In an increasingly digital-first world, adopting Intelligent Process Automation has become a standard norm to stay ahead in the competition.
Automation powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies unearths hidden opportunities in existing business processes. It automates non-deterministic tasks and allows enterprises to fully leverage existing human resources, thereby cutting operational costs and increasing year-to-year ROI.
According to experts, 31% of businesses have fully automated at least one function in 2020. Another report shows that 62% of organizations have up to 25% of business intelligence automation models in place. Unfortunately, a complete business process transition is seen in just 2% of organizations surveyed.
The statistics present a promising picture reflecting that Intelligent Process Automation is on the rise and is gradually spreading its wings across industries. And why shouldn’t it?
With the recent arrival of intelligent RPA, corporate leaders envision the growth trajectory to escalate even further. RPA or Robotic Process Automation is fundamentally a rule-based deterministic automation process and benefits businesses in many ways. Let’s explore further.
What is Intelligent Process Automation?
Intelligent Process Automation combines Artificial Intelligence, RPA, and other advanced technologies to produce automation capabilities that can elevate overall business value. Intelligent Process Automation can give companies a competitive advantage when configured and managed correctly.
For example, many companies employ IPA systems that detect, analyze, and process voluminous quantities of unstructured customer interactions. The resulting data set collections are then integrated with conventionally structured systems involving predictive analytics technologies.
That being said, intelligent process automation’s greatest contribution lies elsewhere – amplifying human workforce capabilities to reach their full potential.
How does Intelligent Automation Amplify Human Capabilities?
There’s a biased notion about Artificial Intelligence. Many believe this technology will replace humans entirely in the coming days.
However, humans and technology can work in sync to deliver greater value than individually. This concept can be termed collaborative intelligence.
Intelligent Process Automation Objectives
The primary objective of Intelligent Process Automation is to provide a company’s human workforce with additional knowledge, support, and insights, not replace them. This is acquired through systems integration and automation via bots.
IPA software can:
- Handle repetitive, manual tasks with minimal human intervention
- Allow employees more time to attend value-added tasks requiring their talents
- Enable businesses to optimize their human workforce core potential fully
- Empowers employees to focus more where client-to-client interaction is needed
This perfect balance between Intelligent Automation and human-like bots can work like a magic potion and help enterprises achieve more significant goals faster than they would have done earlier.
However, full-scale IPA adoption is not devoid of obstacles and challenges, a few of which are discussed below.
Collaborative Intelligence Challenges & Remedies
These shortcomings, obstacles, and challenges are not absolute. Every problem has a silver lining; we need to identify that on time.
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High Expectations Result in Higher Challenges
Intelligent RPA is often referred to as the “arms and legs” of these bot workers because these applications can essentially duplicate the typical human interactions with in-house business systems, like keystrokes and mouse clicks.
Unfortunately, many tasks within the process execution environment require human intervention strictly as RPA is naturally handicapped to automate them.
Before entering into full-blown IPA adoption, business leaders need to ensure that these bots are adept in accurately mimicking human actions appropriately; if not, take actions accordingly.
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Humans have the Ability to See, not IPA Bots
Humans can see and read documents, identify images, and recognize objects. These naturally inherent capabilities are lacking in AI bots. Intelligent Process Automation aims to augment these bots with the human capability of seeing.
Courtesy recent advances in Computer Vision Technology (CVT), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) are now making these capabilities feasible for bots, as well.
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Human Ability to Sense & Learn not Inherent in Bots
The human brain analyses and processes images and information that people see, touch, smell, and feel and learn from these sensations and the resulting experiences.
Machine learning mimics these human brain functions, and Artificial Intelligence provides systems with the intrinsic ability to automatically learn and improve their engagements without dependence on explicit programming.
A base framework of Listen-Sense-Act helps the bot capture key attributes of a use case, identify patterns or trends, and then take appropriate action as necessary.
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Humans can Communicate; Bots cannot
Customer service and employee engagement processes require interactive communications with end clients. Bots are not inherently capable of communicating with end-users or addressing their myriad issues intelligently.
Courtesy of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Semantic Analysis, bots are equipped with inherent capabilities to understand language in both spoken and written form. Practical, real-world applications of these technologies include Chatbots and Virtual Agents.
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Humans Collaborate & Work unlike Bots
Humans, by nature, are collaborative beings, and it is an established practice for employees to collaborate with team members when brainstorming business case solutions.
But what does a bot do under similar situations? They collaborate as well.
Advanced Knowledge Management System (KMS) is now attempting to mimic these collaborative behaviours between different machines. It can make collaboration between bots quick, practical, and feasible.
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Empathize is a Complex Human Emotion; Absent in Bots
Today, customers expect businesses to empathize with them for more personalized service. But, empathy by itself is a complex human emotion. Often, even humans cannot demonstrate empathy, leading to customer disengagement.
How do we expect bots or automated systems to precisely practice complex emotions like humans? Surprisingly, many Sentiment Analysis applications can already detect a customer’s emotional sentiment simply by scanning their speech, text, or handwritten documents and direct a human agent to the proper set of solutions more expeditiously.
How to Adopt Intelligent Process Automation in 10 Steps
One thing that baffles organizations mostly is where Intelligent Automation might best fit within their existing operations systems. How to initiate the transition eventually delays their entry into the IPA world. Here are ten steps to IPA adoption, serving as a good starting point:
- Educate Leaders within the Organization: Leaders are responsible for onboarding their team members with this new transition. Hence, they must first understand the concept, its benefits, opportunities, and associated risks.
- Identify Tasks for Automation Adoption: Once the organization members gain enough knowledge about Intelligent Process Automation and why the company adopts it, they can easily shortlist tasks that require immediate automation attention.
- Prioritize Tasks for Automation Adoption: Every process involving human intervention can easily be considered a potential candidate for automation adoption. However, bringing major functions under the umbrella without identifying the potential challenges can lead to many bottlenecks. Hence, prioritizing tasks for IPA adoption based on value, feasibility, and realistic ROI expectations should be the third stage in the adoption process.
- Acknowledge Strengths & Limitations of the IT Team: Not every single IT team member is well-versed with the new-age technology; hence, spearheading the transition might fall beyond their capabilities. Therefore, leaders should identify the skills and expertise requisites of the team, establish a well-defined governance structure, and train or hire new members if needed.
- Seek Professional Help: There’s nothing wrong with seeking professional help when your in-house expertise is falling short of catering to enterprise-wide IPA adoption. Automation experts like EdgeVerve can help businesses set up a pilot program and integrate the change slowly and deliberately.
- Build In-House Task Force: An in-house task force is needed to integrate and clean up existing data to avoid useless or damaged information from being transferred to the new AI system.
- Start Small; Grow Big: Enterprise-wide IPA adoption in the first attempt is probably the biggest blunder a company can commit. The success formula is to start small, collect feedback, adjust, and expand gradually.
- Plan for Additional Storage: When your enterprise gradually expands its intelligently automated processes, additional storage for more data will be needed. Hence, plan aforehand to accommodate the bulk of data as and when they arise.
- Feedback: Continuous monitoring of intelligently automated processes and sharing feedback, negative or positive, should be practiced as a habit by all directly or indirectly involved with the process change. This practice will ensure long-term IPA adoption success.
- Build with Balance: One should carefully consider standard operational protocols, bandwidth requirements, storage capabilities, safety, and security. This will ensure the success of IPA adoption without damage or disruption in the existing workflow.
The Bottomline
Intelligent Process Automation can be a game-changing solution for businesses striving for excellence and unlocking the human workforce capabilities like never before. This is no more a fantasy.
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