Rise of the Robots

A recently published white paper co-created by Deloitte Israel and NICE Advanced Process Automation Solutions provides a practical point of view on how to effectively leverage the growing trends of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Robotic & Cognitive Automation (R&CA). A key ingredient for success is to treat automation as a business transformation, in order to achieve scale, stability and ultimately long-term business value. Technology forms an integral part of everyday life, and cognitive technologies and Artificial Intelligence are making greater inroads into the lives of humans. Enterprises world-wide already understand and acknowledge that our lives will be transformed by automation technology and Artificial Intelligence. Yet, in reality, it is challenging for most organisations to cope with the exponential developments and discoveries in the technology world.

Why?

On a practical level, many organisations are seeking the answers to questions, like:

• What is Robotic & Cognitive Automation (R&CA)? 
• Why should enterprises embrace R&CA and what value will be obtained?
• How will R&CA influence the enterprise? 
• How do enterprises work with R&CA – what are the next steps?

Whether organisations are at the beginning or advanced stages of their process automation journeys, these questions address common issues that most organisations can relate to. However, there is no question that enterprises need to start their robotic and cognitive journeys as soon as possible. As a myriad of process automation and cognitive technologies become available - we are at a tipping point – those who embrace robotic and cognitive automation will be a part of the Automation Economy and those who do not, may fall behind.

What is robotic & cognitive automation (R&CA)?

Robotic automation, in its most basic form is a capability that allows organisations to perform complex rules based work without human involvement. This is achieved by interacting with any software application or website in the same way a human would, or by seamlessly connecting to web services and data sources.

On the other hand, the cognitive world (or Artificial Intelligence) is technology that is designed to operate in a way that mimics human behaviour, such as:

• Reading – by utilising OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Text Analytics
• Listening – by utilising NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Voice Analytics
• Communicating – by utilising Chatbots (via voice or text activation).

The robotic capabilities largely mimic the human ability to take action, by utilising robotic and desktop automation to execute basic and repetitive tasks. Like humans, cognitive systems are not born perfect. They need to learn by observing and adapting to their environment (much in the same way that a human would). This is typically done by ingesting data, processing it and storing it for future reference.

The robotic and cognitive worlds both have their strengths. Just as the robotic world relies on connectivity to systems (to automate simple, routine tasks), the cognitive world relies on data (and smart algorithms) to mimic human intelligence. The combination of both the robotic and cognitive, which is R&CA, enables enterprises to draw upon the strengths of both worlds.