Intelligent Automation: All that You Need to Know

There is a buzz about automation these days, almost in every part of the world. Much of that buzz surrounds Robotic Process Automation (RPA). But there is an automation technology that is much more powerful than RPA and provides much larger business benefits.

Its name is “Intelligent Automation”, a leading-edge automation technology that is fast becoming the face of ‘End-to-End Digital Transformation’.

People often find it confusing and consider it similar to RPA. Not knowing the real picture and capabilities of intelligent automation resists businesses to utilize it effectively to make the best from their digitalization endeavours. To help you out, we are presenting an in-depth study on intelligent automation where you will get the answers of all the frequently asked questions about this fascinating technology.

Intelligent Automation (IA), which is also sometimes termed as Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is a holistic automation solution to enable digital transformation. It uses different advanced technologies to run business processes in automated mode. Using an intelligent automation system, you can automate simple to complex business processes very easily to gain distinct business values. It has the power to streamline repetitive and labor-intensive business processes along with those processes where complex cognitive skills are required. Simply, you can say that Intelligent Automation technology is a new age tech buzz that is transforming the world of automation in almost every business sector.

Intelligent Automation is a powerful amalgamation of various vital things – Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Process Management (BPM), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Process Mining.

• AI helps the Intelligent Automation system to mimic human intelligence and adds cognitive capabilities in it to perform complex tasks in a hassle-free manner.
• BPM is a proven and globally accepted method to analyze, design, execute, monitor, and optimize business processes from end to end. It assists intelligent automation to make business process improvements easily.
• RPA enables intelligent automation systems to automate rule-based voluminous business processes. It proves helpful in automating back-office tasks.
• OCR assists in converting data from printed files to digital files.
• ICR assists intelligent automation systems to recognize handwriting, fonts, styles of writing as well.
• ML provides the ability to learn.
• NLP helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language.
• Process Mining helps intelligent process automation systems to analyze and track business processes. It is a data-driven approach to identify trends, details, and patterns of how business processes work.

Combine the capabilities of all such things and you will have an all-powerful automation solution i.e. ‘Intelligent Automation System’.

It is worth mentioning that both these automation technologies are hugely popular but have several key differences as well.

• Intelligent Automation can learn from past actions, RPA cannot.
• Intelligent Automation can mimic human intelligence but RPA can mimic only human actions (mostly rule-based).
• Intelligent Automation can handle structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. RPA works only with structured data.
• The scope of automation is much broader through intelligent automation as compared to RPA.

Intelligent automation (IA) gives you the power to create both attended and unattended bots very easily. You can automate all simple to complex business processes using intelligent automation of any size, complexity, and volume.

Attended Bots: Task where human intervention is required.

Unattended Bots: A complete autonomous system that executes business processes automatically without the need of humans.

Moreover, intelligent automation offers faster, efficient, reliable, and more result-driven outputs as compared to RPA. It is considered as more productive and cost-effective than implementing RPA alone.

• Reduces operating costs.
• Improves productivity.
• Reduces chances of errors thus enhances accuracy and reliability.
• Helps in creating good quality products/services.
• Saves employees time and lets them focus on more important tasks. Proves beneficial in boosting their productivity and morale.
• Enables 24/7/365 customer service with broader functionalities. It helps in improving customer satisfaction.
• Gives you better business process visibility at a granular level. Proves helpful in refining business processes.
• Great for fraud detection, data security, and assets monitoring.
• Fuels innovation at the workplace.
• You can manage all compliances very easily without a miss. That too in a very timely manner.
• Makes products reach the market faster. Boosts project turnaround time.
• Gives you better financial returns. Proves helpful in boosting revenue and profits.

Overall if you carefully look, study, and analyze then you will find that the benefits of intelligent automation are far bigger in magnitude than implementing RPA.

The simplest way to understand the applications of Intelligent Automation is to understand where we can use it in the real world to embrace its immense benefits.

You can use intelligent automation in any industry or for business of any size, and revenue. Based on industries, various of its applications are quite different. So let us quickly help you go through some key applications of a few key industries. 

1. Finance & Accounting

• Indexing incoming communications
• Data entry and auto-filling forms
• Expense management
• Accounts payable processes and procure to pay
• Intercompany reconciliations (ICR)
• Gathering data for tax liability, creating tax basis, updating tax return workbooks, submitting reports to tax authorities
• General ledger updates
• Financial reporting, planning, and forecasting

2. Insurance Industry 

• Claims registration & processing
• Underwriting
• Policy cancellation
• Sales & distribution
• Query resolution
• Calculating risk
• Data labelling
• Handling information-intensive claims
• Pre-filling lengthy online application forms

3. Supply Chain & Logistics

• Automating procurement & inventory management for a competitive edge
• Route routing to save time, money, and fuel
• Automated reporting and feedback to drivers and freight management parties
• Order processing
• Shipment tracking
• Invoice processing and credit collection
• Enhance customer responsiveness with automated order/inventory tracking

4. Healthcare 

• Simplify patient appointment scheduling
• Billing
• Discharge instructions
• Streamlining claims management
• Surgical treatment for better precision and less-invasive medical approach
• Preserving the confidentiality of patient data using robust data protection and access control mechanisms
• Creating better health plans with deep data analysis

5. Automobile

• Predictive maintenance of production plant
• Freight management
• Improves production pace by automating several functionalities in the manufacturing processes
• Real-time process monitoring and analysis
• Managing regulatory compliances
• Inventory management

A good intelligent automation strategy is a must to meet desired business goals without any hassle. Here are the steps to make a successful one.

• Identify automation opportunities: Check for business processes that consume very much time and effort. Select those processes first that are mission-critical and have a great impact on your business.
• Validating the processes for automation: Check the ROI on each process. Also, analyze how much IT infrastructural changes will be required to execute each business process. Filter those that give more positive outcomes with minimum changes to the system.
• Involve all stakeholders and communicate about automation projects. Take feedback and win their trust for a successful automation implementation without resistance.
• Create an automation model.
• Develop an automation plan.
• Test automated bots in a virtual environment. Check whether all the functions are running as expected and meeting desired quality standards. Document all the shortcomings and send updates to the development team.
• Train your resources for a post automation work environment.
• Deploy updated automation system.
• Run business processes in an automated mode. Give proper support to the team with constant monitoring and technical support.

We hope you now have a much better understanding about intelligent automation and must have cleared several of your doubts. If still you are left with any query or want to know how it can prove transformative for your business, contact us now. We, at Vraimatic, have known expertise in intelligent automation. Our automation experts can help you roll out a customized automation solution in a very cost-effective manner.

Website: vraimatic.ai   

Phone: 1-855-203-8196

Email: info@vraimatic.ai

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