VIEWPOINT
WHY INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION IS IMPORTANT
processes breakdown when scripts fail and these are affected by infrastructure, software, data, and so on.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND POST-PANDEMIC CHALLENGES ARE MOVING AUTOMATION INTO THE CORE OF THE ENTERPRISE, PAVING THE ARRIVAL OF INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION AND HIGHLIGHTING ENDLESS TECHNOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES, DETAILS VISHAL MANCHANDA, REGIONAL MANAGER, PROVEN CONSULT.
Culture Intelligent automation is an enterprisewide solution and also need to be managed by change management, use cases, security practices. While intelligent automation is an initiative, building an automation culture is important in the longer term. Since automation impacts people, they can either resist or become a strength.
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raditional software development builds code to capture best practices and embodies them into the back office of enterprise applications. Robotic process automation captures the keystrokes of the workforce on the front end of applications, as they work and deliver, and in that sense automates them into software robots or bots. As building a software robot using RPA tools is relatively quick, adoption of RPA and delivering the first set of robots for any organisation has been relatively easy. RPA as a technology is robust enough to handle complex process automations and scaleup quickly, but it is when we need to solve complex problems that requires mimicking human brain is where we hit a roadblock with RPA. Arrival of intelligent automation Till now, RPA has unleashed a digital workforce of software robots that has worked and delivered on the periphery of much wider enterprise initiatives such as digital transformation. But in order to move forward, RPA will now need much deeper and better integration with subjects such as machine learning and computer vision. This is leading to an evolved form of automation, with RPA at its core, termed as intelligent automation. The rapid post pandemic acceleration of digital transformation initiatives has also highlighted the need to bring intelligent automation into the folds of the enterprise-wide transformation, versus its previous peripheral and sideline 12
CXO INSIGHT ME
MAY 2021
approach. The post pandemic pressure on organisational performance and efficiency has meant that automation is now increasingly moving into the core of post pandemic digital transformation. Learning points Some of the learning points from the usage of intelligent automation: Process According to Forester in its report Ten Golden Rules for RPA Success, May 2020, more than half of all global RPA programs use less than 10 bots. According to Forester, less than 19% of RPA installations have reached an advanced stage of maturity. Some of the setbacks that have stalled programs include fragmented initiatives, multiple vendors and incomplete governance. Technology Using RPA, business users can introduce automation across workflows and automations. But often this includes scripting and the more complex the process the more scripting that is required. Bots or automated
Next level of automation For any type of automation, it may be necessary to look at the entire process to plan for straight through automation. Process mining can help to streamline and automate the process faster. While digital work assistants can be used for simple processes, for more complex processes it may be required to use task analytics, design thinking, journey visioning. This helps to map user behavior, motivations, dependencies. Once completed, the organisation can have a much better view of short- and long-term automation opportunities. Future success As an organisation blends humans, bots and machine learning into processes, the benefits and gains and further opportunities will keep growing, However, in order to be successful, it is also important to build a culture that recognises and prioritises automation. For example, intelligent automation could automate that uses machine language to handle exceptions needs humans to train the algorithms, validate results, and manage process exceptions. Automating processes gives an organisation to rethink the legacy of its processes and refocus on customers and employees. Prioritising automation does not mean that employees and humans are not centerpiece for the organisation. There are huge benefits that humans can gain by skillfully blending automation into the digital enterprises and training data and blending machine learning into processes.
