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Despite the major disruptions in 2020, businesses continue to evolve at warp speed. Stakes are increasing. Customer demands are through the roof. Competition is heating up.
Simplifying business complexities, ensuring workforce agility, and automating processes for greater efficiency is critical for thriving in 2021. And for many enterprises, intelligent automation is the answer. Here are five predictions about what we can expect in intelligent automation in the year to come.
1. More clarity in the low-code market: In 2020 everyone seemed to suddenly claim some sort of “low-code” solution – but were they truly all low code or just retroactively trying to capitalize on the hype? For some, low code issimply a spreadsheet look-alike app.
For others, it’s an enterprise-wide solution that enables Citizen Developers and IT folks to better collaborate and build serious apps fast. Next year, this “low-code washing” will continue, but there will be more clarity and distinction around what’s a true enterprise low-code platform vs. low-code knock-off apps. For now, make sure the low-code solution you invest in is robust enough to meet all your application needs,because not all low-code solutions are created equal.
2. Businesses that can seamlessly integrate new technologies to improve client-centric journeys will excel: An upcoming Pega survey found that two of the biggest automation challenges C-level executives will face in the next five years will be integrating with existing legacy systems (58%) and compatibility with third-party technologies (40%).
Over the next year, the ability to smoothly integrate new systems to improve that experience will become critical. Highly disjointed online interactions will only turn customers off, which will be exacerbated if systems are not easy to integrate. The businesses that will win will be able to seamlessly integrate their systems together to put the customer at the center of the transaction,regardless of channel, and follow that customer throughout their unique “journeys.”
3. Case management will make a comeback as something else: The term may have fallen out of vogue this past year, but we predict the fundamentals of case management will become the cornerstone of intelligent automation in 2021,as multi-channel customer experiences become the standardand businesses build apps faster than ever before.
When businesses talk about customer journeys, partner journeys, and employee journeys they will realise they need to apply the attributes of case management in order to be successful. Specifically, with a focus on orchestration, case management will provide the necessary visibility and clarity around the status and execution of front and back-office work organizations need.
Although intelligent automation continues to be a muddled term, case-based automation will emerge as the gold standard, driven in part by the impact of the pandemic. Our upcoming survey found that more than half (52%) of organizations have been forced by the pandemic to identify operational and transactional use cases that rely on increased automation. As this continues into the new year, we can not only expect this trend to continue, but case management will evolve in ways we haven’t seen in years.
4. RPA will start to lose its luster: Next year, we’re going to see a fall-off of RPA vendors as they try to diversify their solutions and expand into other markets. Businesses are waking up to the fact that RPA has not lived up to the hype and delivered the promised value. Standalone RPA vendors are going to be scrambling to rebrand themselves.
5. We will see the start of the age of hyper-automation:The use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, RPA, low code, and other advanced automation technologies has increased significantly in the last few years. These technologies will start to coalesce, so they work seamlessly together to deliver intelligent automation across the enterprise, ushering in the age of “hyper-automation.”
Fifty percent of C-level executives currently think hyper-automation will impact their business’s customer service operations in the next five years – up from 37% today – while business leaders also expect to see hyper-automation become increasingly influential in other areas, including workflow and case management processes (29% increase over five years), supply and distribution chain (38% increase over five years), and risk management (22% increase over the next five years).
No one could have predicted the year we’ve had in 2020 or how it’s wreaked havoc with businesses everywhere. But the pandemic also exposed areas of weakness which can be bolstered with intelligent automation solutions. While no one knows what the future will bring, one thing is certain. We’re all looking forward to the year ahead.
- Eric Musser, general manager, intelligent automation, Pegasystems