Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Eight Intelligent Automation Predictions for 2021
By Liz Benson, Senior Strategy Director at Kofax
It goes without saying that 2020 has been one of the most
unpredictable years in recent memory, and the uncertainty caused by the global
pandemic has forced businesses to change the way they operate and deploy their
workforces. As is always the case in business, those who have been able to
adapt quickly have largely outperformed those that are slower to evolve. Those
who have been able to navigate the murkiness of 2020 have a number of common
characteristics, and one is that they've begun future-proofing their
organizations by embracing intelligent automation.
The promise of automated solutions has skyrocketed in recent
years, and next year will bring more of the same. Here are eight things to look
for as the year unfolds:
1. The Next Place for RPA to Go? The Business Workflow!: RPA
has caught on like wildfire, because it made automating routine, mundane
tasks fast, easy and dare I say, fun. It made motivation-killing work like
monotonous, cut-and-paste data entry -a drudgery of the past. Where does
RPA go from here? It's all about
workflow. The new normal is
accelerating the call for digital transformation - creating streamlined,
frictionless experiences that delight customers and employees. To do this, organizations increasingly
are bridging their RPA expertise to higher-value initiatives - business
workflow transformation. Workflows
are organizations' ‘secret sauce' - the end-to-end processes encoding how
they do things smarter, faster, better, cheaper. For savvy companies, 2021
is about harnessing their RPA automation expertise - and leveraging it
with complementary technologies like process orchestration and document
intelligence to automate their
mission-critical business workflows.
2. 2021 Automation Priorities: The DNA of
High-Value Workflows: Organizations run on workflows - sequential
tasks like onboarding, invoice processing or approving documents - that
are part of a complex business process.
Workflows are organizations' intellectual property - the DNA
encoding how they do things smarter, faster, better, cheaper. But not all workflows are created
equally. In 2021 organizations will need to prioritize automations that
will yield the most value, the soonest.
Those are workflows whose ‘DNA' has the following characteristics:
- Document Intelligence:
Workflows that apply cognitive capture and artificial intelligence to
unstructured data in order to automate and extract information and unlock data
insights
- Process Orchestration:
Workflows involving orchestration of digital workflows in collaboration with users,
systems and data
- Connected Systems:
Workflows involving multiple critical business systems - enterprise
applications, legacy systems, mobile, chatbots and more - across internal and
external business processes
3. Goodbye Open Floorplans, Latte Machines and Bean Bags, Hello
Collaboration Tools and Automation Platforms: Pre-COVID,
organizations were obsessed with driving efficiency, collaboration and
innovation through analog strategies like smart office equipment and
innovative office design. Open
floorplans, bean bag chairs, latte machines and electronic whiteboards
were just some of the tools that supported employees in generating more
agile and competitive ways of working and thinking. Fast forward to 2021 when employees and
customers are virtual. There's now
a premium on digital transformation as the vehicle for driving employee
productivity and customer experience.
Organizations mastering the digital landscape - from collaboration
tools (Zoom, MS Teams, etc.) to automation tools (intelligent automation,
financial process automation and enterprise output management) are
thriving. Companies stuck in analog
business models are falling farther behind. This trend will accelerate in
2021 and will continue even after offices open up again. Digital workflow transformation is here
to stay.
4. Digital Workers Save Humanity in 2021! In the drive to become
more efficient and productive organizations have been driving employees to
the breaking point. People are
working faster, harder and more efficiently than ever before, and it's
still not enough in rapidly changing markets. Enter the bots - long feared as
replacing human workers. In 2021
digital workers will come to be more fully understood as the savior of work-life balance. As human productive capacity reaches its
limit, increasingly employees will be provided with digital workforce
support - increasing productive capacity while relieving humans of the
dull, repetitive work keeping them in the office late and on
weekends. Harnessing digital
capacity at scale will drive the agility needed for competitive advantage
in 2021. Digital capacity becomes the new differentiator.
5. Business Line Leaders - ‘Citizen Developers' - Will Accelerate
Digital Transformation Momentum: Past automation efforts were driven largely by IT as technology
initiatives. As more intuitive
intelligent automation platforms emerge, business line leaders are
becoming empowered to focus automation efforts to drive specific strategic
business outcomes. These ‘citizen
developers' increasingly will partner with IT in a federated model,
harnessing intelligent automation to transform information-intensive
business workflows. Many companies
excelling today in the New Normal are doing so through automations
inspired by Citizen Developers in partnership with IT. This new model creates agility, reduces
technical debt and accelerates time-to-value. Other organizations seeking to
accelerate their digital transformation efforts will emulate this model.
6. Companies Will Buy Business Outcomes through Ecosystems: In 2020, integrated intelligent
automation platforms emerged as the preferred method of driving digital
workflow transformation results. These one-stop-shop platforms with
pre-integrated, complementary automation technologies, provide all the
capabilities and AI needed to automate quickly, drive rapid results and
reduce technical debt. However, the
80%/20% rule still applies, meaning organizations' will always have unique
requirements that would require customizations. Ecosystems will emerge in 2021 as the
go-to resource for filling that gap.
Platform providers have developed vast networks of technologies,
applications and services operating within their open, dynamic and
integrated architectures - providing access to a network of services, pre-built
connectors, templates and solutions. Companies in 2021 will increasingly
rely on these ecosystems to buy the outcomes they desire - accelerating
their ability to achieve desired automation results.
7. 5G Data: Big Wave Surfing or Tidal Wave?: 5G is here and
along with it, a massive wave of data. In 2021 5G will enable companies to
transmit, collect and analyze exponentially more data than ever before to
fuel business strategy and decision-making. Organizations with the
capacity and ability to ingest this surge of data, digitize and transform
it into business insights will be riding high. It all starts with having document and
data intelligence technology necessary to convert unstructured data locked
in 5G transmissions into structured data assets. AI and Cognitive Capture will be key to
achieve document/data classification, sentiment analysis and content
extraction from key documents such as financial records. Organizations
with data intelligence capabilities will be able to surf the 5G data wave
and attain new heights of performance.
Those unprepared will be inundated by a tsunami of unusable
information.
8. Embedded AI Will Accelerate Automation
Success and Reduce Technical Debt: In 2021, AI finds its winning
use case - embedded in intelligent
automation platforms and leveraged as a key accelerator to achieving
digital workflow transformation. No
longer the sole domain of data scientists within large organizations, AI
use in 2021 will spread to the masses.
Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP),
Intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Image Recognition embedded in intelligent automation
platforms will empower citizen developers to achieve digital workflow
transformation - dramatically elevating productivity levels and
accelerating work throughout the enterprise.
Again, individuals and
workforces are more productive now than ever before. As market conditions shift
and the demand for more continues to loom, those who thrive in 2021 will be
those who take full advantage of intelligent automation to make both human and
digital workforces as dynamic as ever.
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About the Author
Liz Benson is the Senior Strategy Director for
Kofax, driving corporate-level strategy
formulation and leading alliances to partner with complementary ecosystem technology
companies - creating scalable and transformative solutions for customers. She
previously led the Conversational Artificial Intelligence practice for Deloitte
across the federal, state and local government and higher education markets,
which encompassed delivery and sales. Liz spent many years solving clients'
complex business issues using automation technology - including robotic process
automation (RPA), intelligent chatbot, analytics and machine learning, and
systems integration. Additionally, she serves on the Executive Board of the
Ascend Greater Washington Chapter to advance diversity and inclusion in the
workplace. Liz is a graduate of West Virginia University.