A New Approach to Automating Services

Although the term robot brings to mind visions of electromechanical machines that perform human tasks, the term as it relates to service automation refers to something less threatening: software that performs certain repetitive and dreary service tasks previously performed by humans, so that humans can focus on more unstructured and interesting tasks. To help make sense of the landscape, the authors of this article classified the tools along a service automation continuum based on the specific types of data and processes. This article focuses on what is called robotic process automation software tools and platforms that can automate rules-based processes that involve structured data and deterministic outcomes. A broad range of service tasks are suitable for robotic process automation. Typically, companies indicated that they saw returns on investment of 30% or more during the first year of robotic process automation implementation; however, because of the nature of our study of early adopters, we cant say whether or not such returns on investment are typical. The field of service automation is progressing rapidly. Many case study participants said the next horizon would be tackling unstructured data with cognitive automation tools.