{"id":44429,"date":"2019-12-18T12:55:07","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T12:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=44429"},"modified":"2019-12-18T12:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T12:56:12","slug":"from-hype-to-reality-moving-ahead-with-intelligent-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/12\/18\/from-hype-to-reality-moving-ahead-with-intelligent-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"From hype to reality – moving ahead with Intelligent Automation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Intelligent Automation (IA) is slated to see an increase in utilisation over the coming year in the Middle East, promising improved customer experience, enhanced processes, increased revenues and costs savings. Matin Jouzdani, Associate Partner – Data and Analytics at KPMG Lower Gulf, tells Intelligent CIO concerns about the impact on employees will need to be mitigated in order for IA to yield the desired results. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intelligent Automation (IA) is on the verge of entering\nthe mainstream in the UAE, featuring towards the top of many organisations\u2019 strategic\nand tactical agendas. Reasons to implement IA are manifold, including improved customer\nexperience, enhanced processes, increased revenues and, of course, costs\nsavings, to name a few. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies that rely on Artificial\nIntelligence and natural-language processing, such as Robotic Process Automation\n(RPA), enhanced RPA and cognitive automation, can help improve processes and\nworkflows, provide new insights and even help to make decisions that resolve\ncustomer issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With much riding on the promise of IA, business\nleaders may want to consider scaling up efforts, while also broadening the\nscope of implementation to include additional functions and processes. Currently,\nchallenges, including lack of the right skills, deficiency of resources, a\ndearth of enterprise-wide mandates and concerns about the impact on employees, will\nneed to be mitigated in order for IA to yield the desired results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there is investment in IA broadly, a\nrecent global report by KPMG, The state\nof intelligent automation<\/em>, found that only 10% of respondents are\nintegrating solutions which include automation, Artificial Intelligence and\nsmart analytics. While initial efforts are understandably fragmented, organisations would be advised to move quickly to understand how, when and where\nto integrate technologies in order to optimise their potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\nshould companies invest in IA?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a common starting point for IA, RPA offers\nthe potential for significant cost savings and streamlining via automation. But\ncost savings alone should not drive companies to invest in IA. KPMG\u2019s survey\nfound that more than one third of today\u2019s business leaders view IA as a way to\ndrive future revenue growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, for organisations that have achieved\nenterprise-level approaches to IA, enhanced customer experience and unleashing the\npower of existing data to drive insights and sales growth are among their top\ndrivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there is some concern around IA leading\nto job losses, particularly when it comes to RPA, the reality is that these\ntechnologies will be key in accelerating the upskilling of the current\nworkforce, enhancing worker productivity by automating routine tasks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

IA offers the potential to free up\nworkers\u2019 time wasted on repetitive mundane tasks,\nenabling them to focus on value-added services, such as analysing rather than processing\ndata. In fact, less than one percent of the companies surveyed by KPMG indicated\ncost savings or headcount reduction as a key operational goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most IA initiatives are not yet scaled up, nor\ndo they operate on an end-to-end process level. That being said, those surveyed\nbelieve they can scale up their IA initiatives within 12 months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assessing\nthe challenges of IA <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although companies have been testing different IA\npilot programs, less than 20% of firms surveyed were beyond the piloting stage.\nThis may be attributed to a variety of factors, including immature technologies\nand cost of deployment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is more likely, however, that organisations are\nuncertain about launching full-fledged implementation, particularly those that\nrequire coordination and integration (or not) of disparate efforts leveraging\npoint technologies, and how to address IA\u2019s impact on both operations and employees.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, with RPA\npotentially eliminating many work roles, organisations must determine how to address the future of their workforces,\nby retraining, reskilling or redeploying affected employees. At the same time\nhowever, organisations are also faced with a\nlack of skilled resources needed to design, build, deploy and manage IA systems\nand initiatives-especially in the areas of Machine Learning and\nArtificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest roadblocks to the widespread\nand rapid adoption of IA seemingly remains a lack of an enterprise-wide mandate,\nwith less than 10% of organisations surveyed by KPMG indicating that they\napproach IA management and implementation from an organisation-wide\nperspective. In many cases, IA initiatives are starting in a single business\nunit or function looking to do automation specific to their processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another challenge will be gaining the buy-in\nand support of employees who face changing roles and skill upgrading, or the\nperceived risk of job loss. It\ntakes patience when pushing forward with IA efforts, especially given that the\ntransition may face resistance from employees at all levels, who may feel\nthreatened by changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overcoming\nthe hurdles to implement IA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of challenges, it appears that organisations will be required to press ahead with their IA efforts or risk longer-term marginalisation <\/a>as their competitive peers forge ahead. The evolution and adoption of IA technologies is proceeding at such a rapid pace that, while executives recognise its game changing potential, many struggle to understand its implications, as well as determining where to place their own IA bets and investments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key in this process is for organisations to separate\nhype from reality, prioritising IA investment areas and accepting that all\npilots are not equal in terms of return on investment. The onus is on\nenterprises to determine how best to integrate and co-ordinate cross-organisational\nefforts and ensure adequate change management programmes and practices are in\nplace to address the disruption IA adoption will entail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to succeed, organisations must\nview IA from an enterprise level to scale up its usefulness within the business\nand broaden its scope to various functions. Without an organisational\nmandate and guidance from senior management, businesses run the risk of duplicated\nefforts, diluted ROIs and underachieved benefit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A co-ordinated enterprise approach has the best\nhope of leading to consistent use of technologies, resources, governance and\ninvestment pools –\nand, in the end, will elevate best practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intelligent Automation (IA) is slated to see an increase in utilisation over the coming year in the Middle East, promising improved customer experience, enhanced processes, increased revenues and costs savings. Matin Jouzdani, Associate Partner – Data and Analytics at KPMG Lower Gulf, tells Intelligent CIO concerns about the impact on employees will need to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":44430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5307,809,3629,9961,185],"tags":[3355,10907,10905,2696,10906,562,5743],"class_list":["post-44429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-more-news","category-newsletter","category-thought-leadership","category-uae","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-ia","tag-intelligent-automation","tag-kpmg","tag-matin-jouzdani","tag-middle-east","tag-robotic-process-automation"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44429"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44436,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429\/revisions\/44436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}