1RPA gives companies a taste of software-powered automation and AI, which will whet their palette for additional and higher-level AI-powered solutions.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) adoption continues apace. According to Deloitte’s third annual “Global RPA Survey,” slightly more than half of survey respondents reported already starting their RPA journeys, a number that Deloitte predicts will increase to 72% in the next two years and reach “near-universal” adoption within the next five years. Respondents also reported an average of “20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity” provided by bots, with payback on investment reported in less than a year.
RPA is clearly not as complex as higher-level Artificial Intelligence (AI) offerings and solutions. However, at the very least, RPA allows companies beginning their AI journeys to get a taste of what software-powered automation can do for their organizations. Businesses are fundamentally altering how they operate by using RPA to automate high-volume transactions, but that only hints at the disruptive potential of end-to-end automation and cognitive AI. That becomes clearer as you move up the rungs on the AI ladder toward cognitive functionality, conversational interfaces and autonomics.
A Small Step
A leading RPA solution like 1RPA pairs scalable business automation with advanced cognitive functionality, giving users a glimpse of what’s possible if they move along the road to higher-level AI.
1RPA can optimize the bot-creation process with Natural Language Reading functionality, which allows it to automatically structure unstructured data, greatly optimizing and accelerating the building of automations. The solution also comes packaged with Amelia, our cognitive digital colleague, which users can interact with via conversation (through a text box). That means any user — regardless of coding expertise — can simply tell Amelia what they want to accomplish and she will translate their commands into a new automation. What’s more, companies that have no to little experience with AI-powered interactive interfaces can see them in action, enticing them to consider what additional benefits that automation and cognitive AI can deliver within their organizations.
A Giant Leap
Once companies experience Amelia’s capabilities through the 1RPA solution, they can quickly realize her potential for other types of user engagements beyond RPA. In fact, she’s already proven her ability to reinvent business processes, both internally and externally — providing another signpost for companies on their AI voyages.
For example, a global bank hired Amelia to automate their routine internal IT support processes for thousands of end users. Amelia empowered the company to expand their support functions 24/7 and free their experienced tech support team from high-volume but low-level tasks so they could use their expertise to address complex or unique user needs. This made the company far more productive and efficient overall.
Bring it All Together
1RPA and Amelia come standard inside Amelia AIOps (formerly 1Desk), IPsoft’s autonomic backbone that unites various departments — both IT operations and shared services — into a single platform. Not only does AIOps support powerful automated workflows across the entirety of an organization, it also independently suggests new automations based on observations of how your workforce does business. Furthermore, with Amelia, any user has the power to access the entire autonomic backbone just by conversing directly with the system.
Once companies get a taste of AI’s broader possibilities through the conversational bots created by the 1RPA solution, we’re confident that they will start pondering how other automation and cognitive AI solutions can be used to solve relevant business challenges and use cases.