RPA and IPA - Strategy and Management

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has successfully demonstrated the ability to improve the overall productivity of between 10% - 20% by automating repetitive, replicable and routine tasks. New research and development incorporating Cognitive Intelligence into RPA; also known as Intelligent Process Automation (IPA), is intended to take RPA further by combining Business Process Reengineering (BPR) with RPA and Machine Learning (ML) to further exploit the opportunities of improving the overall productivity of an organisation and improving customer experience in this Digital Economy. Some studies indicate that the implementation of IPA can potentially extend organisational productivity improvement to beyond 70% - 80% of existing processes. IPA (augmented with ML) to mimic activities carried out by humans and, over time, learns to do them even better is a fundamental shift from just automating what the human does today. IPA is basically traditional RPA powered with decision-making capabilities from advances in deep learning and cognitive technology. The promise of IPA is to radically enhance efficiency, increased worker performance, reduce operational risks, and improve response times and customer experiences.