AI and Automation: A Critical Pair for the New System of Work
What good is enterprise process automation to an organization without AI?
Alternatively, what wins can an organization achieve and maintain with AI sans process automation?
While companies can experience a solid boost to employee productivity with one or the other, they will need the power of generative AI to reap long-term benefits of process automation—a combination of technologies dubbed “intelligent automation.” It’s how things will get done in companies moving forward.
AI has been at the forefront of business leaders’ minds and strategies for some time.
Consider the results of the 2022 McKinsey Global Survey on AI, which found that AI adoption doubled over the past five years. Now, relatively recent innovations in generative AI have boosted organizational interest in the technology and the benefits it offers, as found by a Gartner poll.
In fact, according to our 2023 survey of 1,000 business leaders, more than three in five organizations (63%) have already deployed AI and machine learning, while two in five (40%) have deployed generative AI. The survey also found that 88% of respondents see AI, machine learning, and generative AI as key technologies to enable successful process automation. Their investments are following suit, with 72% reporting that their organization will invest in intelligent automation in the next 12 months, and the average company spending $5.6 million on intelligent automation in 2023—a 17% increase over 2022 spending.
Why are AI and process automation critical for organizations to deploy in complement? It helps to think of AI as the “brain” and automation as the “hands” of the process. With AI alone—even generative AI—only so much can be accomplished. A human employee can prompt AI to analyze data or create content, but that’s where the activity ends, leaving the employee to take any required next steps. Intelligent automation creates the opportunity to free up more of that employee’s time for value-adding work, and can handle processes end to end.
For instance, using AI, an enterprise can analyze its organizational data to identify processes that are ripe for intelligent automation. Based on the information gleaned, the team can then establish virtual assistants—the top use case for intelligent automation, cited by 68% of business leaders—to help automate those identified processes.
Additionally, intelligent automation forms a comprehensive loop of scalable activity, with the “brain” of AI continuing to inform and enhance the activities that the “hands” of process automation execute. It’s also worth noting that 82% of the leaders we surveyed say their organization supports citizen development, putting the power of this technology directly into the hands of employees, no specialists needed.
An organization’s success with intelligent automation is dependent on two essential things, based on the findings of our annual survey.
First, the vast majority of business leaders (84%) agree that intelligent automation initiatives must be developed with business objectives in mind.
Second, an equal percentage (84%) say that a complete and connected automation platform is required to drive success at scale. When done right, intelligent automation can help organizations check both of these boxes, offering a critical pair of technologies that can enable companies to achieve even greater productivity in the new system of work than if they adopted one alone.
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