Intelligent automation (IA) combines AI and automation technologies like RPA. This combination simplifies processes, allowing the user to focus on the outcome rather than the process that is used to get the results of an application.

IA has many uses that can improve a customer’s experience, including:

Intelligent document processing: Business data like emails, work files, and images has a tendency to come in unstructured formatting that looks overwhelming and cluttered. Intelligent document processing and RPA along with other IA tools can help a business process this business data, extracting important pieces of information and validating the findings.

Discovering processes: Using RPA, IA can locate a process that can be automated. Once a given process has been identified for automation, IA can develop a guide for automating the process.

Improve workflow: IA can use data from different workflows to improve the efficiency and speed of pre-existing processes.

Supply chain and production management: Supply and demand changes as time goes on, and this can impact a business’s production. With IA, predictions and adjustments can be made for the business so that production is not negatively affected.

IA combines AI and RPA, leading to increased efficiency in a business. RPA has its value through automating processes that once needed manual attention. IA takes information from different sources, filtering it through different products and tools to make the interaction more valuable. RPA and AI by themselves are incredibly valuable in many different ways but combining the two results in increased efficiency in the interactions and processes between applications.

IA improvements include:

Increased productivity: By automating different processes and applications, they are able to run faster compared to someone doing them manually. Automation leads businesses toward improved productivity and accuracy in their planning because multiple sources of data are being gathered to help business predictions and decision-making. A good example of this would be a business creating bots that automate the production of weekly website traffic reports.

Lower costs: Larger organizations that have begun implementing IA are achieving an average of 27% reduction in their costs. While RPA and AI work together to process information from the more mundane tasks, real employees are able to focus on more important things while money is saved on the faster IA processes.

Improved accuracy: IA means that real employees will spend less time on mundane tasks, resulting in better decision-making and accuracy in these areas. Automating mundane tasks can erase any errors that real employees may make while going through a manual data entry process, resulting in improved accuracy for various kinds of reports.

Improved customer experience: IA can help organizations better understand their customers’ needs, improve any product they may bring to the market, and help them communicate more efficiently with their customers. The result of this is an improved customer experience, leaving the customer feeling satisfied.

IA misconceptions can leave a business owner hesitant about incorporating it into their processes. Thankfully they are easily debunked, but some of these misconceptions include:

The human workforce will be replaced by IA: This is a common misconception, and completely untrue. IA only takes control of the mundane and repetitive tasks, leaving real workers to focus on more complex and pressing matters in the organization. The tasks that IA is responsible for see improvement in accuracy, reducing errors that might require attention from workers that could be putting their efforts toward bigger projects. By taking workers’ attention away from smaller tasks, doors for learning new skills are opened, allowing a human workforce to grow in their skills.

IA is optional: IA is growing at a rapid rate, and consumers are already seeing automation in their day-to-day lives through different apps and household technologies. In order to satisfy growing customer needs and keep up with the market, utilizing IA is a must. Manual processes can’t keep up with the faster IA processes, and automation improves the quality of a business’s product and customer service through its reduction of errors. Because of these factors, it will be hard for businesses that don’t adopt IA to succeed down the road.

IA is unbiased: The decisions that IA makes are based on the data that is collected from a certain business and its customers. Since these things have direct ties to the business, the decisions that are made are biased.