What is Intelligent Automation?

Process discovery is a cornerstone of Intelligent Automation solutions that allows organizations to uncover, comprehend, and analyze existing processes. By identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks, organizations can improve operations, reduce costs, and maximize efficiency. Process discovery accelerates automation initiatives by providing the intelligence needed for informed decision-making and effective streamlining of processes. When fully integrated within an Intelligent Automation solution, process discovery provides the ability to pinpoint areas ripe for optimization and ensures rapid and precise process transparency, feeding directly into autopilot-led automation creation.

RPA capabilities play a central role in Intelligent Automation solutions. RPA is instrumental in automating repetitive digital tasks, facilitating efficiency, precision, and resilience in business processes. It mimics human actions across systems, allowing teams to offload repetitive tasks. These capabilities become even more valuable when combined with AI and APIs, empowering both professional and citizen developers to build end-to-end automations.

Integration capabilities are the driving force behind a comprehensive Intelligent Automation solution, allowing smooth interoperability, scalability, and data exchange, and supporting the need for secure and compliant operations. Acting as the bridge between systems and applications, integrations facilitate seamless data exchange and connectivity, which is critical for end-to-end process automation within an organization's ecosystem. Like the sturdy supports scaling up a cloud infrastructure, integration capacities ensure automation workflows can interact comprehensively with a multitude of business applications, APIs, and databases, thus catalyzing real-time data flows and actions. Look for Intelligent Automation platforms that offer pre-existing connectors and packages that enable instant connection with an array of business applications and systems, accelerating the pace of automation development and deployment. By allowing the reuse of automation assets enterprise-wide, integrations reduce duplication efforts while driving consistency.

IDP allows organizations to accurately and efficiently process documents at scale. It can extract, classify, validate, and incorporate data from various document types directly into automated workflows. Enterprise-grade IDP can lead to lower cost of ownership by reducing the time required to configure document extraction projects. With pre-built document models and the integration of cutting-edge AI technologies directly into the flow of work, IDP not only plays a pivotal role in end-to-end automations, it also enhances the overall efficiency and efficacy of Intelligent Automation.

Central to Intelligent Automation, generative AI empowers organizations to automate intricate tasks necessitating a high degree of human-like decision-making and ingenuity. Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) extend the capabilities of Intelligent Automation and, critically, Intelligent Automation platforms enable the secure, responsible use of generative AI by providing governance and guardrails. With generative AI seamlessly integrated within an Intelligent Automation solution, employees can use natural language to request automations across systems, generate personalized content, and summarize dense documents, without leaving their preferred application. Generative AI also serves to unlock more document data and accelerate automation development.

Scaling your operations is crucial for adapting to growth and evolving business needs. Intelligent Automation is designed to expand in response to an increase in process volume and a growing number of users. This flexibility allows businesses to efficiently manage a high volume of tasks without sacrificing performance. Effective orchestration is vital for overseeing multiple automations concurrently, an essential capability for large enterprises with numerous processes. Leveraging cloud-based solutions enhances this flexibility and scalability. By utilizing a cloud-native architecture, businesses can reduce costs related to infrastructure, maintenance, security, and compliance. The cloud model supports automatic scaling to meet demand and continuous updates, and includes high availability and disaster recovery options. In addition, an extensible cloud-native SaaS platform makes it straightforward to extend capabilities across departments and teams, accommodating everyone from citizen developers to digital assistants.

A comprehensive Intelligent Automation solution will adhere to a multilayered security framework that includes implementing robust cloud security practices, identity and access management (IAM) protocols, data encryption techniques, and rigorous logging and monitoring systems. It's vital for Intelligent Automation platforms to meet regulatory compliance standards relevant to different industries. Look for platforms that align with GDPR for data protection, employ encryption for sensitive information, and offer secure cloud storage options. Adherence to key certifications like ISO 27001, SOC 1 & 2 Type 2, and HITRUST underlines a platform's commitment to security and compliance. Additionally, built-in audit trails and transparent reporting mechanisms ensure accountability and compliance across all automation activities, while governance features enable precise control over who accesses and modifies automation setups.

Getting started

Automation tools have come a long way in a short time. The first big development was document processing. Businesses could accelerate document creation and remove paper processes by automatically capturing, extracting, and processing data from different document types.

Getting things done

Robotic process automation (RPA) then added digital workers to the toolkit. RPA excelled at repetitive and manual tasks, such as billing, coding invoices, and sending reminders. It could be used to mimic human inputs in real time and perform faster and more accurately than human counterparts.

Getting smart

Intelligent Automation took this to the next level by incorporating cognitive technologies. With machine learning and computer vision, businesses could automate the previously impossible, such as unstructured data. “Hyperautomation” emerged too—essentially, the ability to automate the automation.

Making change

Digital transformation is, of course, a journey. So, what’s next? According to McKinsey, generative AI will be a key driver of innovation and growth. By combining automation with generative AI, businesses could do even more to increase productivity. Think complaint resolution, sentiment analysis, invoice processing, and more.

Discover

You can’t automate what you don’t understand. Quickly and securely discover the fastest path to process optimization and business ROI with Process Discovery. Get fast, accurate, and secure visibility on how your business operates and which processes can be automated to kickstart your Intelligent Automation journey.

Automate

With a detailed blueprint of business processes in hand and prioritization out of the way, it's time to automate. Start with small tasks, or use generative AI to create ready-to-launch, end-to-end automations in no time. Intelligent Automation will help you align business units, teams, workers, and processes to support overall goals and strategies.

Scale

Once the initial benefits have been realized, it’s time to scale your Intelligent Automation program. Flexible, cloud-native automation accelerates transformation, and CoE Manager helps teams govern, track, and measure automation program performance. Analytics and insights also help identify new value generators and empower citizen developers to massively expand automations for more impact.

Engage

Intelligent Automation helps bridge technology islands, unlock speed and agility, and connect people, processes, and data. How? By integrating disparate tools, applications, and systems. Real-time access to data and insights makes it easier for teams to collaborate, ultimately improving operational speed and agility and unlocking innovation.