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.
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.
