Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) technology streamlines the repetitive manual tasks involved in business processes, offering both cost and time savings to businesses that automate their processes. By replacing human workers with software, businesses can improve speed, accuracy, and consistency in all of their business transactions, as well as free up employees to take on more strategic roles in the company. This video will introduce you to how Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) works and what you can achieve through it.
Introduction to Intelligent Process Automation
Intelligent process automation uses software to mimic human actions, so that technology can do what humans do better than they can. This results in increased productivity, accuracy and quality at a low cost. Intelligent process automation is capable of handling many tasks that are repetitive and onerous for humans but natural for computers. These include collecting data from disparate systems, extracting data from documents or web pages, collating related information together and recognizing patterns in massive sets of unstructured information. Intelligent business process automation enables employees to focus on high-value activities rather than routine ones that help drive efficiency.
What is an Intelligent agent?
Intelligent agents are computer programs designed to behave in an autonomous manner, within a specified environment. Artificial intelligence researchers use different terms to refer to intelligent agents: autonomous software agents, active software agents, software robots, and so on. A commonly used term is rational agent.
Some intelligent agents use traditional artificial intelligence techniques, such as knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty, planning and learning from experience. An alternative approach is embodied artificial intelligence in which an intelligent agent is a physical system designed to make its own decisions by sensing things in its environment and by acting upon those things through its body.
Intelligent Agents and Digital Workflow
Intelligent agents are a hot new trend in enterprise software. IPA or Intelligent process automation is an automated software process that uses intelligent agents to integrate disparate business systems and drive digital workflows. An intelligent agent works by monitoring systems for incoming or ongoing events—orders placed, shipments completed, reservations requested—and then triggering an automated workflow based on those events. It’s not unlike what you see at a fast-food chain: The order kiosk at McDonald’s monitors its system for your order; processes it with efficiency when you pay for it and sends a notification to your pick-up window once it’s ready to be served. Intelligent agents streamline such business processes through coordination across multiple devices and platforms.
The Evolution of Digital Workflow in IPA
Businesses are being flooded with Digital Workflow solutions. However, not all solutions are alike. There is a notable difference between true workflow technology and Software-as-a-Service business process management solutions. What is it? Why does it matter? This post will explain how intelligent process automation technology can manage digital workflows efficiently by utilizing document data analytics, AI and robotic automation technology to deliver game changing functionality to your workflow requirements.
In order to determine how intelligent process automation technology can help you manage digital workflows, it’s important to understand what workflow software is and how it functions. Digital workflow systems are tools that capture, automate and manage business processes using a combination of human intelligence, computer intelligence and robotic automation. Think of these as a way for your business to respond intelligently to triggers from customers, employees or partners—instead of just relying on manual data entry by you or your team members.
Key Benefits of Intelligent Process Automation
Every business will rely more and more on technology to deliver customer-centric services. If a business wants to gain a competitive advantage, it must continue to evolve and grow by leveraging new technologies to streamline internal operations and deliver consistent, high-quality customer experiences. By utilizing an intelligent process automation platform, businesses can automate their processes in order to create cohesive services and delight customers at every interaction. Learn how IPAs can benefit your business today.
There are a number of benefits an intelligent process automation platform can provide your business, including: Improved internal operations – Through automation and simplified processes, your business can reduce costs while freeing up employees’ time to focus on higher-value work. Enhanced customer experiences – A cohesive customer experience that is consistent across every interaction will help increase loyalty and sales. Maximized speed to market – Combining data from multiple systems into a single view will enable your business to deliver innovative new services to customers faster than ever before. Increased efficiency – The ability to streamline internal processes will help keep costs low while improving employee satisfaction and productivity.
Powerful Features in Intelligent Workflow
IPA streamlines and manages business processes with a strong focus on automation. Instead of configuring individual rules for each step in a business process, you’ll create powerful workflows that incorporate actions such as sending notifications and alerts to employees, keeping records, and delegating tasks. These intelligent workflows can even include conditions to prevent issues like duplicate orders or over-expenditures. With powerful features like these, it’s no wonder that IPA is growing so quickly in popularity!
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation
Let’s take a look at what makes up an SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation System. First, there is an SAP system with access to a standard interface that can receive information from SAP back-end systems and provide output to other systems. This is typically referred to as the core application in traditional robotic process automation. It is generally built using Java and runs on the JVM platform.
The front-end component is built using modern web standards and accesses a variety of services that allow it to accomplish its primary functions.
There are typically three services:
1) data access;
2) business logic; and
3) delivery channel.
A powerful database such as HANA or MongoDB allows for near real-time updates and response times in milliseconds.
Robotic Process Automation vs Intelligent Automation
While both technologies are used to make processes more efficient, they differ in a couple of key ways. First off, robotic process automation applies to any type of software—not just RPA—that allows you to automate your workflows. This can include things like a spreadsheet or perhaps customer-relationship management software, as well as RPA platforms like Blue Prism and UiPath. An intelligent process automator does what it says on the tin: it’s smart about everything that goes into running a business. By allowing computers to mimic our actions, these apps make us smarter—or at least give us back some time we would have spent typing repetitive tasks into spreadsheets or scanning documents into piles.
The real distinction between robotic process automation and intelligent process automation is in how they use artificial intelligence. RPA systems replicate processes that were once performed by humans, and can go after repetitive tasks—for example, scanning and sorting documents or filling out forms.
How does Robotic Process Automation differ from Intelligent Automation?
The difference between an automated and intelligent system lies in its intelligence. There are a number of ways to measure that, but it boils down to whether a system requires a human or some other form of intelligence input to complete basic business processes. Generally speaking, these are process-based tasks that require a mix of manual data entry and decision making. An example might be responding to an e-mail, selecting relevant information from within another application and copying it over. A non-intelligent solution simply looks for specific criteria within certain fields. The intelligent version is able to parse through large volumes of data as well as understand relationships between objects/people/concepts (human intelligence has trouble with such things). It can then reason and determine if any further action needs to be taken.
