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What is Intelligent Automation?

Intelligent automation could be as transformative as cloud computing, and is already helping companies cut costs. We explain what it is and how your business can benefit.

Lisa Lee

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Intelligent Automation FAQs

Intelligent automation (IA) combines artificial intelligence (AI) with automation technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) to handle complex, end-to-end business processes.

Basic automation follows predefined rules. Intelligent automation adds cognitive capabilities like learning, decision-making, and natural language processing to handle unstructured data and adapt.

The key components of intelligent automation (IA) typically include Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Business Process Management (BPM). These components work together to automate complex business processes, improve efficiency, and enable intelligent decision-making. RPA handles repetitive tasks, AI provides cognitive capabilities like machine learning and natural language processing, and BPM orchestrates and manages business processes.

Benefits include increased efficiency, reduced operational costs, improved accuracy, enhanced scalability, faster processing times, and freeing human employees for higher-value tasks.

IA can be applied across various functions such as customer service, finance, human resources, supply chain management, and IT operations for data entry, claims processing, and more.

IA transforms roles by automating repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on strategic, creative, and customer-facing activities that require human judgment and empathy.

Challenges include complex integration with legacy systems, managing change within the organization, ensuring data quality, and addressing ethical considerations related to AI decision-making.