What comes first RPA, AI or both?
AI needs data and RPA needs processes. In order for AI to make the most of an organizations information. It makes sense to lay the right foundation. You can think of RPA as using automation to enable an information network within your organization. Once enabled, AI can capitalize on that information and provide insights that would otherwise not be available.
In RPA there is a lot of low hanging fruit in Finance and Accounting. On the administrative side of the business there are many possible process optimization projects that can tackle everything from Order-to-Cash to Procure-to-Pay. Automation projects can also handle, Credit Analysis and Processing, Sales Order Processing and Customer Master Data Management. If you can believe it, for many companies Order Entry is still a manual process.
Lets say you automated all of the above work in finance and accounting. Instead of you or your team focusing on the tedious work you used to do. You can now manage the work by handling a few exceptions. The rest of the work will be completed automatically.
Many organizations are currently implementing both AI projects and RPA projects in different business groups at the same time. This is because both AI and RPA projects tend to be narrow in scope. They are automating one process, problem and creating new opportunities.
As improvements in general AI continue to develop there will be an increasing number of opportunities for companies to leverage AI throughout the organization. The utility of general AI will be limited by the underlying systems and access to information.
It is hard to predict all of what AI will be able to do. But we do know that the sooner you implement RPA, the better position your company will be in when it comes time to make a decision on adding a layer of artificial intelligence to your business processes.
I believe RPA is laying the tracks for AI.
What do you think? Should a company invest in RPA, AI or both?
Let me know what you think. Leave a comment below.