INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION Quotes

“IA automates knowledge workers’ activities by mimicking four main capabilities: Vision (e.g., viewing the environment, recognizing objects and signs), Execution (e.g., typing, clicking, filling in forms, and authenticating), Language (e.g., using language to read, speak, write, and interact), and Thinking and learning (e.g., analyzing, creating insight, predicting, making decisions, and adjusting).”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“As emphasized in the critical success factors related to “Management support, vision, governance, and structure” earlier in this section, a leading practice to secure support from management is to provide a high-level estimation of the benefits expected from the transformation. This is often referred to as a “high-level automation assessment” or a “top-down automation assessment”. For example, such an estimation might show that, by leveraging IA, the organization has the potential to increase revenue by 20% while reducing costs by 30% in the coming 18 months.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Leveraging the support from consulting and delivery partners (they can be the same) is critical for gaining the right momentum in the organization with minimum investment.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“The long tail of lower-value automation opportunities should involve less focus on the redesign. The value will be captured through the systematic use of the lean methodology to improve the processes incrementally (e.g., simplify, reduce the number of actions).”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“The talent required within the CoE is wide and ranges from business and operations excellence to risk and IT departments. According to McKinsey’s survey, the CoE of top-performing companies includes a large variety of profiles such as delivery managers, data scientists, data engineers, workflow integrators, system architects, developers, and, most critically, translators and business analysts.152 A”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“IA initiatives have to be sponsored by the highest level of management in the company (i.e., its C-levels). Management is supported by a documented vision (strategic objectives of the transformation), business case (estimating the benefits and costs of the project), and a high-level roadmap (key milestones of the implementation for the coming 1 to 3 years). The design of the program is a top-down exercise, while the implementation is a bottom-up one (e.g., it starts with the deployment of a pilot).”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Think big, start small, and scale fast”: Initiate the transformation with the definition of a multi-year, company-wide vision, roadmap, and business case. These plans need to be flexible and adaptable. Then, “start small” with the implementation of a pilot, and take the time to learn from this first experience. Finally, implement the broader scope in stages to manage the risks. Gradually increase the speed and scale of the transformation, and as a result, generate high impact. “IA is a business transformation, not a technology project”: The perspective of business benefits should guide the transformation. This transformation involves not only technology, but more importantly, people – with change management, and retraining – and processes – with redesigns. “IA is a journey, not a destination”: IA is not a one-off exercise; it is a never-ending transformation journey. It continually brings additional benefits to the organization by applying evolving concepts, methods, and technologies. Hence, building teams with the right skills to guide the company in this transformation is critical. “Infusing IA into the culture of the company”: Implementing IA with siloed, isolated teams does not work. Automation needs to be infused into the company. Change management, education, empowerment, and incentivization of everyone in the company is vital. Every employee should know what IA is and what its benefits are, and be empowered and incentivized to identify use cases and build automation.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“The tone comes from the top”: As with any transformation that brings structural changes to an organization, top management support is a prerequisite to succeed at any IA transformation.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Maintaining an automated process is estimated to be about 20% of the initial implementation cost per year.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“some work activities are displaced, but new ones, more fulfilling and value-adding, arise. What are the new ones? Think of these activities that everyone knows are crucial, but that actually none has the time to perform – for example, spending one hour per week with each team member to coach them.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“The absence of appropriate project governance results in a lack of monitoring of the impact generated by the transformation, and confusion between the roles of the different actors on the project. Most”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Another common issue is the lack of interdisciplinarity in the transformation. In our experience, the highest impact is the result of multi-lever end-to-end process automation – not small, siloed implementations, focused on one single technology lever. To achieve this, management should advocate for getting the right talents from across the different parts of an organization to work together (e.g., data scientists, developers, business analysts). Interdisciplinarity is also about avoiding limiting the transformation to the implementation of one single technology lever (e.g., RPA), and about implementing IA on end-to-end processes instead of only a few process tasks. By combining talents and technology levers and targeting end-to-end processes, the organization will create synergies, build economies of scale, and remove potential bottlenecks. Organizations failing to achieve this are not able to scale their IA transformation.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“In conclusion, smaller companies with a limited budget might opt for open source platforms. Larger, more established, and more demanding companies would typically go with a commercial platform, enabling them to connect their different applications under the same roof. Companies with high growth objectives should leverage scalable cloud-based platforms.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Deep learning techniques are used when data features are numerous and there is a lack of domain understanding to identify and understand them. This data is typically complex, such as images, videos, or voice recordings. For example, an image contains an indefinite amount of data features (e.g., points, edges, shapes, or objects), and some are relevant to the problem being solved, but others are not. Deep learning is used to solve problems such as image classification, natural language processing, and speech recognition.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“In other words, it is about finding homogeneous subgroups within the data. Some uses of clustering algorithms include network traffic classification, document categorization, gene clustering, or product categorization.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Decision trees are not new; what machine learning brings here is the capacity to identify the optimal split of the problem into relevant questions and connect them together in a logical way to achieve a final decision.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“For example, regressions support workforce planning to ensure adequate staffing, or the identification of the talents that an organization should retain based on relevant traits, practices, and skills. Other applications include predicting the level of liquidity required for a finance department based on trends in disbursement.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“As an outcome, based on our experience, the leading practice is to use low-code and smart workflow platforms as a foundation of the overall automation platform. In contrast, RPA is used for any integration of the overall platform with legacy systems or for automation of bespoke processes.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“There are no ready-to-use modules with RPA. Most of the development is bespoke, and all process flows need to be built almost from scratch. The connections also need to be constructed. This results in a more flexible design and implementation of the programs developed, which can fit with more specific business requirements. The key advantage of RPA is that it allows the creation of automation programs that can involve legacy systems (e.g., those which can’t use APIs) or address non-standard requirements (e.g., onboarding of clients for a broker insurance company under Singapore regulations). However, with RPA, the lack of native integration amongst the components has weaknesses. For example, it involves less robustness, weaker data integrity, and lower resilience to process changes. If one part of an RPA program fails, the whole end-to-end process is stopped. As an outcome, based on our experience, the leading practice is to use low-code and smart workflow platforms as a foundation of the overall automation platform. In contrast, RPA is used for any integration of the overall platform with legacy systems or for automation of bespoke processes.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“For a well-defined, standard, and stable process involving hand-offs between people and systems, it is preferable to use a smart workflow platform. Such platforms offer pre-developed modules. These are ready-to-use automation programs customized by industry and by business function (e.g., onboarding of clients in retail banking). In addition, they are modular. For example, a module might include a form for client data collection, and another module might support an approval workflow. In addition, these modules can be linked to external systems and databases using connectors, such as application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable resilient data connectivity. Hence, with smart workflows, there is no need to develop bespoke internal and external data bridges. This integration creates a system with high resiliency and integrity. In addition, the standardization by industry and function of these platforms, combined with the low-code functionality, helps to accelerate the implementation.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“4. When to use RPA versus smart workflow platforms? These technologies can be used interchangeably. The leading practice is to use smart workflow and low-code platforms as a foundation of the overall automation platform. RPA is used when IA needs to be integrated with legacy systems or automation of bespoke processes.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“The cost of errors is enormous: o Medical errors in the US incur an estimated economic value of almost USD 1 trillion78 – and 86% of those mistakes are administrative.79 o 80% of US medical billings contain at least minor mistakes – creating unnecessary annual healthcare spending of $68 billion.80”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“IA not only makes transaction processes more efficient, but it also generates log files for every action, creating transparency and ease of compliance. Machine learning leverages the digital information created by these programs to recognize predictive patterns and project trends.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“4. The potential levers to improve employees’ experience We have identified three levers to enable the transition from the current breakdown of employee activities to the ideal division of activities. They are: Automate: companies should identify and automate routine activities, such as generating a PowerPoint presentation for a weekly meeting or recording invoices in accounting software. Augment: organizations should seize the opportunity to increase the value of work activities delivered by employees. IA is used as a crucial component here, with, for example, the generation of insights through advanced analytics to help decision making. Abandon: some work activities do not fit with leading practices for efficient work, and represent an obstacle to the employee’s experience. These activities should be reduced or eliminated. For example, restricting the volume of meetings and email traffic is essential. We call these levers the “Triple-A artifact”. It has proven to be a handy framework to help organizations build their action plans to boost their employee experience.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“3. What do employees expect as an experience? 69% of employees expect that automation will give them more time to do their primary job duties, and 86% of employees think the use of automation in the workplace will let them think of work in new and innovative ways.55 The question is then, besides removing tedious tasks, what would make people happier and more engaged at work? Studies have found that people like to have opportunities to solve problems in their work. Also, variety among tasks at work leads to increased happiness and higher productivity.56 Based on these findings, the promise of IA to change how people work seems a welcome development. Based on our research, the employee experience would be improved by switching to the “ideal” daily division of activities,”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“3.1. New digital business building Insurance companies, banks, energy providers, and incumbent telecommunication companies need to digitalize their businesses to stay competitive against new pure digital entrants. In most cases, the fastest and most efficient way to achieve this is not to digitalize their existing business, but to create entirely new digital businesses that are highly automated.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Deloitte survey also shows that the benefits of adopting IA are significant. Participants reported that payback was less than 12 months, with an average of 20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity provided by IA programs. Automation met and even exceeded expectations in many areas, including improved compliance (92%), quality and accuracy (90%), productivity (86%), and reduced costs (59%).35 According to a study by Statista, 84% of business organizations adopt AI because it gives them a competitive advantage over their rivals.36”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“All businesses are going digital: the winners will be those who do so the quickest and to the greatest extent. It may be informed speculation to say the landscape of companies will change dramatically over the next few decades. Still, one thing is sure: the winners – even the survivors – will be highly automated, with the bare minimum of human involvement.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Today, more people die from overwork and stress than from wars. More than 75 percent of people are dissatisfied with their jobs, which they view as too tedious and repetitive. Countries are facing growing debts, a constant fear of a coming recession, and later retirement ages. The cost of human error and fraud is almost equivalent to the total amount of money allocated globally to education.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human

“Algorithms are to white-collar workers what tractors were to farmers: a tool to dramatically increase the productivity of each worker, and thus shrink the total number of workers required to produce the same output. But unlike tractors, algorithms can be shipped instantly around the world at no additional cost. Once an algorithm has been sent out to millions of users, it can be continuously updated and improved with no need to create a new physical product.”
― Pascal Bornet, INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human