Over the past 5 years, intelligent automation has changed the way we work driving new trends, obstacles, insights, and risks. We explore different corners of IA with some of our past speakers touching on points such as prioritizing problems before implementation, the affects of IA on different industries, and cybersecurity threats.

When it comes to robotic process automation, AIG’s Global Senior Director, Manik Patel, says priorities lie with identifying your problems in order to set a strategy. Patel shares one of his success stories with a past client that initially wanted to implement an AI based tool before focusing on the right problems to solve. After being properly guided and prioritizing their problems effectively, his client was able to improve their conversion ratio and increase their sales by 340% allowing their business to flourish. He continues to highlight the importance of overall mindfulness when scaling up IA processes, such as aligning your overall automation strategy with your corporate strategy. He emphasizes how taking initiatives to implement RPA technology and scale up is crucial in today’s world. Patel also touches on how IA with change the nature of work in a sense of creating a labor deficit as new jobs emerge, referencing how the influx of social media created jobs like social media coordinator. Hear more about Manik Patel’s tips and insights in his interview from IA Week.

Michael Edmonds, the Robotic Process Automation Manager at Farmers New World Life Insurance Company, enlightens us on how automated technologies have enhanced the insurance industry as well as improved employee experience. He explains the success of his RPA implementation experience saying, “we started small, we put in a couple robots and they were pretty successful and then when we started the next round of them, people started to get the idea that we weren't replacing their jobs [but] that we were taking the bad parts of their jobs…and we were getting the robots to do them.” After the introduction of automated technologies and RPA, Edmonds explains how the nature of his company has changed from being clerical and paper heavy to having faster and more accurate operations. With the operation enhancement, his team started up their own in-house production, project management, and IT support creating a multitude of jobs within the company. To hear more about Michael Edmonds’ success stories and insights on how IA is affecting the insurance industry, access his interview.

NASA’s Director of Service Delivery, Kenneth Newton, shares not only how RPA has improved their organization operations, but also the many opportunities it can provide for other government organizations. He explains how RPA implementation has given NASA, an organization known for technology and excellence, the opportunity to continuously improve their operations across shared services functions like HR, procurement, and finance. This continuous improvement initiative has taken off, allowing employees to accomplish more tasks day-to-day as well as open more time to focus on conducting higher skill level activities. He continues, stating how implementing RPA has given employees the opportunity to engage in more customer relationship building activities. Newton also sheds light on why other government organizations should implement automated technologies by stating, “We owe it to the American taxpayer to do things more effectively and more efficiently,” explaining how NASA can set a great example as well as help expand RPA to other federal agencies. Access Kenneth Newton’s interview for more insights into RPA in government.

With the increase in intelligent automation technologies in company operations, Roderick Kaleho, Director of Security & Risk - IAM & Automation at Cargill highlights the top cybersecurity threats organizations should be addressing. He explains the first risk where organizations have material weaknesses is in identity and access management, which lies at the heart of most breaches. RPA and bots with elevated privileges are prime targets for access hacking due to their abilities to be used across the organizations environment. Kaleho continues with overall data governance as another high cybersecurity priority. He elaborates stating, “If you have a robust data governance, data protection and control… that will be an utmost concern.” Another cyber threat Roderick touches on is the importance of privacy and keeping an eye on where your technologies are filtering and transferring your data. He emphasizes that scaling up your IA processes and capabilities also increases your risks, saying he encourages companies to determine their stance before moving up onto bigger automated processes. For more insights into the importance of cybersecurity with intelligent automation, watch Roderick Kaleho’s full interview.

Intelligent automation still remains a young trend with many benefits and challenges ahead. By learning from the insights of experienced professionals, we can take the opportunity to enhance the nature of work across industries for faster, more accurate and efficient operations. When starting out your IA journey, here are some things to keep in mind: prioritize your problems before jumping to the solution, keep in mind that risks increase at the same pace, and maintain cybersecurity when scaling up your operations to secure data protection and avoid cyber attacks. As time progresses, we can expect intelligent automation to guide different industries in different ways yet all with one common goal: enhancing organizations’ enterprise for a better way of life.