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.