4 challenges of implementing enterprise intelligent automation

Imagine a business free of inefficiency. The workforce is free to focus on creating value for the organizations because the rote, manual processes that took up so much of their time are no longer on their plates. There’s abundant time and energy to launch new products, expand operations, or improve company culture.

This future is closer than we think, thanks to the growth of automation.

Enterprise intelligent process automation (IPA) is the next level of legacy tools, like OCR and RPA, with artificial intelligence to streamline every aspect of a business, eventually improving productivity far beyond current standards. With AI, organizations are advancing the implementation considerable intelligent automation solutions throughout their companies, experiencing benefits such as:

• The ability to extract, organize, and process high volumes of unstructured data
• Increased labor and operational efficiency
• Find ways to increase revenue

2021 research by Deloitte found 73% of senior executives report they’ve already started the journey to full enterprise intelligent automation — up from 58% in 2019. But reaching this future will require significant investment, strategy, and cooperation.

The challenges of implementing intelligent automation

In the Deloitte survey, only 38% of respondents implementing more or scaling existing automation have a strategy to reach full enterprise-wide intelligent automation. Many cite the technical, resource, and cultural challenges that prevent a more aggressive implementation, including these:

Difficulty unifying processes

The Challenge

Since the creation of robotic process automation (RPA), many organizations have contended with fragmented automation, using standalone solutions for each business process. While this has drastically improved productivity, it still creates bottlenecks when employees have to manually start and stop automations or import and export data between workflows. One of the goals of enterprise intelligent automation is to integrate all of these processes together to eliminate these bottlenecks, but finding the right tools to do this is easier said than done.

The Solution

Organizations should look for automation platforms that connect with all of their other software to keep workflows in one place. Better yet, the platform of choice could eliminate the need for other automation solutions entirely. Automation Hero’s Intelligent document processing (IDP) is one example of a platform that can weave an intelligence “fabric” in between existing software automation tools and database systems.

Limited IT resources and bandwidth

The Challenge

Given how much technology is involved in every aspect of business, many IT departments are busy maintaining existing systems. Tackling more implementation could stretch limited resources thin while the potential for technical issues and other obstacles also act as a major deterrent.

The Solution

The ideal enterprise intelligent automation platform will be relatively easy to install and deploy, with or without IT support. Even more important, they should be easy and intuitive to use with minimal training, so IT teams don’t have to learn new software themselves to help employees troubleshoot.

Unclear roadmap

The Challenge

Hyperautomation, or the automation of every business process possible, is the end goal of intelligent process automation. Because there are many ways to achieve it, stakeholders tasked with implementing automation may have trouble seeing the big picture beyond all of the exciting promises and new features many vendors offer. It can be easy to get so distracted by new offerings that the journey to full end-to-end automation gets derailed.

The Solution

Organizations should look for platforms with both end-to-end capabilities and simple and straightforward interfaces that allow for maximum customization.

Resistance to change

The Challenge

Given how complex work can be, many people, understandably, don’t want to contend with any more change than they need. Resistance to automation doesn’t just lead to stagnating company culture — it can actually prevent success. With automation rapidly changing the competitive landscape, failure to move toward enterprise intelligent automation could spell doom for a company sooner than later.

The Solution

Leaders hesitant to further invest in automation should look for solutions that are easy to set up, learn, and work with to make change as easy and frictionless as possible. Starting small and achieving little wins is also the best way to build momentum toward larger automation efforts. Small automations are also easy to iterate in other departments, which will help get buy-ins from other leaders for more sweeping, company-wide investments in new technology. 

Enterprise intelligent automation is worth the challenges

No matter what phase of the digital transformation an organization is in, there will always be obstacles. Unifying processes, resource availability, staying on course, and resistance to change are the most common hurdles, but the rewards for successfully automating are immense. Fully implementing AI to achieve hyperautomation leads to higher profits, improved productivity, and more satisfied employees.

Unlock the intelligence in your documents with our AI-driven automation today

Learn how we helped Markerstudy reduce its claims processing time by 40%. Additionally, learn how we reduced total claim processing time by 80% for another multinational insurance partner — cutting down manual tasks from 10 minutes to just two minutes per claim.

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