The world is on the cusp of interesting technological advancement: Artificial intelligence has revolutionized everyday social touchpoints, intelligent machine learning-driven chatbots are transforming social networking platforms, the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the very nature of supply chain management and robotics paves the way for lights out production lines.

However, AI advancement cannot be seen in isolation. The emergence of intelligent automation (IA) and its sustained maturity will have to be recognized alongside AI’s evolution to get a clearer picture of where we stand in terms of technological progress.

With IA in the picture, industries stand to gain from a myriad of business benefits. Starting with the potential to free resources from mundane and routine tasks by adopting intelligent technology, which consequentially leads to better workers and workflows -- both human and digital. To put this into perspective, consider the sheer fact that we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.

For organizations that thrive on data, this happens to be both a boon and a bane. Humans alone are rather insufficient to handle these large sets of data. And this is precisely where AI comes into being.  Virtual assistants and intelligent chatbots, used by millions of people worldwide, are revolutionizing customer servicing. Self-driving cars will soon take over the automobile sector, while the medical industry increasingly leverages smart diagnostics tools.

Intelligent automation can further assist industries that work with AI and copious amounts of data. IA can enable the large-scale deployment of data analytics while ensuring productivity. With IA solutions, companies stand to amplify their ability to utilize data, taking the heavy load off the shoulders of employees.

Achieving scale, unlocking business value

Organizations that ultimately adopt intelligent automation will lead the way in their respective fields of work. This technological marvel enables large-scale data analysis and improved productivity. After all, it is substantially ahead of straightforward process automation. IA technology has the capability to understand which processes are relevant to an organization’s modus operandi and can execute itself in accordance. However, to make the most out of IA, it should be in sync with the defined orchestration architecture, where machine-made decisions are reviewed by humans to yield better outcomes.

Consider this case of a global banking and financial services industry firm. The company was struggling to identify and recruit the right talent and come to terms with an accurate pace to scale upward. With a customized and scalable IA solution in place, not only did it scale efficiently, but it opened newer business avenues, while fuelling consistent growth.

Pace of change 

As technology advances and datasets grow, companies are keen on adopting IA. Consider another scenario where an investment banking firm of repute had difficulties identifying the right toolset that was compatible with derivative contracts to address relevant growth opportunities. They leveraged state-of-the-art IA technology to effectively enhance customer experience, improve risk profile, fortify controls, and streamline workflows.

The complexity of today’s digital landscape makes comprehensive analysis and processing through manual workflows impracticable. Dependence on manually intensive processes makes outcomes rather slow, error-prone, notwithstanding the inefficiency associated with it. IA outdoes these impediments and enables consistent, accurate analysis of the mode of operations, thereby repudiating the challenges of a human operator.

Anoop Tiwari has worked at HCL Technologies for 31 years. As the Head of Digital Process Operations, Tiwari leads the cycle from acquisition to delivery including client acquisition, building new propositions and industrialization of service delivery. This division offers services to global customers across industry verticals with a strong focus on domain based next generation services powered by functional expertise, integrated global delivery and client centric business models. The division has helped many Fortune 500 companies simplify processes and create tangible business value.