AI is all about machines simulating the human intelligence. Cognitive Automation leverages the AI techniques that simulate human brain functioning, helping in complex processes towards decision making, task completion and achieving the goals. Automation has played a pivotal role in propelling this era of remarkable advancement to the next level.
Recently, a fortune 100 bank, $68 billion annual revenue and nearly 50,000 employees, improved their operational efficiencies through intelligent bots. Currently, they have deployed more than 2,000 bots, minimizing the cost by 30%, reduced time spent in handling complex processes by almost 50%, and achieved 100% error-free. Industry 4.0 in manufacturing is also primarily fueled by cognitive intelligence. Predictive analytics is being used to identify elements that can reduce production quality, causing subsequent failures.
For Pharma industry, predictive modeling could help identify new potential candidate-molecules with a high probability of being successfully developed into a drug that safely and effectively act on biological targets. The intelligent devices are already helping in efficient collection and collation of patient/subject data, thereby augmenting the process of reporting adverse events.
Cognitive Automation
For RPAs to be of next generation, almost every enterprise must incorporate cognitive capabilities. Cognitive RPA will have to replace the older version of AI to work on lines of human brains. Though often considered same as AI and working on same principles, contextual analysis and technological building blocks, cognitive computing is precise in imitating human thinking process.
Businesses working with traditional bots find themselves restricted in automation since the software bot works on certain organized data fed in steady format such as data bases or spreadsheets. Also referred to as “dark data” that ignore information from non-structured sources like e-mails and videos, 80% of information collated by enterprise is dark data.
Cognitive RPA, on the other hand has the capability of processing the data from other sources within business that are not structured too. As per McKinsey, the existing RPA data becomes watertight and accelerated through cognitive cloud that in turn increases the ROIs by approximately 300%.
Another remarkable feature of cognitive bots is their unsurpassed ability to learn further with time, that will slowly and steadily make the entire repetitive and routine process human-free, enabling humans to shift their focus to more qualitative tasks.
Benefits of Cognitive Automation
Businesses that fail to acknowledge and embrace cognitive RPA can face serious threat of losing in future.
AI not only reduces cost and improves quality but also enhances productivity, further resulting in better employee engagement by pulling them out of boring and uninteresting tasks, thereby minimizing employee turnover while boosting employee satisfaction and minimizing on training and recruitment. The focus should be on business and wisely apply AI to drive strategic decision making and fulfil objectives.
While deploying RPA, the business process improves, obliterating the older ways of simply doing things causing technological dysfunction. Reduction in manual work, the rate of errors drastically reduce that reflects on the bottom line and public relations. In a long run, businesses save millions by cutting cost, achieving higher ROIs and avoiding lawsuits or fines resulting from poor quality.
Key Collaborations in Organization due to Cognitive Automation
Automation is enabled by combined work of technological expertise and non-technical staff for them to rethink and then build on process improvement. Thus, cognitive automation facilitates both employees-bots and business-IT collaboration.
Communication between salesperson and customers is in many levels, be it B2C or B2B. There are multiple aspects that must be considered to close a sale. While the bots can take care of the mundane characteristic features of selling through automation, employees can collaborate with customers on other front to make the entire process more precise and fetching. Similarly, end-to-end automation encourages more interactions among employees across various verticals and departments. Cross-functional teamwork becomes a mandate for careful strategic thinking and execution.
While automation brings in business velocity, it also brings together collaboration of right people to trouble-shoot the problems when process goes awry and work closely with problem-solvers for best solution and ideas on-time.
Human-Centric Business
Digital transformation is the new yardstick. In the business of technology if latest advancement is not leveraged and utilized in digital transformation, businesses will be left behind in the trending razor sharp competitive world. Businesses on top are reaping the outcome from unification of robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive automation that was otherwise never been imagined to be feasible in the past. Globally, organizations have started to take advantage of AI adoption and become faster, more efficient and essentially customer-centric. In just the last 24 months, AI and cognitive machine learning technologies have enabled unprecedented amount of business transformation while keeping the system human-centric.
Using intelligent predictions, we not only gain ability to be more effective in our decision-making but also are able to provide engaging and immersive customer experience. It has become increasingly clear that using intelligent predictions and usage of tools such as AI and ML is no longer optional. While cost optimization remains an important factor, delivering error-free transactions, creating new service models, etc. is now made possible with intelligence fused bots. The human-centered systems have paved way for maximizing utility and advanced human learning faster than ever in documented history.
On contrary to bots replacing humans, automation validates the fact that human-ness and human-centric businesses are more important than before for a robust digital workforce, bringing the business leadership at the forefront.
Bridging the Gap
AI platforms can be exhaustive at times and need humungous expertise before extracting valuable reports. Though these platforms are quite fetching, and leading enterprises are gaining momentum through advanced capabilities from chat bots and predictive analysis to spot fraud and foretell failures and much more. However sometimes they are not feasibly applicable across the functions.
Cognitive automation enabled IQ bots facilitate the use of best of RPA and advanced cognitive AI through due diligence more easily for complex logics and less structured data to be interpreted accurately and competently. Finance and HR departments can be more efficiently automated through cognitive AI for data enrichment andassist in better management and utilization of data. Therefore, cognitive automation becomes a conduit to patch the gap of huge RPAs and AI platforms.
Conclusion
AI has already made a remarkable impact on the business environment globally. Cognitive automation will in all possibilities accelerate the conventional AI. AI is maturing, and cognitive capabilities are growing by each day and only those businesses will thrive the harsh market volatility who continuously seize these possibilities.
CMS-IT has considerably demonstrated expertise in Cognitive Automation across Manufacturing, Pharma and CPG industries and currently work with Global organizations to help them become more intelligent and personal in their interactions with the consumer world. Their focus on automation to deliver KPIs is remarkable, thus equipped to take complete advantage of RPA and cognitive automation for better customer understanding and deliver best-in-class IT solutions.
References
Lhuer, X. (2016, Dec). The next acronym you need to know about: RPA. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/
O’Neill, D. (2018, Apr). Artificial intelligence, robots and a human touch. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/
Rai, M. (2018, Jan). Cognitive Automation – 4 Keys to Success. Retrieved from https://www.automationanywhere.com/blog