Recession or Recovery…

…flip the dice in your favour

The issue

The British Chamber of Commerce and Bank of England are forecasting a recession for the UK economy with three consecutive quarters of contraction expected between Q2 and Q4 in 2022. Annual expectations for GDP growth also continue to decline, with 3.3% forecast for 2022, significantly below the 7.4% growth recorded in 2021. We all know what this means…

Reduced consumer spending with corresponding cutbacks and layoffs at large companies. This is the inevitable outcome… or is it? Might there be a smarter way to deal with crises? Could we shift swiftly from recession to recovery?

Innovative Solutions

Here at Clustre, we are convinced that now is the moment to invest in capturing the knowledge of experienced colleagues – leveraging this expertise to drive growth and cut costs. Moreover, we have seen compelling evidence that the fastest way to achieve this goal is to exploit Intelligent Automation (IA).

IA tools, can radically reduce the cost of doing business. They can prevent expensive mistakes from happening, improve the customer experience as well as potentially open-up new revenue streams. But let us clarify what we mean by IA and why it is so important…

To help distinguish between IA and RPA tools, we often use the human body as a metaphor. If RPA is the muscle and fingers, IA tools are the brain. The snag is those robotic fingers have run out of easy pickings. Companies already using RPA tools have probably gathered all of the low hanging fruit. Now they must reach higher to gather the next level of savings… and this is where IA comes into its own.

Case Studies

We list below three powerful case studies where IA tools have been used either to cut costs, reduce business risk or to generate new sources of revenue. In some instances they have delivered on multiple objectives:

1. Generate new sources of revenue – A Big 4 accounting firm worked to codify expertise on corporate uses of personal data, and the myriad of factors driving that use. The firm recognised that there is a significant market for data privacy consulting that can only be serviced by an IA-powered solution. It has spawned a new Centre of Excellence to govern the development of more such IA-powered products. IA is also being used for the automation of tax advisory and audit in other Big 4 firms.
2. Reduce risks – A UK wealth management and asset advisor created an IA-powered tool that automatically scores each client’s suitability for an investment approach enabling it to effortlessly reduce its risk profile and meet regulatory deadlines. The tool reduces the effort by over 50% and has given the firm a significant competitive advantage as they can now robustly demonstrate compliance to a regulator who is increasingly giving fines for non-compliance.
3. Cut costs – Accountants BDO have embedded the deep expertise of senior staff in an IA-powered tool. Each tax claim used to take 5 tedious hours to process. Now it is handled efficiently and accurately in seconds delivering better quality outcomes for clients. This has freed key people to invest their time more profitably in building relations, almost doubling their advisory pipeline. More than that, it has liberated and enriched the lives of key staff adding to staff retention during a time of market churn.

If you want to learn more about the innovative solutions touched upon in this short paper please email innovation@clustre.net