Intelligent Automation: A Look at Funding & Investment

Intelligence automation is no longer as a large number of companies across industries leveraging

Intelligent automation combines artificial intelligence, including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and machine vision, with automation. AI and automation are no longer new as a large number of companies across industries leverage emerging tech. But the technologies have advanced substantially in recent years.

Some intelligent automation technologies, including those driving a new generation of collaborative robots and Google's self-driving cars, assess and answer to a stream of situational data from sensors. Others, like IBM's Watson, ingest and evaluate huge volumes of textual information to respond rapidly to multifaceted inquiries like a request for a medical treatment plan.

The wide range of business problems to which intelligent automation can be implemented are intensifying as technologies for voice recognition, NLP, and machine learning advance and become usable by non-specialists. These technologies are increasingly available as open source or low-cost products or cloud-based services.

Other technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) allows organizations to automate rule-based processes with software programs that don't require human interaction. Beyond this, the next step in the automation journey is Intelligent Automation, delivering exponential value by learning and adapting as it automates.

In today's disruptive age, companies are becoming more ambitious as they are investing more in intelligence automation. In our finding, over 30% of enterprises in 600 are investing more than US$55 million in intelligent automation solutions – artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing, and robotic process automation. And this funding indicates that the sector is moving beyond pilots and into more scaled initiatives.

Companies are investing in intelligent automation to sustain mature product categories, including automobiles. Additionally, businesses are implementing this technology to foster efficiency, enhance quality, reduce labor costs, and reassign workers from low- to higher-value tasks.

Analytics Insight predicts Global spending on robotic process automation (RPA) software is anticipated to be worth US$2,600 million by 2022. RPA encompasses the automation of standardized and rules-driven system-based activities using scripts and other methods to support efficient business processes. RPA can be utilized to automate workflow, infrastructure, and back office processes that are labor intensive. The technology interacts with the existing IT architecture without intricate system integration required.

Moreover, spending on Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence systems is expected to reach US$52,200 million by 2021. The spending is increasing at a CAGR of 46.2%. Over 40% of all cognitive systems spending throughout the projected timeframe will go to software, including both cognitive applications – text and rich media analytics, tagging, searching, machine learning, categorization, clustering, hypothesis generation, question answering, visualization, filtering, alerting, and navigation – and cognitive software platforms that facilitate the development of intelligent, advisory, and cognitively enabled solutions. Cognitive computing technology is created to simulate human thought processes in a computerized model. Using self-learning algorithms that leverage data mining, pattern recognition, and NLP, the computer can mimic the way the human brain works.