Intelligent automation—or intelligent process automation—is a trend that combines artificial intelligence (AI) with robotic process automation (RPA). The majority of business leaders expect intelligent automation to be deployed in companies within five years, but they recognize the obstacles they will face.
Related: How to Choose RPA Software: 8 Things to Consider
Benefits and Challenges of Intelligent Automation
- The rise of IA: 86 percent of the global business leaders surveyed believe their organization must successfully deploy intelligent automation (IA) solutions within the next five years to be a leader in their field.
- Facing reality: Although they recognize the growing importance of IA, 69 percent of the business leaders said their company is not currently deploying it.
- Future investments: 54 percent of the companies that are not currently using IA intend to do so in the future. Of the executives responding to this question, 63 percent are IT decision-makers and 45 percent are C-level execs.
- Coming soon: 59 percent of the global business leaders who intend to use IA believe their organization will begin investing within two to three years. On average, companies will invest in IA within four years.
- C-Level leadership: Business leaders believe it will be more important for C-level executives to understand new and emerging technologies (60 percent) than to have a deep specialization in strategy, sales, and marketing (40 percent).
- Essential qualities for executives:
- Ability to lead a workforce that’s augmented by IA and other tech: 53 percent.
- Strategic vision that incorporates technological changes: 52 percent.
- Thorough familiarity with emerging technologies: 52 percent.
- Roadblocks to incorporating IA:
- Difficulty recruiting (or retraining) IA-skilled employees: 40 percent.
- Increased cyber-security threats: 39 percent.
- Difficulty integrating IA into legacy IT: 37 percent.
- Facing the resistance: 87 percent of IT decision-makers and 72 percent of C-level executives believe the adoption of advanced technologies and innovations has been limited by employee resistance.
- How IA would affect workers: 45 percent believe incorporating IA would replace a portion of their workforce, but 55 percent believe integrating IA into their current processes would simply augment their workers.
- Job consequences: 60 percent of consumer respondents believe workers would lose their jobs as a result of intelligent automation.
- Could IA help employees?: 40 percent of respondents from the United States and the United Kingdom and 47 percent from Germany believe integrating IA would enable workers to do their job better.
- Industries most affected by IA:
- Financial services: 38 percent.
- Manufacturing: 36 percent.
- Aerospace: 31 percent.
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