The Economist Intelligence Unit explores the advance of, the current and likely future progress of automation on businesses in relation to business hopes, fears and realities.
Different organisations in all regions and industries are turning over more and more of their business processes to automation. The operational gains being made from this are plain to see, but business leaders are looking for more. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to automation technologies can help them secure it.
Automation was once a term associated exclusively with manufacturing. Today, after three decades of advances in digital technology, there are few fields of organisational activity left untouched by it. Businesses in every industry are using software to automate the processes that guide their daily operations as they seek the efficiencies that come from replacing manual tasks with machine-operated ones. However, its usage is accelerating and widening to create opportunities for business growth, and to encourage greater creativity and innovation from employees. Such hopes are buoyed as artificial intelligence (AI) gives rise to intelligent automation technologies.
The automation of business processes has made considerable headway, according to the results of a survey conducted for this report. Over 90% of respondents’ organisations are using automation technologies and just over half extensively, particularly for processes relating to IT, operations and production, and finance. Most are satisfied with the returns they are seeing from automation, which so far mainly takes the form of higher productivity. Most also say that automation has helped their organisation to kickstart digital transformation. Not all expectations are yet being met. However, there is clearly room for organisations to improve their utilisation of automation.