Whether we like it or not, business process management has moved up the ranks and has become an indispensable tool that every CEO wants to utilize. It isn’t anything new and it has proven its utility, especially during the pandemic. By fully automating a set of small tasks, as part of an entire end-to-end process, businesses benefit by increasing efficiencies and cost-savings on a company level. BPM packs up a heavy punch on its own. Now, imagine BPM combined with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Processed Automation). The result: a monstrous automation supercharger called Intelligent Automation. In this article, we’ll try to get a better understanding of what IA is, how it applies to business, and what benefits it brings, and of course some real-world examples to better illustrate the capabilities of this modern solution. As always grab your coffee, tea, or whatever drink you prefer, and let’s get down to business.

What is Intelligent Automation?

Intelligent Automation, sometimes also referred to as cognitive automation or hyper-automation is the combined use of business process management (BPM), and robotics process automation (RPA), to form a solution that enhances business operations by simplifying processes, freeing up resources and improving overall operational efficiencies. Intelligent automation has numerous applications. For example, IA can be used in the insurance sector to calculate payments, address compliance needs, make predictions, and others.

We can separate IA into its three core components — AI, BPM, and RPA — in order to try and explain it better.

Artificial Intelligence – This is how IA basically makes decisions. AI is probably the most important component of intelligent automation. Its role is to analyze structured and unstructured data, by utilizing machine learning and algorithms, so that businesses can develop a substantial knowledge base and formulate predictions based on that data.

Business Process Management – We already mentioned this a couple of times. BPM automates workflows, not single trivial tasks, and helps businesses across various industries to streamline processes, providing agility and consistency.

Robotic Process Management – This basically acts as the brute force of IA. RPA uses software robots to handle various tasks such as extracting data and filling out forms.

These three components combine to form the solution that we call IA, which simplifies and streamlines processes and ultimately improves customer experience.

Benefits of Intelligent Automation

By supercharging automation using IA there are a plethora of benefits. We mentioned two in the heading of the article: cost saving and process efficiency. Others that are worthy of mentioning include increased staff productivity and satisfaction, improved regulatory compliance, and enhanced customer experience.

Reduced costs – by default automating processes saves resources because it reduces the amount of time needed to complete tasks. If a person does a task manually not only it takes more time, but there’s also the risk of making mistakes, and fixing those mistakes also costs resources.

Process efficiency – AI’s supercharged automation ensures consistency and provides a high quality of processes. Intelligent automation not only measures and monitors process execution but also proposes ideas to improve it.

Increased staff satisfaction and productivity – By properly automating business processes you will allow employees to focus on other tasks, which are more meaningful and important to them and to the business. Also, the time saved by automating tasks can be utilized by employees to learn, develop and improve new skills.

Improved regulatory compliance – Most companies operate under strict government and industry-specific regulations and laws. With intelligent automation, businesses can ensure those rules are met every time, with little to no room for errors.

Improved customer experience – Customers want immediate and accurate solutions to a problem they might run into. Chatbots are a perfect example of how IA can boost customer experience – they are available 24/7, they respond fast, and can solve multiple cases at once accurately.

Application of Intelligent Automation

Due to IA’s resourcefulness and error-free reassurance, it can be applied in various sectors and in different business areas. Here are a few examples of how intelligent automation can affect a couple of industries.

Healthcare

Bots with conversational AI capabilities can help patients schedule their appointments with a specific physician by interacting with them and figuring out their health problems. They can also help with reducing no-shows by sending reminders and providing a simple way to reschedule or cancel appointments.

Financial services & banking

By utilizing intelligent automation, banks can speed up know-your-customer (KYC) processing times, reduce error rates, and improve regulatory compliance. Also, by using AI-powered automation financial institutions can reduce the manual paperwork during loan application processing.

Retail

By leveraging IA retailers can better manage stockouts and waste. Intelligent bots can use AI/ML models and historical sales data to estimate the optimum inventory levels for different products, in different places and at times.

Manufacturing

Intelligent bots can be connected to machinery by sensors, thus allowing manufacturers to keep track of the health of their equipment in real-time, to help predict machine failures, and set maintenance schedules.

Insurance

Claims processing is a labor-intensive process, and making this process as efficient as possible is important. AI-powered automation can accelerate document processing which can help increase profitability and customer retention: 87% of customers say effective claims processing influences their decision to choose an insurer.

Closing lines

Оrganizations must continue to innovate and adopt various technologies in order to keep an edge and stay competitive in their respective sectors. Intelligent automation is one of those technologies that can truly transform the way businesses operate and deliver. The main benefits are faster operations, cheaper costs, lower risk of mistakes, and appeasing people from trivial day-to-day tasks. IA will undoubtedly change the future of how businesses will operate, and those that don’t implement it will find it extremely difficult to remain relevant.