What is Intelligent Automation (IA)?

No matter what industry firms operate in, they always look for opportunities to become as lean and efficient as possible. The ability to create more from less is the key to innovation, flexibility, scalability, and forming more value from the same goods and services. Companies that want to cut costs, increase productivity, and accelerate development have long used automation. If they had previously focused on industrial automation, today, the emphasis has shifted to favoring intelligent automation (IA). This blog post will discuss what IA is and how it positively impacts your business.

Exploring Intelligent Automation

Intelligent automation is a mix of artificial intelligence and automation, including cognitive automation, machine learning (ML), business process automation (BPA), and robotic process automation (RPA). IA, sometimes called “hyper-automation,” simplifies many business procedures. Such a simplification allows users to concentrate on the purposes and results rather than the process that must be adopted to solve such problems.

Intelligent systems, including online assistants and chatbots, provide businesses access to critical data that helps raise automation efficiency and ensure rapid response to client requests. Advanced intelligent automation tools like optical character recognition (OCR) allow paper-heavy areas, including the medical and financial fields, to automate document analysis and make more efficient decisions.

We are confident that we have what it takes to help you get your platform from the idea throughout design and development phases, all the way to successful deployment in a production environment!

The Main Elements of IA

Each firm should have a personal AI automation plan, where the priority of elements is determined, taking into account the unique characteristics of the business. Let’s look at the main aspects forming a holistic approach to IA.

Artificial intelligence

Organizations want to make informed solutions based on considerable amounts of data in less time and with maximum accuracy. Artificial intelligence (AI), the brain of any smart automation, allows us to find perfect decisions.

In this field, AI performs cognitive objectives, including optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and intelligent character recognition (ICR).

AI is essential to scaling and getting the most out of IA in business. By combining complex mechanics and machine learning, businesses successfully work with structured and unstructured datasets on a previously unimaginable scale.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

If AI is the system’s brain, then RPA is its body. Unlike AI, which focuses on cognitive activity, RPA helps automate rule-based routine processes. At a low level, RPA systems may simulate human relationships.

Typically, RPA acts as bots that successfully handle back-office tasks. Think about large-scale, labor-intensive activities that do not require critical thinking, including data gathering, reporting, order processing, etc.

To understand the benefits of RPA, consider some statistics: up to 50% of companies spend about $25 on each payment document processed manually. In addition, sales department employees spend up to 64% of their working time on jobs that do not generate profit.

Business Process Management (BPM)

Leading firms today strive to save capital, time, and effort, so they will implement Lean Programming standards. They involve an in-depth re-examination of all business procedures and tasks and how and when people participate.

This data mining allows you to evaluate the company’s performance and the positive and negative factors that affect performance. Based on the study’s outcomes, any redundancy and inefficiency are eliminated in processes, and AI or RPA replaces the unnecessary participation of live agents. The main goal of business process management (BPM) is to decrease the time a firm spends on non-value-added activities and raise the efficiency and precision of vital procedures.

What is Intelligent Automation (IA)?

Primary Profits of Intelligent Automation

IA’s advanced technique provides many revolutionary profits. Let’s take a look at how IA systems can make your life simpler:

Saving technicians’ working hours and effort: standard automation may turn a seven-hour manual task into a ten-minute objective. What about IA, which collects data, learns from it, and makes complex decisions? It will speed up procedures exponentially, so your staff may focus on more critical tasks.
Reduced chance of errors: intelligent systems can be more accurate than humans when programmed clearly. Unlike automated instruments, live agents do not follow structured algorithms, and AI-backed solutions allow IA to work with large volumes of data to make informed decisions.
Finding opportunities: IA can effectively create opportunities for your company. Use AI-ruled solutions, e.g., ChatGPT, to generate new ideas and synchronize advanced AI structures with existing workflows.
Clear regulatory compliance: IA helps you comply with regulations and laws across various industrial sectors. By automating critical tasks, including record keeping and document management, you ensure that your company’s operations comply with government and industry guidelines.

IA will be a quick procedure if you provide enough computing power. Intelligent systems may scan your software, look for potential threats, and even fix such vulnerabilities faster and more efficiently than if people did it.

Areas of Application of Intelligent Automation

Many modern firms are already actively utilizing the potential of intelligent automation. And, as with standard automation, IA can be used in almost any field:

Business procedures: workflow automation reduces the need for manual labor and streamlines existing work procedures. It increases the efficiency of activities related to data entry, financial registrations, and interaction with suppliers. You may scale your operations without hiring new employees, making your business more efficient.
Customer interaction: IA promotes positive customer experience in various areas, including trade, medicine, education, sales, finance, automotive, etc. Such tools can fill out appointment forms, send reminders, streamline scheduling, and provide real-time updates.
Finance and banking: IA helps financial institutions automate various activities, including loan origination, payment processing, and fraud detection. By reshaping business processes that contain unstructured data, IA simplifies complex processes so employees can concentrate on strategic goals and risk reduction.
Automotive: IA helps companies in the automotive sector more effectively forecast and adjust manufacturing to respond to changing market conditions. They may optimize work procedures to raise efficiency and decrease mistakes in production. The introduction of robots minimizes the need for manual labor and simplifies the detection of defects, offering clients optimal quality at minimal cost. The German car engine manufacturer Volkswagen utilizes robots to work on the physically challenging engine assembly stage. It reduces the number of injuries among personnel, speeds up production, increases accuracy, and reduces physical stress for specialists.
Retail: IA can be used in commerce to improve inventory management, customer interactions, and marketing strategies. Retailers may create personalized offers by studying customer behavior and past purchases, increasing customer loyalty.

IA’s ability to simplify and automate different tasks in different areas demonstrates its potential to transform how businesses operate. By automating routine activities and providing valuable data, organizations may increase their efficiency and focus on other strategic tasks to thrive.

The Main Difficulties with Intelligent Automation

Intelligent process automation poses some challenges due to the complexity of the system and its constant evolution. Additionally, AI is a relatively new component of enterprise software. Let’s look at the main difficulties that users encounter when implementing IA:

Integration difficulties: IA typically requires synchronization with existing software and procedures, which can be sophisticated and time-consuming. It may include synchronizing IA instruments with legacy applications, handling various vendors, and creating a seamless data flow between systems.
Data quality issues: the effectiveness of IA largely depends on the quality of the datasets, and firms may interact with incomplete or inaccurate information, as well as data security troubles. Poor data quality can make it challenging to realize the entire potential of IA systems.
Talent shortages: you may face a shortage of skilled talent who may build, deploy, and support IA, limiting the scalability of your initiatives.

Remember that calculating the ROI of IA can often be difficult, especially regarding benefits such as increased productivity or improved user experience. You must set clear parameters for IA solutions, evaluate them regularly, and communicate progress.

Final Words

Maintaining a leading position in a rapidly evolving world requires constant innovation and automated technologies. Implementing AI-backed systems into your automated procedures creates limitless potential for an active digital workforce that can mimic human knowledge and judgment.

You may speed up business procedures, decrease mistakes, and eliminate monotonous objectives. Explore the full potential of advanced workplace automation tools to thrive in a competitive environment.

If you want to get the most out of intelligence automation, we recommend contacting GlobalCloudTeam. Based on best industry practices, our experts will offer advanced software and technical solutions, considering your business’s challenges and needs!