Process automation has many moving parts.
The five articles in today's Five for Friday covers a range of these automation-enabling tools. These include a look at the "unicorn" of intelligent process automation, plus thoughts on how artificial intelligence and RPA will work to free up human minds for deeper work.
There's also an article about an unexpected and overlooked automation tool -- the office copy machine.
Two Revolutions in Intelligent Process Automation
Our favorite one for the week comes from our own Richard Medina in DOCUMENT Magazine.
From the articles introduction:
Let’s start by talking about the unicorn. The unicorn is the combination of AI, IC, task automation with RPA and workflow to create intelligent process automation (IPA) that’s really worthy of the name. One of our clients, a senior IT architect who’s working with these technologies, declared a few years ago in conversation that combining these technologies would be capturing the unicorn.
Until recently, IPA was a joke: most of the tools weren’t very intelligent, they addressed tasks, not processes, and they automated little because they had limited application and required human assistance. That’s changed and today intelligent process automation is truly possible: RPA automates tasks; intelligent capture digitizes content to feed RPA; AI makes both RPA and intelligent capture smarter; and next-gen process automation orchestrates and manages all the pieces in the process.
Click here to read the article.
How to Choose RPA Software: 10 Key Factors to Consider
RPA can give companies a tremendous leg up on the road to automation. However, it’s easy to get to miss things.
“RPA (robotic process automation) promises to rescue business users from performing boring, repetitive tasks. Hence the term “robotic”: The nature of the jobs performed by RPA tend to be rote and low-level. Businesses use RPA software to create software bots that perform pre-defined, structured jobs that typically involve filling in electronic forms, processing transactions, or sending messages.
Read on for the 10 key factors to consider.
Preparing the Office for the AI Revolution
This short piece discusses one of the common themes in AI – the fear of replacement of man by machine. AI is more of a set of tools that, like RPA, allow the machines to do the grunt work to free up people to do more complicated tasks.
This piece focuses on the chat and digital communications aspects of what AI can do. Click here to read more.
Time to Accelerate Your Digital Transformation
You can’t be a digital organization with business processes that rely on paper This article from Kofax Product Marketing Director Gabriela Garner points out an often-overlooked ingestion point for paper documents: the office copier.
“MFDs are capable of so much more than basic print, copy and fax jobs - and herein lays a golden opportunity for businesses that take advantage. Because they're connected devices and part of the larger Internet of Things (IoT), MFDs have the potential to add enormous value to organizations and accelerate digital transformation.”
Click here to read the article.
Unstructured Legal Data and the AI Lifeboat Solution
“MFDs are capable of so much more than basic print, copy and fax jobs - and herein lays a golden opportunity for businesses that take advantage. Because they're connected devices and part of the larger Internet of Things (IoT), MFDs have the potential to add enormous value to organizations and accelerate digital transformation.”