Today, most enterprises seek greater agility, improved efficiency, faster go-to-market, and most importantly the ability to adjust their business process in accordance with customer needs.

This ability to stay relevant in the market requires the adoption of automation software to enable intelligent business processes. These processes not only leverage robotic process automation and process mining, but also AI, including natural language processing and machine learning, in order to learn, adapt, and respond to decisions on their own. A prime example is IBM Cloud Paks for Automation, an AI-powered portfolio of solutions that helps customers streamline business processes, automate tasks based on data analysis, and continuously improve workflows that run centrally, in networks, and at the edge.
 

The adoption challenges

Most business leaders agree that using intelligent automation solutions to help their customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys is critical, yet there are many challenges when adopting automation solutions. Some of the key challenges include:

• Automation Strategy: Most organizations approach intelligent automation without considering the complexity of the process. A value-driven automation strategy that expands over time can ensure sustained benefits.
• Stakeholder Management: A shared vision and set of goals between business, technology and implementation partners is essential to better manage customers’ expectations during the automation journey.
• Identification of Starting Point: Selecting tasks that can be automated ahead of time may help business accomplish their automation goals faster.
• Risk and Compliance: Creating a measurable, compliant, and secure path to automation in order to manage shifting regulations and increased privacy concerns are of paramount importance.

The foundation

A recent IBM Institute for Business Value report surveyed 1500 global executives on the impact of intelligent automation initiatives. The study highlighted that more than half of executives planned to increase their AI investments in the next three years. Additionally, they expect these investments to pay off: 73% expect revenue growth from implementing intelligent automation technologies.

As the market evolves, enterprises should adopt a predetermined set of automation guidelines that include an assessment framework to identify a starting point, reference architectures to aid strategy and reduce risk and prebuild solution accelerators to increase the development and adoption of automation solutions.

The way forward  

The automation adoption journey is a challenging, yet important task for any enterprise. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and IBM share a viewpoint that flexible, portable, and secure automation solutions will solve operational challenges and accelerate business growth across the industry. The new IBM Automation Foundation, which underpins IBM Cloud Paks for Automation, is undoubtedly the answer. 

To help customers expedite decision-making and accelerate their productivity, TCS developed Jumpstart for Cloud Pak for Automation, an accelerator featuring predefined guidelines, reference architectures, playbooks, and case studies designed to help ease automation adoption across the enterprise. The Jumpstart uses IBM Cloud Paks for Automation to help businesses automate routine tasks and increase productivity.

TCS joined IBM’s ecosystem of partners using IBM’s new Automation Foundation, which underpins IBM Cloud Paks for Automation built on Red Hat OpenShift, to offer customers a portable, flexible, and secured path to optimization by automating business and IT processes to accelerate growth. The IBM Cloud Paks for Automation with IBM Automation Foundation together provide an intelligent automation platform that provides AI and machine learning-assisted automation recommendations and RPA-driven automations for users who are looking to resolve their challenges and inefficiencies in business and IT processes. Together, TCS and IBM can help customers unlock the true value of their data and accelerate their path to modernization.

This blog is authored by Punkaj Vohra (IBM Digital Business Automation Practice Head) and Sibabrata Mohanty (Head Data and Analytics, TCS - IBM Enterprise Cloud Architecture Unit) Tata Consultancy Services, Ltd.