The last few years have reshaped the meaning of resilience. From the coronavirus pandemic to geopolitical tensions, supply chain fragility and cyber attacks, disruption has become the norm. Which is why Sean Botha, product manager for hyperautomation at Sybrin, says the key to resilience in 2025 and beyond is adaptability. “It’s no longer about planning for stability,” he explains. “It’s about adapting to inevitable instability and how quickly you can respond.”
The problem is that adaptability is often constrained by legacy systems. Built for a different era, these systems are expensive to maintain and have become increasingly hard to support. They also create a talent gap: developers and designers want to work with modern technologies, not outdated infrastructure, leaving organisations struggling to attract the skills they need. But big system overhauls are rarely the answer. Compared to the large transformation projects of the past, which were costly, disruptive and often failed to deliver on their promises, hyperautomation takes a more practical approach. “Hyperautomation is basic automation on steroids,” adds Botha. “Automation automates a task or step in a process, whereas hyperautomation refers to automating entire processes or even value chains.”
Building business value
Hyperautomation goes far beyond task-level automation. In banking, that might mean moving from a bot that captures ID data to a system that captures the data, runs compliance checks, validates KYC documents and performs sanction screening in one seamless flow. In insurance, it could mean a claims process that continues automatically even if an administrator is unavailable, with business rules and routing built into the system to prevent delays. “Manual processes are inherently fragile and very risk-prone,” says Botha. “You’re relying on human beings to do things in a very consistent manner but human beings are notoriously unpredictable.” Automated rules remove that single-point dependency and allow organisations to scale consistently without proportional increases in staff or cost.
Hyperautomation turns efficiency into growth. A great example is onboarding. The process is sped up, which means revenue comes in sooner. “If you’re reducing the time that it takes you to onboard a customer, that customer is going to start transacting much sooner,” explains Botha. “If you’re pulling down your onboarding time from days to a matter of minutes, that’s how much sooner you can recognise your revenue.” This same approach lets organisations take on more work without increasing staff, reduces risk by eliminating manual steps and delivers a better experience for customers. “Regardless of what industry you're in, customer experience has become important and competitive,” he adds.
Scale and reliability
The impact of hyperautomation is most visible when combined with mobile, which has become the primary channel for customers in emerging markets. “If you’re not prioritising mobile, you are signing your death sentence as an organisation – even if that death is a slow one,” says Botha. “For any customer-facing product or service, you need to be thinking about mobile because that is where customers are spending their time.” Hyperautomation provides the scale and reliability that mobile services demand, ensuring they run with the same consistency and compliance as traditional channels. Botha says this is why hyperautomation cannot be delivered as a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to work with existing financial ecosystems, supporting mobile services at scale without forcing institutions to rebuild their core systems.
This is why Sybrin’s approach to hyperautomation is modular, integrative and intentional. Instead of replacing core systems, it layers capabilities where they are needed most. “We’re starting to integrate GenAI into our app builder, and that’s sped up the development times dramatically,” says Botha. He explains that bringing GenAI into low-code allows developers and business users to assemble applications faster, with automation handling much of the routine coding and configuration. “It takes out the repetitive pieces and frees developers to focus on the areas that benefit most from deep human thinking,” he adds. By accelerating the way applications and workflows are built, GenAI strengthens the delivery of hyperautomation itself, making it quicker to scale across industries and use cases.
For Botha, hyperautomation is not about trade-offs. Efficient processes are, by design, resilient.
They adapt quickly to change, scale with demand and maintain continuity when disruption strikes. By intentionally layering automation on top of legacy systems and delivering through mobile-first channels, organisations can leapfrog outdated infrastructure and build for growth. “As a hyperautomation vendor, it’s easy to say ‘we can do everything’ because theoretically, we can,” concludes Botha. “Hyperautomation by its very nature, is custom, because every environment is different. We’d rather do what we do best (and partner where it makes sense) so our clients get the right solution for real growth and value.”
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