Traditional business process automation (BPA) systems have one
major flaw: they lack intelligence.
It’s just like you’re “automating” your car’s movement by strapping a
brick to its gas pedal. This might prove effective for maintaining a
constant speed on a straight road. But what happens when you
encounter a curve or traffic? The “automation” fails miserably.
That’s exactly how traditional BPA systems work. They only follow
rigid flows and algorithms. As such, they cannot learn, adapt, or
even help you make data-driven decisions.
Fortunately, you can overcome this limitation by integrating AI into
your business process automation efforts. Today’s guide will get you
up to speed on everything you need to know about AI business
process automation.
Let’s start from the top:
What is business process
automation?
Business process automation is the strategic use of technology to
automate rule-based, repetitive, and time-consuming complex tasks
within your business activities.
Let’s take your business's social media presence, say on TikTok, for
instance. Traditionally, managing an account and growing TikTok
followers might involve several manual operations—posting at
specific hours of the day and interacting with followers.
With TikTok automation solutions like Planly or Crowdfire, you can
simply schedule your social media posts to go live at specific times.
That’s not all; you can even automatically respond to basic
comments based on pre-written messages. This way, you’d free up
more time to handle other important tasks, like content creation.
What is AI?
AI, which stands for Artificial Intelligence, is a collection of advanced
technologies that allow machines to simulate human intelligence
and cognitive functions. This includes a wide range of things like
learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Speaking of the technologies backing AI, there are two important
ones.
One is machine learning systems (ML). Machine learning algorithms
allow AI systems to learn patterns and relationships from pre-
existing data. So, when they’re faced with new data or complex
processes, they can "think" and then make predictions or
recommendations.
The other is natural language processing (NLP). This involves using
language models to help machines understand, interpret, and
generate human-like language.
This technology plays a particularly crucial role in developing AI-
driven chatbots and text-based generative AI tools like Writer
above.
What is AI business process
automation?
AI business process automation (AI-BPA), or intelligent automation,
involves using AI with your automation tools to optimise several
business tasks. So, you’re not only automating repetitive tasks but
also adding a layer of intelligence to this automation with artificial
intelligence technology.
Think of restaurant employee scheduling as an example. Sure, you
can use a traditional BPA tool to automatically allocate tasks to
employees to some extent. But for that to work seamlessly, you still
have to do a lot of work yourself.
For instance, you still have to manually analyse the strengths,
weaknesses, and performances of employees before giving them
tasks.
However, with AI-driven automation, human intervention would
become very minimal. Through machine learning, the tool can learn
about your employee’s past performances. Then, it figures out the
best employees for certain tasks and hours and allocates the tasks
accordingly.
And if something unexpected happens—assume an employee calls
in sick unexpectedly—you don’t have to panic. The tool can help
you find another employee with similar performance metrics and
adjust the schedule accordingly.
Benefits of AI business
process automation
AI-powered business process automation can help your business in
several ways, starting with cost savings. That’s because adding AI
to your existing business automation software system further
reduces the need for human workers.
So, naturally, your operational expenses, like labor costs, go down
too. And when your operational costs are reduced, you'll have extra
funds to direct into business growth and innovation.
Moving on, another benefit of AI business process automation is
that it can help you handle workplace information overload. This can
be a real headache in business, literally. In fact, 80% of
workers reported that they feel stressed daily due to information
overload.
How can AI-BPA solve this issue? Well, with AI, your workers don’t
have to process much data anymore. The system can automatically
analyse the data and draw actionable inferences from it without any
hassle.
So, let’s take your customer support automation, for instance. You
won’t have to worry about analysing the information coming from
your chatbot interactions.
AI can collect and analyse these customer queries and interactions
over time. Then, it gives you digestible insights into your customers'
sentiments, preferences, and most pressing pain points.
Challenges of AI business
process automation
AI business process automation can be a rosy journey (or maybe
not). This will depend on how well you’ve prepared for certain
potential issues.
Your first reality check would be resistance from employees. And
who can blame them? After all, no one wants to lose their wages. A
majority of the 3000 American workers surveyed by Checkr said
they feel the adoption of AI at work can lead to pay cuts, if not job
losses. The sentiment cuts across different generations:
But you can overcome this challenge by taking the time to upskill
and reskill your employees. Essentially, focus on equipping them
with the skills they need to work with AI and not be replaced by it.
That aside, note that AI deals with a lot of sensitive data. So, you
need to brace yourself for privacy and security challenges. You
don’t want a data breach that exposes your customer information
due to vulnerabilities in your AI system.
So, what’s the solution? Give serious thought to your cybersecurity
measures from Day 1 of the implementation of your AI business
process automation. And this shouldn’t be a one-time thing. Make
sure you constantly update your security protocols and access
controls.
Mind you, your employees are probably handling an AI workflow for
the first time. Therefore, it’s necessary to educate them about cyber
hygiene practices so none of them become a point of cyberattack.
You can even create a company policy to this effect.
Last but not least, implementing AI-BPA solutions for all your
repetitive and rule-based business processes can come with hefty
upfront price tags. So, finances might be a challenge too.
That's why you have to be smart about your budget. If you’re a
small business working with a lean budget, you can start small and
scale gradually. You can pilot-test AI solutions for particular areas of
your business processes before going for a full-fledged
implementation.
Most importantly, you also want to opt for vendors with transparent
pricing and good track records to get the most out of your
investment.
Future of AI business process
automation
AI business process automation isn’t static and is far from being
finished. As long as there are technological advancements in AI,
you can expect more innovations and trends to surface. Let’s just
cover a few of them.
For starters, most AI BPA solutions available today can only
automate one part of your business operations. For instance,
an appointment scheduling automation tool can’t work for
inventory management. But that will change soon.
With hyper-automation, you’ll see AI-powered automation tools that
can seamlessly automate and integrate as many business
processes as possible. This promises businesses a greater level of
agility, efficiency, and cost reduction.
Secondly, AI-BPA systems are on the path to becoming more
democratised. This simply implies that they’ll be more accessible
and affordable to every business, regardless of size or AI expertise.
The primary way this will happen is through the emergence of more
low-code AI solutions. With these solutions, businesses can easily
build their own proprietary AI solutions to manage their automation.
And lastly, human workers will still play an important role in the
future of AI business process automation. They’ll still be required to
perform tasks that require a higher level of empathy, creativity, and
judgment, and, of course, govern AI systems.
Examples of AI in business
process automation
We already saw how AI in business process automation can play a
pivotal role in key areas like employee scheduling and customer
support. Now, let’s see some other examples of how exactly AI can
streamline your business automation.
Let’s start with the recruitment process. A brilliant example of AI-
BPA in action is the AI-powered application tracking
system (ATS). This tool can scan resumes and cover letters
automatically to find keywords or skills you’re looking for. Then, it
filters out the applicants that don’t match.
Some of these ATS tools also come with in-built NLP-powered
chatbots. This means that they can understand the nuances of
human language. Thus, you can use them to conduct initial
candidate interactions and pre-screening interviews. This saves
your human resources team even more time.
Recruitment aside, you can also use AI in your order fulfillment
automation. Let’s say someone placed an order. Based on learned
data and previous interactions, AI can verify the order and ensure
no fraudulent activities are going on.
From there, your automation can then check if the order is available.
If not, AI can also analyse the customer's buying behaviour and
recommend other products they might like. This simple gesture can
go a long way toward boosting your sales.
Speaking of sales, you can also directly integrate AI into your sales
process automation tools. This gives you more leeway to analyse
historical data and customer interactions and assign scores to leads
based on their likelihood to convert. This way, you can focus more
effort on people who are more likely to buy from your business.
Conclusion
Chances are you’re already using traditional business automation
technologies to automate routine tasks, and you're getting decent
results. But if you truly want to get the most out of these systems,
pair them with artificial intelligence (AI).
This way, you won’t be stuck with a rigid, rule-based automation tool
but with something that can adapt according to your changing
business needs. That’s AI-BPA or intelligent process automation.
Moreover, with AI, it's easier to reduce human error and achieve
better operational efficiency. You'll also obtain valuable insights that
can help you make strategic decisions.
This guide covered everything you need to understand about using
AI in your business automation efforts, including the key benefits,
challenges, and examples.
Now, over to you. When implementing, don’t forget that you can
always start small and then scale gradually.
