What is Intelligent Automation?

Learn how intelligent automation can automate actions by leveraging the combination of artificial intelligence and automation. Here’s a detailed explanation with an example.

What is Intelligent Automation?

Intelligent automation (IA) encompasses cognitive technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing with RPA to mimic human intelligence. Doing so eliminates the need for human intervention in a business process, leading to more accurate results. Today, companies use Intelligent Automation to speed up their journey and infuse intelligence into enterprise business processes.

According to research from Intelligent Automation Network, a key factor underscoring the adoption of IA is the dramatic surge in the implementation of automation centers of excellence (COEs), as evidenced by the numbers. The 2023 Intelligent Automation Spend & Trends Report revealed that in 2021, only 54% of respondents had implemented an automation CoE, and 72% said they already had one in place in 2022.

Organizations are now getting serious about business process automation and building out the organizational infrastructure to meet their business imperatives and achieve broader transformation agendas.

Learn More: What Is Business Process Automation?

Challenges with Intelligent Process Automation

But even though IA use cases are growing across tasks such as document validation, demand forecasting, and automating spreadsheet entry, challenges persist. Deloitte’s 2022 Global Intelligent Automation survey spotlights three significant challenges.

• Fragmented processes: Several companies have fragmented processes with slow systems, poorly designed user interfaces, or too much mundane, repetitive work that should be automated. Sometimes there needs to be more visibility into how these processes work. As a solution, companies use process and task mining before implementing IA to get an end-to-end picture of the business process and how it works.
• Lack of IT readiness:  Advancements in enabling intelligent automation technology such as AI, process discovery, and low code make it achievable; the lack of IT readiness prevents organizations from unlocking the benefit of IA.
• Cost of implementation: There’s also an additional cost of implementation. One way to mitigate this challenge is by employing dashboards that clearly and concisely quantify the benefits of intelligent automation—enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions and justify the expenses associated with the implementation.

Learn More: What is Process Automation?

Intelligent Automation Examples

Here are a few examples of intelligent automation in different business functions:

• Intelligent automation in HR: Bots powered by AI can take over high-volume and repetitive processes like scanning entry-level resumes, conducting orientation sessions, and enabling HR to focus on strategic analysis and relationship building.
• Intelligent automation in Logistics: Supply chains use IA to store and transport products safely and on time. Intelligent automation provides even greater benefits when combined with another data source, like IoT, with sensors embedded in vehicles, shipments, and warehouses.

Learn More: What is Intelligent Process Automation (IPA)?

Maximizing the Benefit of Intelligent Automation

Today, over 60% of the teams’ workday is spent on unstructured interactions in documents, emails, communications, custom applications, and websites – outside of ERP, CRM, and other systems of record. This massive unstructured and undocumented interaction dataset between people and software is untapped and contains a goldmine of insights that could give a significant competitive edge to enterprises.

Traditional task solutions used for identifying and building automation pipelines have significant privacy, accuracy, and scalability issues and fail to capture work done outside the systems of record, such as ERPs and CRMs.

Through Soroco Scout^TM, powered by the world’s first work graph platform, organizations can unlock this data source to discover processes where inefficiencies occur and are prime candidates for intelligent process automation.

Request a demo of Soroco Scout^TM today!