The State of Intelligent Process Automation

Author: Chinia Green, Marketing Manager

Over the last couple of years, there has been a raft of reports about Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) and the impact on the future of work published by analysts and industry publications. The predictions made in these reports can vary and can sometimes be confusing to understand. The below is a summary of the findings from the most popular reports and publications about IPA and automation from last year.

Around half of organisations surveyed in the reports covered in this article have deployed and are piloting some form of IPA (AI, RPA, Analytics, chatbots and other technologies) with only 20 – 30% of businesses not considering IPA to be a crucial part of their strategy. Interestingly, despite many analysts valuing the market at anything between $13.1 billion and $75 billion by 2023, one report suggested that the actual total company spend on automation technology was only 6% per annum. This implies that either everyone and his neighbour are using some form of automation or the market value can at times be widely over-inflated and a little misleading.

Improvements to the customer experience are cited as the top benefit of deploying IPA, although this might be largely due to the inclusion of chatbots within the definition of IPA. Anything between 35% and 86% improvement in customer satisfaction level improvements is stated in the reports as a result of deploying some form of IPA technology, delivering a direct increase in profits. Other popular benefits achieved include minimised risk of fraud, improvements to employee satisfaction and operational cost reductions. Although, most of the reports are very clear to state that the cost reduction in many cases is not as a result of cutting FTEs. In fact, organisations are more focused on improvements to culture and creating more rewarding work environments, with KPMG reporting than 30% of the organisations they surveyed were looking to retrain staff within data analytics skills or to complete new tasks to drive value and top-line growth.

Accounts Payable (AP) and Finance departments were reported to be the business where most technology investment is currently being made, with both KMPG and IDC highlighting it as a top priority for transformation in the next couple of years. Despite the focus on the AP and Finance automation projects, it was reported that projects were not being led by functional teams but rather by IT. As discussed by Celaton’s Commercial Director, Gina Gray earlier in the year in The RPA Academy webinar, IT teams are under increasing pressure to deliver projects with shrinking budgets and time scales, meaning automation projects are not always a top priority, perhaps leading to delays. A lack of IT readiness is also cited by one report as a major barrier to adoption and in some cases the failure of projects. The same report also indicated that only 6% of IPA projects are led by CoE’s (Centres of Excellence), which reflects the lack of an organisational wide approach and adoption to IPA technology.

Other challenges facing organisations when looking to implement IPA included limited vision and ambition from management, a lack of ability to build a strong use case and a shortage of skills and resources need to implement the technology. In fact, Workplace Insight reported that 75% of organisations surveyed were finding it difficult to recruit or retrain staff with the digital skills needed for automation projects. Whilst the level of skills and knowledge may improve for future generations with better educational programmes, to overcome these barriers organisations should perhaps seek technology solutions requiring less technical skill, such as Machine Learning solutions which learn through the natural consequence of processing and through the actions and decisions of operators, minimising the need for recoding and associated skills.

Despite the barriers to adoption, more than 60% of those organisations surveyed already using IPA are currently leveraging multiple technologies and in a separate study, SSON found that 37% of businesses are planning on integrating technologies to achieve further scale and growth.

In conclusion, of the 10 reports and articles reviewed in the above summary, industry analysts and publications understand the huge potential impact that IPA technologies could have, and in some cases are already achieving for organisations. Whilst the reports paint a positive picture, it is clear that more needs to be done to overcome the cultural and mindset barriers to adoption and this can only be achieved by demonstrating real use cases from the likes of Accounts, Sales and Customer Service in order to validate the ROI, thus removing uncertainty of adoption and fulfilling the predicted market growth as a result. 

Reports used:

The Future of Work: Why humans, AI systems and robots need to get along at work – and why it’s so hard to do. Appian & IDG https://www.appian.com/future-of-work-part-3/?utm_source=referral&utm_medium=press-release&utm_campaign=ia-readiness&utm_content=future-of-work-part-3

IDC Survey Finds Artificial Intelligence to be a Priority for Organizations But Few Have Implemented an Enterprise-Wide Strategy, IDC, https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45344519

Session 3: Rise of the Machines – Embracing Next Level of Automation through Artificial Intelligence, IDC, https://idc-cema.com/dwn/SF_251248/05_idc_session_3_artificial_intelligence.pdf

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Services 2019 Vendor Assessment, IDC, https://www.cognizant.com/ai/pdf/idc-marketplace-ai-assessment-2019.pdf

Contribution of “digital workers” to grow by 50% over the next two years, Neil Franklin, Workplace Insight https://workplaceinsight.net/contribution-of-digital-workers-to-grow-by-50-percent-over-next-two-years/

Gartner Survey Reveals Leading Organizations Expect to Double the Number of AI Projects In Place Within the Next Year, Gartner, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-07-15-gartner-survey-reveals-leading-organizations-expect-t

UK CFOs and FDs split on the need for automation, survey shows, Financial Director, https://www.financialdirector.co.uk/2019/11/28/uk-cfos-and-fds-split-on-the-need-for-automation-survey-shows/

Easing the pressure points: the state of intelligent automation, KPMG, https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/state-of-intelligent-automation.pdf

Automation with intelligence: Reimaging the organisation in the age of with intelligence, Deloitte, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/tw/Documents/strategy/tw-Automation-with-intelligence.pdf

Adopting a Tripartite Approach to RPA, HFS, https://www.cfb-bots.com/single-post/2019/10/21/Adopting-a-Tripartite-Approach-to-RPA

SSON Intelligent Automation Global Market Report 2019 (H2), SSON, https://www.ssonetwork.com/rpa/reports/sson-intelligent-automation-global-market-report-2019-h2?ty-ur

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