A report from ISG said that large and mid-sized enterprises are embracing intelligent automation at a rapid pace.
ISG Head of Intelligent Automation and AI Wil Harris said that some of this was due to COVID-19 which forced companies to find ways to remain competitive and still deliver value to customers.
He said that pre-pandemic, most AI and automation projects were focused on IT infrastructure operations and traditional back-office tasks such as finance and accounting.
“Now, however, automation is moving to the front office, with customer service, sales and marketing and supply chain automation all introducing automation to make them more efficient”, he said.
Most companies are not interested in reducing headcount but increasing productivity.
“We’ve all read headlines that say robots are going to take over our jobs, but ISG’s research tells us this is not the case: it is true that with declining revenues, companies are using automation to do more with less, but their focus is on increasing productivity, rather than seeking to reduce cost by lowering staff numbers. Some roles may change, but in terms of pure numbers, headcount will largely remain stable. This approach will allow companies to scale up in the future, without increasing their cost base”, Harris said.
Conversational AI helps companies deal with Brexit-related supply chain issues. Many companies in the UK are feeling the impact of Brexit, on top of the pandemic. The UK relies heavily on skilled workers form EU companies, particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and are starting to feel the shortage of those skills.
“Brexit brings additional headaches for the supply chain, with increased tariffs and border checks, as well as the legal complications faced by EU citizens residing in the UK. As a result, they are looking at AI (including conversational AI) to alleviate these headaches and using process mining technologies to identify areas of the business that could be automated effectively. There is a flurry of tech start-up activity in this area to meet demand”, Harris said.
Companies are also trying to streamline and improve the customer experience with automation. The focus is on areas such as improving accuracy, using data effectively and automating mundane tasks that don’t need human intervention in order to free up customer service time to deliver real value to customers who need help with more complex issues.
Organisations are investing in technologies that can be easily implemented with existing technology infrastructure. This means a focus on low code/no code development and solutions that can be integrated to bigger technology stacks, including pre-packaged business processes that don’t require high levels of customisation. This means a rise from vendors of solutions that allow different systems to talk to each other – bots talking to bots.
“Businesses are looking to do more, with less. Scale and growth are top of their priorities – no-one cut their way to greatness. The coming year isn’t about replacing humans with robots, but about augmenting human ability with automation and AI. We’re moving away from businesses automating small pockets of the business towards a more strategic approach to automation. The questions businesses are asking have changed from ‘how to do I automate this task’ to ‘how can automation increase my productivity’.”
The biggest area of automation and AI investment is in customer-focused areas of the business. If you can improve customer service and sales, but not increase headcount to do it, that sets you for the growth that so many businesses desperately need as we come out of the pandemic.”
