Intelligent Automation (IA) is one of the most trending technology everyone is talking about these days. Don’t panic, we are not trying to put you through the poisonous spell of another industry jargon. To put it in simple terms; Intelligent automation is the perfect integration of artificial intelligence (AI), Digital Process Automation (DPA), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Business Process Automation (BPA).
IA is certainly one of the most marvelous technologies delivering endless benefits starting with cost savings, improved efficiency, and enhanced productivity. Apart from these business-related benefits, it also focuses on maintaining work-life balance and job satisfaction. Employing automation in your business projects might come with a lot of paybacks, but that’s incomparable to the success and results that it grants. Gartner recently reported that as high as 50% of RPA deployments initially fail after an initial success. In a similar finding by Forbes, 54% of automation failures are due to poor management, where technical problems cause only 3% of failures. This implies that failures in automation projects (~43%) are major because of the results of people and process repositories that grow rapidly due to separated tools and technologies that businesses implement.
That’s why you need a very experienced and expert automation partner to prevent your automation journey from being a tedious and complex process instead of the road to progress.
Now when you are quite acquainted with the fact that how great Intelligent Automation can be, then it’s time to get into the steps by which you can make the best use of it.
Get everyone onboard
Every automation project requires buy-in from your leadership. Apart from this, before committing to an automation project, make sure your organizational culture and people are also aligned to your automation vision. But best of the results
cannot be achieved until and unless major changes are not implemented so as to result in the effective use of automation.
Try implementing the people-first approach
Frontline users play a major role when it comes to utilizing the technology of Intelligent automation and hence their ideas must be prioritized. Before you actually start implementing, identify functional leads and champions/influencers right at the beginning of the project.
Engage your operations team with the service provider for complete clarity on their roles and responsibilities of both the stakeholders and how they can contribute and expect from each other.
Set clear goals and objectives
The pace of your IA journey will mostly be determined by your goal and objectives set at the outset. If you have a clear shared vision in place and with the support of the right automation partner, the journey ahead will be a smooth ride.
Define phase-wise approach for easy implementation and success
For a glitch-free execution, it is advised to implement your IA project phase-wise. Let’s see how you can achieve this.
Stage 1: Start with attended RPA
It is advised to start with automating tasks/processes that are part of a larger process. Such implementation of RPA introduces the concept of attended automation. This is an advanced version of RPA wherein bots collaborate with humans in order to enhance productivity and improve efficiency.
Attended automation, brings in a more sophisticated user experience. Attended bots automate all the monotonous tasks of a pre-existing workflow within the supervision and upper hands of humans. Besides they are pretty simple to implement.
Stage 2: Business Process Automation
After establishing your RPA solution from stage 1, the next step is moving to fully automated business processes in the intelligent automation journey. End-to-end automation of the business processes involves and calls for the
need for multiple bots. When such bots are utilized in place, touchless and optimized workflows are achieved wherein all the business processes are simplified and aligned perfectly.
Overall, the goal is to democratize automation and familiarize the business with the potential of IA as full-time end-to-end process execution support
Stage 3: Adding AI
Unlike traditional RPA, Intelligent automation is an advanced version that is capable of performing complex work by making use of the application of intelligence and past learning, which is typically out of reach, to get you further along the route to accomplishing business goals faster. Intelligent automation is the perfect blend of RPA and AI to digitize and structure data, process information, and enable logical decision-making to drive business outcomes.
Once we have implemented attended RPA and have automated most of the business processes end to end by collaborating with multiple bots, optimum results are certain. Once you have advanced to Stage 2, then there is no looking back and your business is all set on the path to success.
Final Thoughts …
To automate or not to automate is not a question anymore. Businesses will have to assimilate IA into their growth strategy for their survival and competitive advantage.
Automation has proved to be the best technology for optimizing business processes and thus working upon the betterment of the overall working culture. Automation lets you enjoy the real-time efficiency gains while sparing enough tie for your workforce to focus on the core tasks and learning. All of this concludes that Intelligent automation is going to be the future of automation evolution.