100 Automation Use Cases To Intelligently Transform Your Industry
100 Automation Use Cases To Intelligently Transform Your Industry
Automation is impacting industries in extraordinary ways. There are hundreds of use cases that are applicable across industries as well as industry-specific scenarios. But which ones are right for your organization?
The biggest blocker for most organizations considering automation is uncertainty about where to start. Choosing the right case study for your organization can be challenging with so much information out there. In this blog, I provide you with one-hundred real-world use cases for bringing automation to your organization.
There are 29 horizontal use cases as well as dozens more in the following industries and departments:
• HR
• Retail / e-Commerce
• Operations
• Healthcare
• Banking / Financial services
• Manufacturing
• Telecommunications
• Government
• Real Estate
• Hospitality
• Education
• Professional services
• IT
• Energy
• Food & Beverage
• Non-profit
• Logistics & Transportation
Let’s jump right in!
Horizontal Use Cases for All Industries
1. Scheduling Automation
Scheduling automation helps buyers schedule appointments with staff without all the back-and-forth to set it up. First, user intent is analyzed to automatically determine the best type of appointment, whether chat, call or an in-person meeting. Then, when a buyer selects a date and time for their appointment, AI syncs with all company calendars to ensure a staff member is available for and notified of the appointment. Automated reminders and the necessary information are sent to all participants. Participants are also automatically notified when an appointment is cancelled or changed.
Benefits:
• Schedule appointments faster
• Reduce missed meetings
• Keep participants informed
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reduce labor costs
2. Recommendation Engine
Recommendation engines analyze user behavior to deliver curated, personalized content to your buyers- just like Netflix, Spotify, etc. Putting the right product or service in front of the right users reduces friction in the sales chain and enhances the customer experience. As a buyer interacts with content, they inadvertently tell the engine what they want without giving it a thought and are provided the most relevant content to them. This both enhances the customer experience and provides valuable insight into what buyers are interested in.
Benefits:
• Increase sales
• Reduce customer acquisition costs
• Enhance the customer experience
• Increase customer satisfaction
3. Data Entry Automation
Capture data automatically and accurately by drawing together data from relevant information sources then pulling the insights into a dashboard for easy consumption. Through connected data sources and automated workflows, AI or RPA can automatically enter data into all necessary entry points.
Benefits:
• Increase data accuracy
• Increase breadth of data
• Reduce labor costs
• Access a dashboard for real-time insights
• Increase workplace efficiency
• Decrease operational costs
4. Customer Retention/Defection Risk Identification
Analyze customer behavior, demographics and interaction sentiment to identify potential defection risks outside of seasonal and market trend forces. Analyze comparable cases to determine the factors that lead to high defection propensity. Paired with customer intent insights, users can identify and remedy factors driving churn.
Benefits:
• Reduce operational costs
• Improve sales
• Improve operational efficiency
5. Invoice Automation
Automate invoice approval, entry, billing, payment, and data management. If an invoice relates to a new user, the system can create an identification to store information for that user. Receipts and other related documents for transactions are matched, so that everything is in one place.
Benefits:
• Reduce processing costs
• Go paperless
• Match documents
• Monitor spending & sales
6. Prescriptive Analytics
Integrate data collection sources with an intelligently populated dashboard to gather and analyze data, then automatically leverage descriptive, inferential and predictive statistics to provide intelligent action recommendations. Action items will automatically populate in the dashboard. Dashboard prescriptions augment user expertise to inform the best course of action.
Benefits:
• Increase ROI
• Automate insights
• Reduce labor costs
• Improve brand image
7. Document Automation
Identify and replace unique document elements while retaining reproducible elements. Client names, numbers, addresses, budget items, and other specific information is filled from existing data and records. When documents are automatically generated, human users then review the accuracy of the information. This is particularly important when documents need to be rapidly generated and delivered. By only relying on human users to verify content, fatigue is reduced, and accuracy is increased.
Benefits:
• Collaboratively manage content
• Automatically generate reproducible documents
• Increase document accuracy
• Reduce labor costs
• Increase time for specialized work
• Locate documents effortlessly
8. Sentiment Analysis
Automate the analysis of calls, email exchanges, and social media posts to identify customer sentiment. Translate language into insights about your customers’ feelings by identifying positive and negative words and phrases to generate a wide array of sentiment measures such as positive-to-negative word ratios, sentiment across products and customer segments, and changes to sentiment over time.
Benefits:
• Strengthen your brand
• Improve your customers’ satisfaction
• Understand what you are doing right and what you can improve
• Retain and acquire customers
• Implement best practices
• See a full view of customer sentiment across calls, email, and social media
• Gain greater control over the conversation about your organization
9. Customer Service/Support
Intelligent customer service representatives (AI assistants/chatbots) are available 24/7 to answer customer questions, direct them to the products they want, and even cross- or up-sell. If customer needs can’t be resolved automatically, the AI assistant can get them in touch with the right person when combined with intelligent scheduling. Customers’ questions and needs are addressed immediately, helping them navigate their individualized experience. By augmenting the customer service experience, customer service teams are then better able to build the more complex parts of the customer relationship.
Benefits:
• Resolve customer service requests without human intervention when not needed
• Improve customer retention
• Free customer service representatives to focus on building strong customer relationships
• Improve brand loyalty
• Cross-sell and up-sell
10. Procure-to-Pay Automated Workflow
With automated workflows and document filling, the entire process from procurement to payment can be automated and digitized. Requisitioning can be completed with compliance to a company’s policies with intelligently recommended vendors from a pre-approved list. The approval process can also be digitized and automated to streamline and speed up the process. Then, issuing purchase orders, receiving invoices, matching invoices, and issuing payments can all be completed with minimal human intervention.
Benefits:
• Speed up the procurement process
• Get visibility into procurement procedures and transactions for better quality control
• Increase accuracy of information with visibility into all financial activity
• Reduce processing costs
• Reduce the risk of fraud
11. Customer On-boarding
Robotic process automation (RPA) allows for automated document capturing, identity verification and seamless integration between a CRM and other systems. When on-boarding a new customer, client information, contracts and documents are automatically filled out through RPA and uploaded directly and safely to a company’s desired system to keep the on-boarding process quick and simple.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Brings down operational costs
• Improves quality control
12. Customer Due Diligence Automation
Connected internal and external data sources allow AI and other automation systems (like RPA) to leverage that data for risk reduction. Customer on-boarding is also covered with automated ID verification and ongoing communications. Auto-filling documents helps in this process as well as automating data authentication. Recording content can also be automated for visibility and compliance.
Benefits:
• Faster customer on-boarding
• Reduces costs
• Increases accuracy
• Increases visibility
• Strengthens compliance
13. Automated Testing
Validate that code or software is functioning properly and meeting requirements with automated testing tools. Automated testing tools can also populate reports and compare results with previous tests. Automated testing not only saves software engineers time but is also more accurate than manual testing.
Benefits:
• More accurate testing
• Saves money overtime
• Frees developers’ time for higher-value tasks
14. Software Installation Automation
Keep track of software inventory management, provide automatic network scanning and deploy multiple types of installation packages across the workplace. When installing software onto on multiple computers, software installation automation helps in rapid deployment so that tasks within the workplace are done quicker and more efficiently, and sensitive information and employees are more protected.
Benefits:
• Rapid deployment
• Saves time
• Keeps information safe
• Make sure software is up to date
15. Compliance Automation
Automatically track all compliance activity in one place and automatically populate compliance reports with automated compliance trails and other tools. Eliminate manual reporting and documentation by automating your compliance processes from your data collection process to reporting and validation.
Benefits:
• Keep compliance activities in one place
• Increase visibility
• Increase accuracy
• Save time
16. Re-targeting
Re-targeting automation pushes dynamic advertisements to your website visitors or email subscribers based on actions they do (or do not) take. By having certain actions trigger advertising sets across various platforms, targeted ads can be sent based on abandoned shopping carts, un-engaged email subscribers, website visitors who didn’t take action, etc. to ensure your brand stays top-of-mind to warm leads.
Benefits:
• Serve the right ad content to the right people at the right time
• Eliminate annual tagging and segmentation
• Get better results from data-driven ads
• Increase ROI
17. Pricing Optimization
With the increased accuracy and insight AI and automation can provide, automating price optimization can find the best price for your products and services based on a number of analysis automation tools can perform. Some analysis includes segmentation, brand tracking, and competitive analysis to find the best price for your product/service in your market. Some pricing optimization automation tools can also optimize promotion pricing and bundling.
Benefits:
• Increase ROI fast
• More accurate reporting
• More informed decision making
• Minimize human error
• Reduce manual intervention
18. Website Personalization
Backed by conversational AI, an AI assistant on a homepage helps website visitors with a human-like touch by responding to requests, giving product information, capturing possible leads and much more. If a customer visits a design website to learn about possible window treatments, an AI Assistant is there 24/7 to make sure their questions are answered. Personalize even further by providing users with playlists of curated content; let them access all the content at once, all housed in one single location.
Benefits:
• AI assistants are available 24/7
• Capture possible leads
• Customers can learn about products or services right now
19. Image Tagging
When a company receives a great number of digital photos, image tagging analyzes, sorts and organizes each photo using deep learning techniques. Automation automatically tags the photos sent to or already exist in a company’s database. Photos become more accessible and navigable in a company’s assets library so that employees and customers alike can search their website or database by using keywords associated with that search.
Benefits:
• Photos become more accessible
• Photos are organized
• Automation saves time
20. Email Autoresponder
Repeated processes that involves inbound or outbound email are a perfect fit for automation. If a customer sends out a request to change their password immediately, email autoresponders can send them links to get the process started right away. From delivering automatic drip campaigns, help desk requests, updated shipment status’ and so much more, an email autoresponder can send the customers the correct message at the correct time, all with the help of automation.
Benefits
• Saves time
• Automates workflows
• Builds better relationships with customers
21. Content Generation
From visual, text and even audio, AI algorithms step in to automatically create content. These AI algorithms learn from, scan through and analyze articles that are similar to certain given keywords so that optimized content is created; this is done by using machine learning (ML) and deep learning. It’s always important, because content generation is still very new, that there is some sort of human intervention to quality check or expand on the content that has been generated.
Benefits:
• Creates content quickly
• Saves time
• Offloads manual tasks
22. Forecasting
By collecting data from conversations with AI assistants, emails with customers and more, companies can utilize Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to pick and choose from what content strategies have worked best and abandon strategies that have failed. RPA can also scan the internet to find data on current trends with customers. RPA and data help companies stay ahead of the curve with their content strategies.
Benefits:
• Clear, concise data
• Knowing what content works and what doesn’t
• Always in the know
23. Sales Attribution
By utilizing an AI dashboard to view content engagement throughout the customer journey, businesses can easily visualize how much engagement there is on the content they are giving to their customer base. This makes for an easy valuation of the content and identifies certain touch points throughout the customer journey that lead to a conversion or purchase. Housing all the content that is sent out in the form of a playlist helps with direct and immediate engagement with content, which in turn keeps customers informed and ready to buy.
Benefits:
• Clear engagement metrics
• Better results on content sent out
• Keeps everything in one location
24. Lead Generation
AI assistants on website homepages help in obtaining information from possible leads that are then automatically added to marketing automation software or a CRM. When a customer interacts with an AI assistant and gives personal information such as an email, autoresponder email campaigns can be used. This allow companies to segment leads further so that follow ups are more precise and targeted campaigns are personalized to the lead’s sales readiness.
Benefits:
• Better customer personalization
• Information is automatically stored
• Information obtained is more detailed
25. Knowledge Management
Having an AI assistant to answer questions in real-time on a homepage helps to reduce support tickets and frequently asked questions from customers, which in turn helps employees work on more important tasks. Storing all the information from customer conversations digitally also helps in understanding common customers pain points, or even possible defects in products or services.
Benefits:
• Decrease support costs
• Employees are constantly informed
• Quick response time
• Increase ROI
26. Developer Assistance
Automated unit tests for the software development process help catch bugs in software before it becomes an issue, while also helping with providing solutions so that the application does not crash or break again. Automation can also assist with Application Programming Interface (API) by simplifying operations, implementation and maintenance of software even further so that when issues arise with an application, developers can promptly remedy the situation.
Benefits:
• Simplifying the process
• Reduces human error
• Streamlines testing
27. Automated Website Scraping
Website scraping gives organizations invaluable information. It can help organizations generate leads, run competitive analysis, monitor their own brand, and so much more. With automated website scraping, organizations can get all this information quickly so they can analyze it and take action faster.
Benefits:
• Save time
• Increase accuracy
• Increase speed
• Decrease errors
28. Automated Email Query Processing
Automated email query processing allows you to quickly process emails, group like emails together, and even auto reply with canned responses to frequently asked questions and other types of common inquiries.
Benefits:
• Save time
• Improve customer lifetime value
29. Forms Processing
Automated forms processing helps organizations move away from cumbersome paper forms to easily trackable and analyzable digital files. With automated forms processing, form templates can be intelligently populated yet customizable. An automated forms processing solution can also aid in inspections, audits, and other critical forms-related tasks.
Benefits:
• Reduce costs
• Increase productivity
• Speed processing
• Enhance auditing and compliance
• Greater visibility
HR Automation use cases
30. Candidate Sourcing — HR
With the number of potential employees applying to a position at any given time, HR departments need a better way of sourcing, tracking and hiring only the best candidates. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the sourcing process increases competitive advantage when hiring and reduces the time required to fill positions. This in turn helps HR departments meet their overall recruitment goals. RPA tools can even source candidates on social media platforms.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Reduces searching effort
• Meets hiring KPI’s
• More accurate employee sourcing
31. Performance Management — HR
Automation helps in no longer having to chase down employees to get them to fill forms before important deadlines or keep track of paperwork itself. Pre-filled, automated forms keep track of correct data while automated reminders and feedback loops manages the entire performance management process.
Benefits:
• Helps HR save time
• Conversations are more focused
• Forms are correct and ready to go
32. Retention Management — HR
Instead of ignoring employees’ requests for change, HR departments need to utilize automated management systems to offer support during the entire employee lifecycle. Employees often complain about lack of responsiveness from HR departments, and by using automated systems, employees can be heard clearer and quicker.
Benefits:
• Reduce employee turnover
• Decrease onboarding costs
• Delivers a great experience in the workplace
33. Employment History Verification — HR
Instead of doing manual verification for a new hire, automation helps when potential employees input incorrect identifying information. This reduces loopholes and provides only authentic information when hiring a new employee into the workplace. Receive instant employment and salary verifications, criminal records, terminations, theft and much more.
Benefits:
• Hire only the right people for the job
• Save time during the hiring process
• Keep current employees safe
34. Payroll automation — HR
Instead of hiring outside consultants to check for errors during payroll, automation alleviates stress and reduces those errors, and in turn, saves money and time. Automated payroll can gather and aggregate data to fill out spreadsheets, make precise calculations, fill out government forms and so much more. HR leaders can make the payroll process more efficient and accurate with automation to better manage their budget, provide better compliance and boost the overall employee experience in their business.
Benefits:
• Improved accuracy
• Simplifies payment process
• Reduces costs
• Reduces errors in timekeeping
• Any industry or company size can benefit
35. New Employee On-boarding — HR
Extensive information and training is usually required when a new employee is hired, but automation takes the pain out of this process. Automation can provide structured learning paths per each employee’s new and specific role. Automation can also trigger notifications to push the employee along in the process (where an AI assistant can be available to answer any questions or concerns).
Benefits:
• Create workflows to easily manage multiple employees
• Saves time
• Empower employees with the information they need
36. Worker’s Compensation Claims — HR
Before automation, claims required multiple professionals to do a visual comparison of the approved or denied treatment. This makes for a higher chance of mistakes during the compensation claim process. Automation in workers compensation claims helps flag and review claims that require a second look; it also provides complete and correct information about patient’s conditions so that injured people’s get the treatment they need without dispute.
Benefits:
• Claims are resolved quicker
• Injuries are assessed correctly
• Decrease in costs
Retail/e-Commerce Automation use cases
37. Updating Inventory Records — Retail/eCommerce
Having an up-to-date record of inventory is critical when knowing how much product is in stock in a warehouse or even on the salesfloor. Instead of manually writing down which product is in stock, having an automated inventory management system not only keeps count of all the products you have on hand, but it also provides intelligence into how well a product is selling and whether or not the product should be re-ordered when stocks are low. Get updated in real-time to sell the products customers want most.
Benefits:
• Increase stock accuracy
• Identify issues earlier
• Reduce data-entry errors
• Keep operations running smoothly
38. Customer Retention/Defection Risk Identification — Retail/eCommerce
Analyze customer behavior, demographics and interaction sentiment to identify at-risk customers outside of seasonal and market trend forces. Analyze like-cases to determine the factors that lead to high defection propensity. Paired with customer intent insights, users can identify and remedy factors driving customer churn.
Benefits:
• Reduce operational costs
• Increase sales
• Improve the customer experience
• Improve operational efficiency
39. Customer Service/Support — Retail/eCommerce
Intelligent customer service representatives (AI assistants/chatbots) are available 24/7 to answer customer questions, direct them to the products they want, and even cross- or up-sell. This takes significant burden off the customer service/support team so they can focus on high-value objectives and complex customer relationships. Plus, customers are taken care of immediately with an individualized experience.
Benefits:
• Resolve customer service requests without human intervention when not needed
• Improve customer retention
• Free customer service representatives to focus on building strong customer relationships
• Improve brand loyalty
• Cross-sell and up-sell
40. Personalized Product Recommendations — Retail
Surface product recommendations in the form of content about those products. This way, when a customer begins consuming content about certain products, they can binge on content about similar products as it gets surfaced to them in a playlist format. Or, through a natural feeling conversation, AI assistants can surface products to add to their carts based on the products they are already interested in. This allows customers to get the product and product information they are looking for, as well as the products they didn’t know they needed.
Benefits:
• Increase ROI
• Increase customer retention
• Enhance the customer experience
• Easily up-sell to customers the products they want
41. Employee Retention — Retail
Assess whether candidates are the best match for your business by analyzing intent and personality characteristics. AI and automation can assist with on-boarding by providing employees with the information they need to get up to speed. Throughout employee tenure, AI and automation measures employee engagement, identifies drivers of turnover, and assesses employee intent to best design a personalized growth and training plan.
Benefits:
• Reduce recruitment costs
• Increase employee retention
• Identify churn root causes
• Improve employee satisfaction
• Increase productivity
• Reduce overall operation costs
42. Returns Processing — Retail/eCommerce
Automation helps in streamlining the returns management process at scale. By utilizing data and Machine Learning (ML), automating returns processing helps with monitoring logistics event data, while instantly notifying employees when a return case needs intervention or assistance. By collecting data from customer conversations and return insights data, companies can boost and save on marketing campaigns, promotion and creation of products and retain customers.
Benefits
• Refines workflows
• Saves return times
• Cuts costs
43. Fraud Detection — Retail/eCommerce
By learning from historical data and real-time data, machine learning can identify fraudulent behaviors and assess the risk of fraudulent transactions. Conversely, machine learning can ensure legitimate transactions aren’t marked at-risk to increase approvals of legitimate transactions. Then, with automation, certain actions can be taken based on suspicious versus legitimate behavior and everything can be recorded for audit automatically.
Benefits:
• Increase approvals for legitimate transactions
• Increase sales
• Decrease fraudulent transactions
• Increase visibility
• Decrease the need for manual intervention
Operations Automation use cases
44. Issuing Refunds — Operations
AI and automation help companies in responding to refund requests promptly and accurately. Because AI assistants are available 24/7, there’s a helping hand around the clock to answer customers questions or concerns when they are dissatisfied with a product. Automation assists in issuing refunds as well gives insights into possible product design defects and supply chain issues overall. Making the return process more efficient helps in providing a better customer experience and higher retention rates.
Benefits:
• Quicker return responses
• Decrease supply chain issues
• Higher retention rates
45. Shipment Scheduling and Tracking — Operations
Automating shipping scheduling and tracking helps in preventing errors when shipping and can cut shipping time down significantly. When shipping out products, automation helps in giving greater control and visibility over the movement of materials, as well as giving access to time-sensitive information; know where a product is and when it will arrive in the right place.
Benefits:
• Increase shipping efficiency
• Provide greater visibility into item tracking
• Keeps track of the entire shipping lifecycle
• Ship items quicker
Healthcare Automation use cases
46. Remote Patient Monitoring — Healthcare
Automate the process of engaging with patients to assess their health outcomes and risks, integrating this information with existing health records. Patients can receive information automatically, schedule a phone call with providers, or schedule an in-person appointment. Healthcare providers are given risk and adherence data to determine the most appropriate course of treatment.
Benefits:
• Reduce health care costs
• Improve treatment adherence
• Early intervention identification
47. Patient Experience — Healthcare
Automated follow-up chats measure outcomes and suggest next-steps, giving providers more time to focus on the patient-provider relationship. By measuring patient experience, providers can identify what is lacking in their systems, whether it is navigation aid or facility quality. Patient responses can be used to identify deviations from normal treatment responses and, at the aggregate, locate systemic problems through heat-mapping. By providing real-time treatment information through chats, and by suggesting next steps, patients are automatically directed to the right providers and treatment options.
Benefits:
• Improve patient satisfaction
• Automate navigation assistance
• Identify system weak spots
• Identify and address systemic health issues
• Improve treatment information and transparency
• Treatment reminders
48. Drug Discovery — Healthcare
Automation and robotics allow for the exploration and identification of potential new drugs. In just weeks, millions of chemical compounds can be discovered so that scientists are able to find successful drug combinations that may one day make it onto the shelves, all with the help of automation. Data from the trail process is captured, analyzed and automatically fed into systems so that researchers can use it for further drug discovery.
Benefits:
• Quicker drug development
• Automates manual tasks
• Locates data quicker
• Reduces labor costs
49. Patient Scheduling Automation — Healthcare
Scheduling automation helps patients schedule appointments with clinicians without all the back-and-forth to set it up. First, patient intent is analyzed to automatically determine the best type of appointment, whether chat, call or an in-person meeting. Then, when a patient selects a date and time for their appointment, AI syncs with all available clinicians’ calendars to ensure a clinician is available for and notified of the appointment. Automated reminders and the necessary information are sent to all participants. Participants are also automatically notified when an appointment is cancelled or changed.
Benefits:
• Schedule appointments faster
• Reduce missed appointments
• Keep patients informed
• Increase patient satisfaction
• Reduce labor costs
50. Streamline Claims Management — Healthcare
When a claim is inputted into an automated claims processing software or claims management solutions, data is collected. The claims that have been entered into the system are automatically scanned to show whether or not they will be rejected or returned based on this data. These data-backed outcomes as well decrease the back and forth within the hospital staff, which completes or denies claims quicker for patients.
Benefits:
• Reduces overall costs
• Increases efficiency
• Saves time
• Saves money
51. Automated Discharge Instructions and Follow Up — Healthcare
Delivering discharge instructions to patients after an appointment can be automated to ensure patients are informed of their next-steps and medication instructions. Follow up notifications can also be automatically provided to patients to make sure they follow through on their care plans.
Benefits:
• Improve patient relationships
• Improve patient outcomes
• Save time for clinicians
52. HIPAA and Regulatory Compliance Automation — Healthcare
When managing a clinic, remaining HIPAA compliant becomes seamless with automation. A centralized automated location stores documents and new information to always maintain compliancy and keep up with the most current HIPAA requirements, headquarters, regional or remote locations and multi-ePHI Systems so that they become more easily managed.
Benefits:
• Keep compliance activities in one place
• Increase visibility
• Increase accuracy
• Save time
Banking/Financial Services Automation uses cases
53. Home Loans — Banking/Financial Services
With a home loans AI assistant, prospective home buyers have aided navigation through the pre-approval process. The data gathered from chat conversations is then converted into actionable insights for lenders. Applicant income data, intent and conversation valence are automatically captured. Next steps in the lending and borrowing process are suggested and automatically scheduled, making home buying simple.
Benefits:
• Reduce labor costs
• Automate import of applicant data
• Reduce paperwork
• Aid borrower navigation
54. Bank Statement Reconciliation — Banking/Financial Services
Automated bank statement reconciliation lets customers upload bank statements and automatically reconcile them into a banks system by using matching rules applied by that system. Spreadsheet-based solutions, built-in functionalities and add-on modules automate the transaction matching process to improve overall balance sheet reconciliation.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Reduced repetitive tasks
• Reduced error-prone bookkeeping
• Reduces errors
• Points out irregularities quicker
55. Credit Lending and Scoring — Banking/Financial Services
Automation supports retail mortgages and SME (Small Medium Enterprise) lending, which in turn helps banks focus on existing customers that are refinancing or increasing credit limits. Automated decision-making helps revise credit processes, handles simpler customer cases quicker and makes the credit-paper and collateral-review processes even smoother. Hand-offs, extensive written reports, data entry and much more are simplified through automation.
Benefits:
• Reduce human error
• Reduce operational costs
• Reduce customer wait time
• Reduce manual entries and tedious tasks
56. Fraud Detection — Banking/Financial Services
Analyze bank records and create unique identifier profiles to determine consumer spending habits. When irregular transactions occur, financial institutions are alerted. Credit card fraud can be identified by analyzing the amounts, locations and products associated with transactions in comparison with profile predictions. By automating the analysis of user habits, identification and intervention occur quickly.
Benefits:
• Early fraud identification
• Automate fraud response
• Decrease fraud costs
• Decrease investigatory labor costs
57. Travel and Expense Management — Banking/Financial Services
Automating expense management helps take the guesswork out of whether or not receipts are missing, expense submissions are late, spreadsheets are done wrong, unnecessary items are purchased and more. With an automated system, organizations can compare an employee’s travel expenses against established spending guidelines within systems inside and outside the company. Scaling becomes easy with auto-approval of standard expenses.
Benefits:
• Ensure compliance
• Reduce manual effort
• Improve accuracy
• Reduce delay in expense submissions and approvals
58. Tax Reporting — Banking/Financial Services
With changing tax laws, having an automated system that adapts to new laws and regulations aids accountants with time to focus on more important tasks. It as well helps with keeping all information in one single location to complete clients or employees tax reports on time. Robotic process automation (RPA) backs these automated systems to gather documents, photos and other varied formats from across an entire company, processes it and uses it to auto-fill tax forms.
Benefits:
• Prevent mistakes
• Prevent possible late fees or other fines
• Process tax information quickly
• Ensure compliance
• Save employees time
59. Accounts Payable — Banking/Financial Services
Processing invoices incorrectly or too slowly can delay payments and induce fines for many companies. By utilizing an automated system to process invoices sent by various companies or clients in differing formats, companies can easily put together unstructured information and the overall document reading process through automation. Automation as well helps in scanning, digitizing and validating data from these invoices and uploads it directly into their desired system, all with robotic process automation (RPA).
Benefits:
• Accelerate invoice processing
• Pay suppliers quicker
• Prevent errors
• Avoid late or in-completion fees
• Reduce fraud
60. Accounts Receivable — Banking/Financial Services
With specific requirements for each customer, companies need a way to process invoices and store specific customer documentation in a succinct way. Automation lets companies treat customers from around the world (with different legal requirements) in the exact same way by automatically submitting an invoice for a customer, no matter what kind of accounts payable system they use. Robotic process automation (RPA) takes the information needed from the customers database and uses it to send documentation to the company’s system for billing/invoices.
Benefits:
• Bill customers quicker
• Receive payments sooner
• Ensure accuracy
• Maximize revenue
• Saves time
• Gives employees more time to work on creative tasks
61. Account Reconciliation — Banking/Financial Services
Automated account reconciliation provides more accuracy and saves heaps of time. By automating the process, data can be brought together from various sources, the process is standardized, and all actions and data can be recorded — all automatically.
Benefits:
• Increased visibility
• Save time
• Increased accuracy
Manufacturing Automation use cases
62. Inventory Optimization — Manufacturing
Augment inventory processes by providing inventory employees with optimized inventory level suggestions. These insights are often delivered in an easy-to-use dashboard. Whether demand prediction, sales forecasting, optimal stock levels, or potential impacts to stock levels, you have all the information needed to make the best decisions.
Benefits:
• Reduce perishable waste
• Reduce excess stock
• Optimize buffer stock
• Identify production flow issues
• Reduce down-time labor costs
• Improve brand image
63. Shipping Lead Time Optimization — Manufacturing
Analyze product movement and customer preferences to determine which products to ship first and at which delivery speeds. AI and automation can provide accurate ship times and account for contextual factors that may affect delivery speed. Arrival and shipping times are predicted to ensure efficient product placement within the warehouse or on the production floor. Transport space can also be analyzed to determine the most efficient minimum and maximum loads.
Benefits:
• Reduce production down-time
• Optimize transport container space
• Accurately predict ship times
• Optimize product placement for efficient loading and offloading
64. Bill of Materials Automation — Manufacturing
Automation helps to create a centralized database to manage bill of materials (BOM) within a business that is constantly updated with new data. From engineering, purchasing, to manufacturing, all departments within a business will have immediate access to responses or requests such as new parts to be ordered, or changes to the current part designs. Documents, contracts and conversations are kept and analyzed within an automated BOM, which helps to not interrupt the design cycle.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Keeps everything in one place
• Reduces errors
• Reduces redundancy
• Reduces back and forth
65. Logistics Data Automation — Manufacturing
An automated transportation management system (TMS) aids in managing transportation and freight departments from one single location. Employees and customers alike during the entire logistics process become more informed with updated data via logistics automation; the system notifies them with real time updates on shipping, accessorials or fuel charges and an integration with a company’s commodities are updated simultaneously within the ERP system and address book.
Benefits:
• Reduces manual entry errors
• Saves money
• Saves time and effort
• Knowing cost and time to ship up front
Telecommunications Automation use cases
66. Customer Segmentation — Telecommunications
Using text derived from customer interaction like calls, emails and website interaction, data can be generated from customer responses to cluster and segment customer data. Use these insights to analyze trends within precision targeted clusters.
Benefits:
• Make your brand stand out
• Reduce churn
• Increase market share
• Increased loyalty
• Increased product usage
• Increased ARPU
67. Product Development — Telecommunications
Through customer chats, emails and calls, customer sentiment, needs and trust can be collected and analyzed to help companies roll out perfect products and get the products up and running. By identifying positive and negative conversation valence, companies can identify strengths and weaknesses in their product reception that might go unnoticed by support employees.
Benefits:
• Increase customer loyalty
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Increase product usage
• Increase ARPU
• Increase customer referrals
Government Automation use cases
68. Social Monitoring for Policy Feedback — Government
Evaluate public sentiments throughout the policy implementation process and provide insights for the creation new policies. By analyzing public sentiment on social platforms, agencies can identify unintended policy consequences and evaluate the effectiveness of intended policy outcomes. AI and automation provide insights into common issue areas, allowing governmental agencies to publish content to better inform citizens of policy details and outcomes.
Benefits:
• Identify public sentiment in response to policy implementation
• Augment existing research practices
• Respond to up-to-date public sentiment insights
• Reduce research costs
• Expedite research insights
69. Automated 311 — Government
Reduce wait times and resolve many inquiries in real time. Whether the inquiry is about hazardous or bulky-item pickup, service requests or a question about election administration, AI assistants and chatbots can resolve most inquiries. AI assistants and chatbots can determine user intent, provide them with the information they need, automatically schedule services or schedule a call with the right person to resolve their inquiry. The data from chats can be used to analyze resolution times to identify where improvements can be made and whether all appropriate information is published and publicly available.
Benefits:
• Automatically resolve resident inquiries
• Automatically schedule services and calls
• Analyze up-to-date inquiry data
• Identify inefficient inquiry resolution trends
• Locate information gaps
• Reduce training costs
Real Estate Automation use cases
70. Lead Management — Real Estate
Automated lead management systems sift through any and all leads in a CRM to sort the best and most profitable leads for real estate agents. This means clients are prioritized based on if they are actually interested buying, or if a sale is ready to close. Instead of wasting time on the wrong leads or leads slipping through the cracks, automated systems also can remind agents to follow up with a client on their journey to buy.
Benefits:
• Only contact the best leads
• Saves time
• Better customer service
• Better commissions for agents
71. Contract Management — Real Estate
Managing multiple contracts as a real estate agent can be a huge time waster without an automated system to house them in. Automated contract software helps to grow a real estate agent’s customer base and business overall by auto-filling forms or contracts and sending them out right away to clients who are ready to buy; agents can then get their clients to sign contracts quicker and can even have them sign contracts electronically right from within the system or with a mobile application.
Benefits:
• Better collaboration
• Closes deals faster
• Reduces errors
• Compliant
72. Automated Property Inspection — Real Estate
Property inspections require a lot information that often gets lost in the inspection process, but if an automated system is used, real estate agents can get the correct and up-to-date inspection information on houses they sell to clients. Reporting the correct condition of a home to a buyer/client is easy with property inspection software. It can schedule inspections online, provide reminders for inspections to happen, automatic payment for inspection, integrate into your calendar, offers pre-populated inspection documents and more.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Provides updated, correct information
• Agents no longer have to worry about the process
73. Automated Open House Lead Generation — Real Estate
After an open house, agents can easily collect leads and send automatic follow up emails to clients with the help of automated open house software, which all integrates right into an agents CRM to help nurture their sales. And with newfound insights into interest in a certain property after an open house, agents can then alter their marketing strategies to cater to the most popular houses to market and sell them faster.
Benefits:
• Increase ROI
• Streamlined process
• Gain more leads
74. Automated Property Management — Real Estate
Landlords and property managers with multiple listings can employ an automated property management system so they always know what properties need the most attention. Bring together and contact the correct staff and documentation so that all properties are managed equally and correctly. Automated property management systems can provide marketing for listings, screening for potential applicants, lease tracking, rent collection and even coordination and notifications for maintenance on properties.
Benefits:
• Properties are managed correctly
• Saves time
• Keeps everything in one place
75. Automate Commercial Deal Process — Real Estate
Commercial real estate deals have a lot of moving pieces, paperwork to fill out, contracts to sign, and- typically — many people involved in the decision-making process. Automation can aid in recommending content to bring to deals, auto-filling documents, capturing conversations and keeping all conversations in an easily accessible location for all participants. Ultimately, automation accelerates the deal process.
Benefits:
• Save time
• Close deals faster
• Keep everyone on the same page
• Increased customer satisfaction
Hospitality Automation use cases
76. Guest Personalization — Hospitality
Hospitality services have provided personalized experiences for repeat clients for a long time, but with automated software, hotels can keep track of everything current guests like and don’t like so that their stay is just to their liking. By adding thoughtful touches for repeat guests, hotels can keep guests coming back. Robotic process automation (RPA) also comes in to play when identifying and scanning potential personal touches online that newer guests might enjoy. This puts hotels ahead of their competitors by altering the experience to the individual.
Benefits:
• Boost revenue
• Boost loyalty
• Cater experiences to each guest
77. Booking — Hospitality
Opportunities to actually communicate with hotel staff are limited, so utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to offer 24/7 support for booking or questions is a gamechanger for hotel guests. By deploying an AI assistant or chatbot, bookings and common inquiries can be handled digitally, leaving hotel staff with more time to devote to complex inquiries and guest relationships. AI assistants located on a hotel’s website or mobile app can even provide dates and check-in details; reducing friction for customers while also providing a tailored experience.
Benefits:
• Frees up staff
• Makes the booking process smoother
• Helps create a better experience for guests
78. Price Management — Hospitality
Automate rate and occupancy optimization based on demand. Utilizing automation tools, hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts can intelligently raise room rates during times of high-demand and decrease them in times of low occupancy. Certain tools can also predict market trends based on historical data.
Benefits:
• Increase revenue
• Increase occupancy
• Eliminate manual data analysis
79. Preventative Maintenance and Cleaning — Hospitality
Automation software for preventive maintenance and cleaning can notify technicians of needed repairs as well as routine tasks and replacements. It can also manage equipment, cleaning supply inventory and critical systems required for maintenance and cleaning. Utilizing preventative maintenance software can reduce guest complaints of faulty equipment or even top concerns like temperature control and eliminating unwanted odors from an AC system or other critical systems.
Benefits:
• Increase guest satisfaction
• Reduce guest complaints
• Reduce costs of fixing and replacing neglected critical systems
• Reduce manual processes for systemizing inventory refills and equipment check-ups
80. Reputation Management — Hospitality
Eliminate manual oversight of review sites like Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor, etc. with automated sentiment analysis. Reputation management software can also guide you through the process of replying to negative reviews with notifications and pre-scripted replies. Automating reputation management allows hospitality workers to focus on other objectives and only manually interact with review sites when they are notified. Finally, prescriptive analytics can help you take action on data from reviews to improve the customer experience.
Benefits:
• Eliminate manual oversight of reviews
• Set it and forget it until something urgent arises
• Automate the review response process
• Improved guest experience
81. Improved Guest Support and Sales Calls — Hospitality
Using AI and automation, hotels, motels, and bed and breakfast businesses can intelligently analyze guest support and sales calls, perform sentiment analysis and provide prescriptive analytics. By transcribing and analyzing every guest support and sales call, sentiment analysis can be performed to give management comprehensive oversight of guest sentiment in calls, the percentage of time a guest talks versus an agent in any given call, and best practices can be extracted from top sales and support agents.
Benefits:
• Improved guest experience
• Eliminate manual call reviews
• Get rich, comprehensive insights into sales and support calls
• Extract and evangelize best practices from top performing agents
82. Staff Interaction — Hospitality
Intelligent front-desk representatives (AI assistants/chatbots) are available 24/7 to answer guest questions, direct them to the products and services they want, even cross- or up-sell, and even provide information about local activities. If guest needs can’t be resolved automatically, the AI assistant can get them in touch with the right person when combined with intelligent scheduling. Guests’ questions and needs are addressed immediately, helping them navigate their individualized experience. By augmenting the guest service experience, front desk staff are then better able to build the more complex parts of the guest relationship.
Benefits:
• Resolve guest inquiries without human intervention when not needed
• Improve guest loyalty
• Free hotel staff to focus on building strong guest relationships
• Improve brand loyalty
• Cross-sell and up-sell
Education Automation use cases
83. Smart Content and Lesson Planning — Education
AI and automation can create study exams from textbooks and other study materials based on previously made materials. Using automation, previously created materials can be condensed into useful learning and test-prep tools saving educators time and helping students succeed.
Benefits:
• Improve student outcomes
• Eliminate manual content creation for educators
• Get more out of existing material
84. Admissions Concierge Chatbots — Education
Intelligent administration assistants (AI assistants/chatbots) are available 24/7 to answer student questions, direct them to the resources they need and walk them through the enrollment process. If a student’s inquiry can’t be resolved automatically, the AI assistant can get them in touch with the right administrative staff when combined with intelligent scheduling. Student’s questions and needs are addressed immediately, helping them navigate their enrollment process. By augmenting the administrative process, staff are better able to build the more complex student relationships.
Benefits:
• Resolve guest inquiries and questions without human intervention
• Improve student relationships
• Reduce confusion in the enrollment process
• Free administrative staff to focus on building strong student relationships
• Lasting impression on potential students
• Reduce administrative costs
85. Intelligent Tutoring Systems — Education
Provide interactive applications to students to individualize the learning experience to their learning style and provide an always accessible, virtual learning environment. Some ITS (intelligent tutoring systems) can translate text to provide additional support for ESL students and connect students with educators intelligently when needed.
Benefits:
• Improve student outcomes
• Lessen the burden on educators
• Personalize the learning experience
Professional Services
86. Speech Recognition and Transcription — Professional Services
AI and automation can turn recorded speech into text with increasing accuracy as advancements are made. This way, conversations can be recorded, saved and analyzed automatically. Transcriptions of conversations have traditionally been taken manually, with automation, this task can be completed with minimal human intervention.
Benefits:
• Saves time
• Saves money
87. Contract Analysis — Professional Services
Data can be extracted and clarified with AI software. As Harvard Business Review reported, AI-driven contract analysis software can:
- Quickly pull and organize the renewal dates and renegotiation terms from any number of contracts
- Let companies review contracts more rapidly
- Organize and locate large amounts of contract data more easily
- Decrease the potential for contract disputes (and antagonistic contract negotiations)
- Increase the volume of contracts it is able to negotiate and execute
Benefits:
• Decreased disputes
• Save time analyzing contracts
• Increase volume of contracts and execution
IT Automation use cases
88. Backup Recovery and Cybersecurity — IT
With automated software updates and backups, organizations and individuals alike can ensure the security of their systems without the technical knowledge needed for manual updates and backups.
Benefits:
• Increase security with updated apps and software
• Save time (and huge headaches) from trying to recover lost data
89. Virus Detection — IT
Automatically detect viruses and notify the right staff members to resolve issues that can’t be resolved via existing virus software. Detect at-risk/suspicious behavior and address them before they become a problem.
Benefits:
• Enhance security
• Reduce the burden on IT and security teams
90. Automated Incident Response — IT
Automated incident response takes the guess work out of security breaches and other systems security related issues with dynamic case management, automated notifications, reports and consistent process management.
Benefits:
• Enhance security
• Lower costs
• Save time
91. Issue Mitigation — IT
Automation can detect issues and alert necessary stakeholders to mitigate them. Combined with machine learning, automation can even notify and sometimes autonomously handle issues, security breaches, etc. before they occur. Plus, the right IT and security experts can be notified of such issues and easily escalate them to management when needed.
Benefits:
• Save time
• Reduce the burden on internal teams
• Resolve issues faster
• Keep systems secure
Energy Automation use cases
92. Outage Prediction and Response — Energy
With machine learning, analysis can be performed to identify the actions and times-of-day that are likely to result in outages. Then, with automation, electricity can be directed accordingly, and notifications can be automatically delivered to both the utility owners and affected home/business owners.
Benefits:
• Improve planning
• Improve customer communications
• Save money
• Save time
• Increase efficiency
Food & Beverage Automation use cases
93. Sorting and Quality Control — Food and Beverage
With a combination of machine learning and robotics, quality control of food can be executed by analyzing the size, shape and color of a given food type then sorted accordingly. Machine learning can also analyze other factors such as the fat-content in meat.
Benefits:
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Save time
• Improve product quality
94. Customer Delivery Notification — Food and Beverage
With automation, personalized notifications can be sent to customers detailing their order and expected arrival time. Notifications can include the organization’s messaging to strengthen the brand and are customized to include order details such as what’s in the order, the quantity of the order, etc.
Benefits:
• Strengthen customer relationships
• Improve delivery efficiency
• Mitigate delivery errors and rejections
• Decrease the burden on support staff
Non-Profit Automation use cases
95. Prospect List Management — Non-Profit
Document then automate communications with donors and volunteers. Give event organizers and volunteers prioritized lists of tasks and key parties to focus on.
Benefits:
• Increase volunteer efficiency and effectiveness
• Increase donor communications impact
96. Automated Donor Communication — Non-Profit
Donors can be automatically segmented, and communications can be automated based on gift variables with notifications for staff to follow up a given number of days after the gift has been received. Gifts can be sent as incentives to donors who have stopped their regular donations. Everything can be integrated with the organization’s CRM with the right automated software.
Benefits:
• Improved donor communications
• Increase donor lifetime value
• Strengthen donor relationships
Logistics & Transportation Automation use cases
97. Delay Predictions — Logistics and Transportation
Machine learning (ML) can learn from historical data points and real-time data when logistics and transportation companies can expect delays. Automaton can then push notifications to drivers and customers receiving packages to notify them of the delay. It can also push notifications to management so they can better pivot deliveries and schedules as well as personally reach out to customers when needed.
Benefits:
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reduce missed deadlines due to delays
• Anticipate delays and pivot faster
• Reduce burden on support teams
• Reduce costs
98. Shipment Scheduling and Tracking — Logistics and Transportation
By leveraging machine learning and automation, logistics and transportation organizations can intelligently plan routes, schedule shipments, get automated reports and push notifications to all necessary stakeholders on delays, inventory, etc.
Benefits:
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reduce missed deadlines due to delays
• Anticipate delays and inventory shortages
• Reduce burden on support teams
• Reduce costs
• Increase revenue
99. Order and Inventory Processing — Logistics and Transportation
Automation can track inventory and orders and automatically fill reports. It can also notify the necessary stakeholders of inventory shortages as well as overstock, so businesses can maximize profit, create strategic offers and ensure they never run out of in-demand products.
Benefits:
• Increase sales
• Save time
• Reduce costs
• Increase visibility
100. Capturing, Researching, and Closing Out Loads — Logistics and Transportation
Robotic process automation (RPA) software can automatically access the carrier website to capture each shipment’s PRO number, track/trace information, and invoice amount. Automatically file and fill related documents, validate at every stage and automate the invoice process, all with minimal human intervention.
Benefits:
• Save time
• Reduce costs
• Reduce the burden on support teams
Conclusion
With so many possible use cases available to you, it can be hard to identify the right ones. I hope this list of top 100 use cases that you can implement today will give you inspiration to identify the right use case(s) for you.
In this blog, I’ve given you brief overviews of 100 industry-specific and industry-agnostic use cases along with the top benefits of each. We’ve covered horizontal use cases, as well as use cases in the following industries:
• HR
• Retail / e-Commerce
• Operations
• Healthcare
• Banking / Financial services
• Manufacturing
• Telecommunications
• Government
• Real Estate
• Hospitality
• Education
• Professional services
• IT
• Energy
• Food & Beverage
• Non-profit
• Logistics & Transportation
Need more guidance on your automation journey? Social27 has plenty of resources on our blog, as well as experts available to help you find the best use case for your unique business. To learn more about Social27 can help you get started on your automation journey, please visit social27.com.
