Without any doubt, intelligent automation is the latest buzzword thrown around by digital leaders who are willing to do more with less. As per Forrester's prediction, "Automation is becoming a business imperative in 2021." This being the fact, enterprises and digital innovation leaders are embracing these forward-thinking technologies to automate more and more.

With the automation evolution, even C-level executives are challenged to wrap their heads around intelligent automation. They are reimagining their business process by figuring out certain questions like what it is? and how intelligent automation can help in business processes? where it is best suited? and how to start with it?

Here are five critical components that underscore the foundation of intelligent automation-

1. Process Optimization

2. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

4. Data Analytics

5.. End-to-End Automation

Let's get quick with all these five critical components-

• Process Optimization – Star Component in Automation Efforts

Just because RPA is fit for one business process, it doesn't make RPA applicable to all. When you take off on your intelligent automation journey, you will realize that some business processes can be automated just by optimizing the underlying business process instead of using an RPA bot.

While some of the processes will need bots to take over, which increases the ROI and value of the RPA bot – many organizations still fail to scale RPA either due to the wrong choice of business process or no process optimization. But some powerful processes and task mining tools are available to be your guiding light in the discovery of the "right" process to automate.

• RPA – An Adhesive Bandage

RPA technology is at the top line of automation effort and doesn't require massive integration efforts. RPA bots can mimic human interaction and act as humans with software programs. In this way, it frees up employees' time and allows them to focus on more strategic tasks. RPA can be applied to a rule-based process as a quick fix for business processes.

RPA is tremendously helpful in voluminous tasks without any critical thinking involved. This thinking comes along when RPA combines with a cognitive ability like AI.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – A Step Beyond RPA

Like the brain is to the human body, Artificial Intelligence is to RPA. Merging AI and RPA incorporate the ability of bots to make decisions in the critical thinking processes.

Mimicking human actions is simple, but acting as a human brain in the decision-making process is complex. This is one of the reasons people talk a lot about AI, but when it comes to solutions, these are scarce.

With complex algorithms munching endless amounts of information to make human-like decisions, Artificial Intelligence can revitalize the service operation and enable enterprises to take hold of it and harness its power. AI use cases in RPA come in the form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).

• Data Analytics – A Building Block in Automation

Using data for process optimization in RPA is a common work norm. When applied in automation, the speed at which the process is mined, analyzed, and utilized is exceptional. Along with constant data collection, intelligent automation enhances the ability to improve the underlying business processes. And if you want to harness more from it, a combination of AI, Smart Analytics, and Automation is the key to scale.

• Customized End-to-End Automation- Scale from Ground

Process optimization opens a new avenue for optimized business and technology adoption. And the enterprises which are adopting Intelligent Automation harnessing its full power and reassessing their human assets to determine where customized automation can improve the overall process.

But the real value comes from focusing on end-to-end automation and creating a roadmap to design the process using technology. With this paradigm shift, RPA is top of broken processes and tech stack. Instead, automation is built from the ground up with a customized end-to-end automation approach to offer a seamless interface with all systems.

Is Automation Inevitable?

Using intelligent automation, enterprises can transform the business, and this paradigm shift to cloud computing paves a similar path to automation. With this flexibility, corporations accepted that they need to invest in cloud and automation technologies. Now corporation investment in automation has become a trending norm.

It might feel fearful in the beginning that intelligent automation is devaluing human efforts and intelligence. But with its benefits, automation is accelerating its pace in IT industries.

Sowing the Seeds of Automation Bring Immediate Value

As per the trend, simply turning one's hand to intelligent automation optimizes the whole business process.

And future is bright with RPA, as more enterprises are embarking on the automation journey. But to scale for success in RPA, companies must ask questions to their workforce like "Are they stuck in tedious, manual, and error-prone tasks, and how do they want digital leaders to upgrade the process so that employees can focus on more strategic work?"

With "automation for all", intelligent automation has become an important driver of organizational performance in the years to come. That's what makes it crucial for companies in all sectors to understand and adopt intelligent automation without the risk of falling behind.