What is Intelligent Automation and How Does it Benefit My Business Now and into the Future?

What is the definition of Intelligent Automation?

Automation is now a familiar technical concept for enterprises, with many automating manual, repeatable tasks to achieve efficiency. The intelligent aspect is introduced by robotics, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies that can carry out human actions and act independently by making decisions, or interpreting data without direct human interference.

So, Intelligent Automation is the convergence of these ‘smart’ technologies with automated processes to elevate business process automation. EY defines Intelligent automation (IA) as “the integration of robotics with multiple components from different emerging technologies.”

What is the difference between Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is used to automate specific tasks and solve individual problems within a business process such as moving data from one system to another where no API is available. It is used mostly to remove human effort from repetitive tasks, such as data entry.

The most important difference between Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Automation is that RPA is a solution to just one part of using technology to improve the end-to-end process across a business. It’s vital to note that if treated as a silver bullet RPA will fail to meet that broader goal entirely.

Organizations focused on Intelligent Automation and the end-to-end process use intelligent Business Process Automation technologies to manage the flow of work across systems, people and devices. This often means leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to increase the efficiency of business rules and learn from data to make educated decisions in the future.

The Business Process Automation technology (a.k.a digital process automation) acts as an orchestrator for the entire process and can initiate steps to be handled by an RPA tool or intelligent document management.

What are the advantages of using Intelligent Automation?

Increase process efficiency – speed up your processes while ensuring they are completed to a high standard
Make the most of bots – rather than leaving RPA bots to complete individual tasks in isolation, integrate them with other technologies to achieve intelligent automation
Release employees from repetitive tasks – you can be confident that routine tasks are being carried out fully, effectively and error-free with intelligent technologies helping to make informed decisions
Interpret Big Data – intelligent automation can handle and interpret large amounts of data that would take humans a long time to manage
Reduce costs – automating tasks can save costs equivalent to one or many FTEs, who can use the time to carry out more value-adding tasks or be deployed elsewhere in the business
Improve governance and fraud detection – automated tasks means you can ensure that governance is being followed to the T, and intelligent systems can identify suspicious activity to detect and prevent fraud

How have businesses benefited from Intelligent Automation?

Organizations can benefit from deploying intelligent automation in their organization, particularly processes where data needs to be managed, moved from one area of the business to another, or presented to a client, such as automating customer requests. Without intelligent automation, these tasks would take significantly longer, and would be more prone to errors.

Bizagi helps businesses to automate their business processes and integrate with intelligent technologies to save time and money. Some examples include:

• In-branch customer service
• Online customer requests
• Customer onboarding
• Employee onboarding
• Insurance claims processing
• Loan origination
• Claims payments
• Smart manufacturing

One of the largest banking groups in Latin America, Bancolombia, is using Bizagi to facilitate Intelligent Automation and deliver better customer service, both digitally and in-branch, helping humans and robots to work together effectively.

One example of their achievements is the combination of Robotic Desktop Automation, coordinated by the Bizagi platform, to support its branch employees by presenting them with the correct customer information in real-time, with AI recommending the best service for that person. This has seen a 59% increase in efficiency of services time and freed up over 515,000 hours per year in-branch.

What is the future of Intelligent Automation?

We are increasingly seeing more examples of intelligent automation in our day-to-day lives. For example, new car models have safety features such as recognizing hazards or autonomous, self-driving cars.

“Ultimately, intelligent technology will give rise to new technologies and applications - many we haven’t even begun to imagine. Continual advancement will open new doors, and smart approaches to technology will help guide innovation in positive, powerful directions,” reports The Fast Company.

With platforms like Bizagi, it’s easier than ever to model processes, automate them and integrate them with intelligent, decisioning technology. So more examples of intelligent automation are appearing all the time.

Get started with Bizagi today.

Related Resources

Planning Your Path to Intelligent Process Automation
The combination of digital process automation, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence is what Bizagi, the sponsors of this whitepaper, calls “Intelligent Process Automation”. Download Now!

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Intelligent Process Automation: Unlocking True Digital Transformation
In this report, IDC’s Neil Ward-Dutton discusses key topics including why Intelligent Process Automation should sit at the heart of any digital transformation strategy – including how it supports RPA and AI initiatives. Download Now!

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