assures all government and corporate regulation compliances and enables you to deliver
closing reports on time every time.

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6 SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 Suggestions:
Automation is the thing in todays world and organizations should invest in it
for better prospects in the future.
Employees would be wary about embracing automation, but they have to be
taken into confidence that their jobs would not be lost and that automation is
being developed to improve their efficiency on job.
Automation providing companies should cater to companies by understanding
the clients requirement and modifying the software according to its
requirement.

6.2 Recommendations:
Organizations which are focussing on some specific fields like IT or
Manufacturing or Healthcare should start venturing into other fields as well.
Organizations giving huge discounts on their products give an impression that
their product isnt up to the mark and may lose clients. So it would be better to
give gradual discounts and some extra offers instead of huge discounts at
once.
Employees need to be given training by their organizations in order to help
them cope with the automation phase and help them in getting accustomed to
the new environment also Employees have to be given time to adjust to the
new surroundings before laying them off or firing them.

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7 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dias, J., Patnaik, D., Scopa, E., & Bommel, E. (2012, Aug). Retrieved from
http://www.mckinsey.com/: http://www.mckinsey.com/businessfunctions/business-technology/our-insights/automating-the-banks-back-office
E-Lock, T. . (n.d.). Basics Of Digital Signature. Retrieved from www.elock.com:
http://www.elock.com
Gorman, P. (2016). Leveraging Marketing Automation: Best Practices for Creating New
Marketing Models. Chief Marketer.
Nawaz, N. (2014). Automation of the HR functions enhance the.
Office Automation. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.wikipedia.org:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_automation
Regalix Research. (2014). State of Marketing Automation .
Sargazi, A. A. (2007). Investigating the Effect of Office Automation on Organizational
Excellence. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social
Sciences.

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