Intelligent Automation (IA) is a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA). In the tech world, intelligent automation is becoming the core of digital transformation as it empowers rapid end-to-end automation of business processes. RPA allows businesses to delegate and execute tasks with the machine learning and analytics capabilities of automatic process discovery, cognitive technologies like computer vision, NLP (natural language processing), and fuzzy logic. IA constitutes the complete automation journey, discovery, automation, optimization, automation of any front or back-office business functions, and facilitating work across the human-bot teams. But intelligent automation's real effectiveness can only be realized when it empowers business leaders to digitally amp up the work across all the sectors of the office.

With so many vendors entering the market and offering RPA and IA, there is hype and confusion that will mask its ability to deliver results. So when selecting a vendor, it is important to get clarity about the program's actual capabilities. "Through 2021, 40% of enterprises will have RPA buyer's remorse due to misaligned, soiled usage and inability to scale.", says Gartner who too realized this issue.

So, what are the things one should consider while choosing an RPA provider?

Comparing Capabilities

Depending on what a business is looking for, short-term tactical benefits with great effort and risk or strategic work transformation with less effort and minimal risk, there are differences between the capabilities of RPA and intelligent automation vendor's software. Here, we are talking about two bots, one which is a highly advanced software robot trained and run on a collaborative platform by business users with an inbuilt capability to operate with an IT department, and the other one running scripts and activities against other software pieces which work well for basic task automation.

Measuring Effort

The advantage of employing an intelligent automation solution should be the rapid rate at which a business can cater to dynamic market demands without the additional effort of building a bot to come up with new work. An IA program will automate this "new" work using an intuitive operative system. If a business is choosing the wrong vendor, that program will be supported by code-heavy deployments which will have to get in the IT queue for extensive debugging work to meet the new market demands.

Assess The Collaborative Potential

The best way to measure the value of work from an intelligent automation program is by having the option to deploy robots wherever they are needed to do collaborative work. So ask the vendor if their program allows that. In some cases, if any automation technology is set up across desktops and used in a single-person context, it may help the person empower the work but not the business. This approach will limit the program's potential.

Evaluate The Accountability Capabilities

In a business setup, all automation activities must be done with transparency. For this, a company will have to choose a vendor that provides an OS, allowing audit trails of the automated processes. Even better, if the program will allow a user to create automated processes, so they can report it through documentation.

For a business to thrive in this fourth industrial revolution, it is crucial to choose the right intelligent automated technology vendor. Not only will it limit the potential of a business to make a mark in the industry but also increase the risk of a digital chaos. A good way to judge a vendor is by keeping these guidelines in mind and understanding how every aspect and function of the IA technology will benefit the business goals.