Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to software that runs attended or unattended, working as a virtual employee within the existing IT infrastructure to reliably automate repetitive tasks at scale. In our changing world, RPA is the first step in being augmented with multiple digital and analytic elements. It enables much larger transformations across the spectrum of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the internet of things.

This augmentation and transformation are what we are calling intelligent automation (IA). It is rapidly gaining adoption in back-office functions such as finance, tax, human resources, and IT, as well as in supply chain and many customer-facing processes.

Rather than looking at how individual technologies can be applied within an organization, IA is about reimagining how processes across the front, middle and back offices can be transformed to meet new digital customer expectations. By combining techniques and technologies to re-engineer and automate processes, we can achieve speed and efficiency while reducing errors and risks.