Process automation has become an important tool in accelerating the performance of modern businesses. The technology enables companies to offload some manual work from business users and IT teams, delivering productivity gains, cost savings, and more.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has played a significant part in the development of process intelligence technologies, and new research has revealed just how important a role AI, machine learning (ML), and generative AI has to play going forward.
A new report from research company Foundry and Automation Anywhere — one of our top 10 organizations representing AI as a Modernization Enabler — cites ML, AI, and generative AI as critical technologies for the success of process automation.
For the report, Automation Now and Next: State of Intelligent Automation Report 2023, researchers surveyed over 1,000 global automation leaders in various sectors, including finance, healthcare, retail, telecom, tech, and manufacturing.
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The key findings from the report are as follows:
- Companies are investing more in process automation technologies in 2023, spending an average of $5.6 million, representing a 17% increase over 2022
- 45% of respondents intend to invest in generative AI-powered automation over the next 12 months. 88% of those surveyed identified AI/ML and generative AI as crucial to successful process automation
- 63% of respondents have deployed AI/ML technologies, and 40% have deployed generative AI, with virtual assistants as the primary use case
- Process automation stands out as the best way to increase productivity. 78% of respondents cited productivity gains as the intended consequence of automation. In comparison, 86% understand that to achieve substantial productivity gains, they must move beyond task automation and incorporate end-to-end automation strategies.
Finally, the survey highlighted a trend in company-wide adoption of process automation technologies to meet business goals: 82% of respondents said they actively support citizen development. However, 49% of respondents say security and governance concerns remain barriers to scaling citizen development.
Riding the AI/Generative AI Wave
Ankur Kothari, Chief Customer and Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere, put the above findings in context. “Customers are doubling down on automation where almost 17% of budget increases are assigned to automation,” Kothari says. “That’s very different from the current financial environment, where every company is trying to do more with less.”
Regarding the generative AI boom, Kothari said, “Generative AI and large language models are making it easy to create content and interpret content on demand to automate processes.”
“Almost 88% of the respondents are saying AI is key to successful business process automation, but more than 72% are thinking about using AI in the next 12 months, and 63% are already using it.”
Kothari pointed to the June release of Automation Anywhere’s Automation + Generative AI platform, as well as products for business users to leverage generative AI through Copilots, or virtual assistants. That technology is top of mind for customers.
“One of the other trends you see in this report, the number one ask, is how customers are looking to use virtual assistants to help business users. Copilot allows you to leverage generative AI to automate many use cases. One big trend we see is in use cases related to customer service or service desks.”
Kothari explained how generative AI is changing the way citizen development happens in process automation. “We have a product that we are previewing that allows customers to leverage the industry’s first purpose-built automation model on top of foundational models to simply use natural language to create bots.”
“The challenge with citizen development was how to do the training that is required to train citizen developers and how they can leverage best practices?” he continues. “When you combine this automation with generative AI, you can use natural language to create this bot. You don’t have to train your citizen developers as much and the best practices are embedded as the bot gets created.”
