Intelligent automation:

The future of digitalisation

in organisations
May 2021
 Contents
1. Digitalisation: An imperative for organisations today 4
2. Understanding the components of IA 5
3. The IA market in India 9
4. Moving ahead with IA 15
5. Creating a future-ready workforce 18

2 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

Preface
In 2020, 94.7% of Indian organisations fast-tracked some level of digital transformation programmes. Further,
92.3% are reinventing their business models.1 These staggering statistics indicate an unprecedented scale of
change in the organisational landscape.

Thus, with the objective of capturing the role and impact of the digital enterprise, IAMAI’s Digital Transformation
Council, with the help of its knowledge partner PwC India, decided to study the key pillars of digitalisation, the
value of technologies like intelligent automation (IA), the impact of COVID-19 on its adoption, its expected
evolution, its growth drivers, and the skill set requirements.

In the preface to this report, it is important to note that digital transformation is not only the adoption of the
latest technologies – it’s also about data, processes and overall organisational change. It’s about operational,
strategic and cultural transformation. The forecasts suggest that the global market for the internet of things
(IoT) end-user solutions is expected to grow to around USD 1.6 trillion by 2025,2 even though 65% of risk
management leaders believe that risks from transformation adoption and tech will increase in 2021.3

Artificial intelligence (AI)is expected to increase economic growth exponentially over the next few decades.
Research also suggests that 64% of Indian organisations expect to increase demand for cloud computing
as a result of COVID-19 alone.4 The combination of digital and physical technologies like AI, IoT, additive
manufacturing, robotics, cloud computing, and others is expected to disrupt established business models and
challenge the status quo of how organisations operate, what employees and customers expect from them, and
how they compete in the market. Hence, digital transformation is a top strategic objective today.

This study reveals that IA itself has delivered significant benefits, including immediate reduction in operational
costs, rapid return on investment, and shifting priorities of the employee workforce to innovation, strategy,
and other business development activities with speed, agility, resiliency, accuracy, and better regulatory
compliance. It has also introduced increased employee satisfaction through a focus on high-value activities
while driving real-time transactions and many other useful insights.

Digital transformation in an organisation could be powered by automated, intelligent, and transparent initiatives,
ensuring wow customer, employer and supplier experiences. It is our pleasure to share this report with the
hope that it will enable key stakeholders of the digital ecosystem to make an informed choice for the future.

Vinay Kumar
Director, Artificial Intelligence, Azure and Search Partnerships, Microsoft and
Chair – IAMAI’s Digital Transformation Council

1 https://hbr.org/2019/05/the-ups-and-downs-of-indias-digital-transformation
2 https://www.statista.com/statistics/976313/global-iot-market-size/#:~:text=The%20global%20market%20for%20
Internet,around%201.6%20trillion%20by%202025.
3 https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/risk-management-leader.html
4 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP46454420

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 3

 Digitalisation: An imperative
for organisations today

Rise of the digital enterprise Role of intelligent automation

According to PwC’s 24th Annual Global CEO Survey, nearly 49% in the digitalisation journey
of CEOs plan to increase their rate of digital investment by 10% or
more over the next three years.5 With digitalisation fast becoming Technologies such as big data, intelligent automation (IA) and
a precursor of growth, organisations today are recognising the AI are at the forefront of the next wave of digitisation. Big data
importance of creating a business strategy that aligns closely allows companies to gather large amounts of data and extract
with their digital strategy. Organisations across industries are meaningful insights that can be used to make strategic business
increasingly adopting enterprise architecture (EA) to realise the advancements, minimising costs and maximising results.
benefits of digital transformation and stay ahead of the digital However, only gathering large amounts of data is rarely enough.
curve. As a result, we see the evolution of digital enterprises. Organisations are including data analytics in their ecosystem
These are businesses that implement a complete digitalisation to mass-customise offerings, optimise and improve customer
strategy to make the best use of digital tools and technologies experience, mitigate risks and further utilise data-transforming
across the length and breadth of their operations. As a growing and modelling capabilities to lay out a future roadmap. Combining
number of organisations are redefining their operational processes automation with data analytics can help organisations to deliver
around emerging technologies and ensuring consistent delivery quicker outcomes through increased accuracy and enhanced
of services, they want to use these capabilities to become more operational efficiency. Advancements in analytics, IA and AI are
customer centric. Digital enterprises focus on the conversion of enabling businesses to improve performance and productivity,
informational resources into digital formats and automation of reshape organisational structure, permanently upgrade the ways of
business processes with scalable technologies – cloud computing, working, and have a significant impact on the economy.
internet of things (IoT) artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning
(ML) and various technology-driven solutions. Software automation
technologies are the key towards creating robust and resilient
infrastructure that is capable of being scaled up to meet this
exponentially increasing demand for agile, digitally empowered
organisations.

5 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2021/report.html#digital-acceleration

4 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

The four pillars of digitisation

Digitisation

Data and analytics competency – big data

Analytics competency –
1
(volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value)
IA competency –
automation path

analytics path
Standardisation Personalisation
An
on

aly
ati

Simplification Decision making

t
tom

ics
Au

Automation AI competency Analytics

3
2

4 AI competency

Productivity Experience Revenue Profits

Source: PwC analysis

Organisations across sectors and industries are harnessing the as organisations move higher up the digitalisation maturity curve.
potential of digital technologies to gain significant competitive Fast-evolving product capabilities complemented by ease of use
advantage. As per a PwC report, emerging technologies for non-developers are fuelling market growth and enabling citizen-
(augmented reality, drones, virtual reality, IoT, robots, blockchain led innovation in IA adoption.
and AI) are driving rapid cross-functional innovation and making
Furthermore, this exponential increase in the adoption of IA is
organisations smarter.6
driven by the increased capabilities of cognitive technologies
IA is a crucial component of the digitisation agenda. The layering to solve practical challenges and their proven ability to deliver
of automation and intelligent technologies such as smart optical tangible results such as decreasing costs and increasing revenues.
character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP)/ Firms are exploring new avenues of moving up the automation
natural language generation (NLG) and ML enable organisations maturity curve as more competitors adopt IA.
to transform the way they work. IA is fast becoming mainstream

6 https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/gx/en/digital.html

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 5

 Understanding the
components of IA

IA combines the capabilities of robotic process automation (RPA) Furthermore, hyperautomation is an increasing trend among
with smart OCR, conversational AI and cognitive intelligence: organisations as IA capabilities evolve and organisational
demand for end-to-end automation grows. Process-mining tools,
RPA: RPA can be defined as technology that configures or
business process management and advanced analytics are being
interacts with computer software to capture and interpret
increasingly used by organisations to expand the scope of IA and
information, thereby enabling transaction processing, data transfer,
realise greater benefits.
data comparison, etc.
• Process mining supports the analysis of data, including diving
Smart OCR: OCR/intelligent character recognition (ICR) is the
deeply into how teams work to show them what to automate.
conversion of images into machine-readable format. Using OCR/
ICR is the first step towards converting images/scanned documents • Business process management automates a complete set of
into editable and searchable data. tasks involved in an end-to-end workflow.
• Advanced analytics helps in unlocking the value of data to
Conversational AI: Conversational AI is a set of technologies
provide deeper insights that enable real-time decision making.
that allows human-like interactions with computers. It enables
computers to understand natural language (including speech and
text) and respond in a manner that mimics human conversation.7

Cognitive intelligence: Cognitive intelligence is a set of pretrained

algorithms/skills that replicate human decision-making abilities and
seamlessly integrate them within the bot ecosystem. It uses ML to
make predictions based on historic data and NLP to understand,
generate and process text.

7 https://genietalk.ai/what-is-conversational-ai

6 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

Transformation of a traditional enterprise to an intelligent enterprise

Traditional + Machine + Natural language + Deep Intelligent

enterprise learning processing learning = enterprise

Augmented Conversational Unlock value and real-

Traditional automation
intelligence intelligence time decisions

RPA OCR/ICR Chatbot/voicebot ML/NLP

Executes rule-based and Recognises content and Conversational automation Automation using its own
repetitive processes by extracts information from an which integrates with historical data to provide
mimicking what users do on image or scanned document systems on the backend deeper insights, enabling
their computer real-time decision making

Source: PwC analysis

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 7

IA tools can also be used for low-code and drag-and-drop methods of solution development, making the adoption of citizen-led
automation possible and beneficial for organisations across sectors.

Benefits delivered by IA

Cost reduction Quality and compliance

Software robotics brings immediate reduction in The automated nature of software robotics reduces
operational cost beyond labour arbitrage, and realises errors and leaves a digital audit trail that increases
rapid return on investment. accuracy and regulatory compliance, enabling
programmable controls.

Value-focused talent Revenue enhancement

Software robotics increases revenue growth through
The priorities of the employee workforce shift to
shorter cycle time to service customers.
innovation, strategy and other business development
activities. There is a one-to-one relationship between a bot and
the tasks it automates for a single worker (full-time
equivalent or FTE). In others, a single bot automates
tasks performed by three to five workers. Savings are
Scalability easy to calculate.
A virtual workforce can respond to growth events (e.g.
organic, acquisitive) with speed, agility and resiliency. 24/7
Once developed, automated solutions can be used to
Robots never sleep and many of today’s digitally
ramp up/down volumes easily.
enabled processes can be orchestrated to operate
autonomously 24x7, driving real-time transactions.

Employee and customer satisfaction Speed to value and low risk

Increased employee satisfaction through a focus on Software robotics has a quick time to delivery and
higher value activities will, together with fewer errors, avoids the invasive traditional system integration.
result in more satisfied customers. Weeks or months instead of years.

Source: PwC analysis

8 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

As organisational strategies and operating models vary, so do the Improved employee efficiency and job satisfaction
benefits envisaged from implementing automation programmes
In today’s technology-driven competitive landscape, maintaining
and the metrics used to track progress. The objectives of such
a motivated and action-oriented workforce is important for
implementation is to enable human-digital workforce collaboration
businesses to advance. A widespread misconception about IA is
and make it as seamless as possible. This in turn should translate
that robots will replace the human workforce, ultimately leading to
into increased productivity, reduced costs, redeployment of
job losses. However, IA capabilities help in the better execution of
employees to more cognitive functions – depending on what the
tedious and rule-based tasks, thus enabling humans to focus on
goals are, how the automation strategy is defined and the current
more strategic value-add activities.
automation maturity. While the focus is on error-free processing
and reducing turnaround time in the early stages, mature A 2019 survey conducted by a US-based business magazine
automation programmes can enhance scalability and compliance. found that out of 300+ senior executives who had explored IA,
96% reported increased employee efficiency and 93% observed
The large-scale and growing adoption of IA has enabled
enhanced employee satisfaction.8
businesses to automate more than just repetitive rule-based
activities, create greater value from their human resources Improved employee satisfaction and efficiency result in lower
and streamline workflows/processes to accelerate their digital attrition and increased productivity, both of which are important
transformation journey. The key aspects that help businesses factors to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
leverage IA to drive competitiveness are mentioned below:
Using IA capabilities to harness the value of data and
Using AI and IA to upgrade business processes/systems propel informed decision making
without disrupting current operations
Businesses today have access to large amounts of data that
Although many businesses have started implementing AI to can be converted into relevant business insights and help in risk
advance their digital transformation strategies, they are also mitigation. Leveraging IA technologies allows businesses to better
alarmed by the perceived difficulties in implementation. A key integrate gathered data into the current ecosystem. In case the
concern amongst businesses is that the implementation of AI data is unstructured, AI can be utilised to transform information into
capabilities can impact existing IT systems and daily operations, a robot-friendly format. Together, AI and IA can help in unlocking
leading to increased complexity and added efforts. insights that enhance human decision-making capabilities.
Organisations are wary of the risks posed by incidents that impact
critical operations. They are increasingly looking at platforms and Enhanced customer experience
tools that can seamlessly incorporate AI capabilities such as ML Customer service has become a prominent differentiator in
and NLP into existing processes and systems without disrupting the digital age. With IA executing manual tasks and repetitive
current operations. Such demands are enhancing the maturity workflows, employees can now devote more time and effort to
of AI products and services, and vendors are prioritising these addressing customer needs and swiftly resolve their concerns.
parameters when coming up with updates and new releases. This Employees can further work towards developing creative solutions
is enabling businesses to leverage IA to perform usual business and addressing unresolved customer issues. This enables
operations as well as significantly upgrade their status quo. businesses to deliver better customer service and strengthen their
position among competitors.

8 Accelerating business value with intelligent automation, Forbes Insights, 2019

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 9

 The IA market in India

IA adoption is witnessing continuous growth across organisations. every sector. Moving forward, most organisations will be using IA to
As more organisations understand the value of automation, service drive business growth further and encourage greater productivity,
providers are developing products that are bridging the gap for creativity, leadership and innovation among their employees.
the democratisation of IA. The COVID-19 pandemic has further

Indian businesses are finding value

accelerated IA adoption across industries.

According to a PwC report charting India’s mid-term journey

following the COVID-19 crisis, rapid acceleration of digital in the use of IA
technologies will change many aspects of operations. Through
their ability to build transparency, improve efficiency and develop The Indian outlook towards automation is particularly optimistic
resilience, process automation technologies such as chatbots, because the country has gained extensively from previous software
automated calling, voice assistants and RPA will gain further booms. India’s largely young population makes automation a key
traction.9 priority for the economy. Acquiring the right skills in automation
is essential for India to retain the advantages of its demographic
There are a very few areas of business that are yet to undergo any dividend. Organisations across the country expect their key
kind of automation. Utilising bots for repetitive tasks is generating business metrics such as profitability and customer retention to
value and improving the efficiency and productivity of businesses in improve as a result of automation.

9 https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/research-insights/full-potential-revival-and-growth

10 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

 Automation in front offices The IA market in India has huge potential for growth since the
adoption of IA is relatively in its early stages. While organisations
As automation objectives evolve to tackle customer-centric across industries continue to explore IA, there is immense scope
functions using cognitive tools and technologies, there is an for large-scale incorporation of automation as an integral part of
increase in automation adoption in front offices as well. While an organisation’s operating model. The demand for IA has grown
highly repetitive back-office tasks in IT, finance and human significantly across various sectors in India over the past few
resources (HR) departments were the most automated functions in years to improve business-process efficiency. The BFSI sector
business processes when organisations were just getting started has been one of the early movers in adopting IA by automating
with RPA, businesses are now also increasingly introducing IA in core business functions to reduce costs and focus on strategic
consumer-facing functions such as marketing and sales. value-add activities. IA adoption has also gained momentum in
sectors such as telecom, retail and consumer goods, transport and
The Indian economy has grown consistently – from a USD 0.47 logistics, healthcare and manufacturing over the past few years.
trillion10 economy in 2000 to a USD 2.87 trillion11 economy in Education, oil and gas, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and
2019. This growth of India’s economy has been fuelled by factors government offices are gradually implementing IA as well.
such as economic liberalisation, financial reforms, favourable
business dynamics, a large graduate pool, digitalisation and While most organisations started with pure-play RPA initiatives,
globalisation. The Government aims to make India a USD 5 trillion India is now witnessing a strong shift towards the adoption of more
economy by 2025. To achieve this transformation, it is necessary sophisticated tools and technologies to handle more complex,
to foster sustainable growth through drivers such as technology. end-to-end processes via automation. The IA market in India is
IA can increase productivity, enhance scalability and reduce estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
processing time and costs across sectors and businesses, thereby 55%, with large enterprises expected to spend approximately USD
accelerating growth across all the sectors at the grassroots level. 340–350 million in IA capabilities in 2024.12 The overall expenditure
is expected to exceed this figure since the market now also
includes start-ups and various SMEs.
GDP growth of India (in USD trillion)

2019
2018
Impact of COVID-19 on IA adoption
2017 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented
2016
changes in how organisations function. It is the need of the hour
2015
for organisations across the world to re-engineer the ways of doing
2014
business. It is also of utmost importance for organisations to re-
2013
focus on key support functions of businesses that will enable them
2012
to stabilize in this new atmosphere and develop new strategies
2011
for what’s next.13 Organisations need to transform themselves into
Year

2010
2009 modern workplaces that enable the synergy between their human
2008 and machine workforce, with the former assuming responsibilities
2007 for strategic and customer-centric initiatives and the latter
2006 executing repetitive activities.
2005
The pandemic has further increased the adoption of emerging
2004
technologies. As organisations witnessed the impact of a resilient
2003
operating model amidst the pandemic first-hand, COVID-19
2002
has proven to be an opportunity , giving organisations a chance
2001
2000 to repair (emerge from the present crisis), rethink (plan for
transformation) and reconfigure (make fundamental updates to the
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 modus operandi and achieve sustainable competitive advantage).
GDP
Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.
CD?locations=IN

10 World Bank GDP Data: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=IN

11 Ibid.
12 https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/hyper-intelligent-automation-spend-by-global-enterprises-will-reach-usd-4-7-billion-in-
2020-says-zinnov-873983712.html
13 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/crisis-solutions/covid-19.html

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 11

Organisation-level processes and requests as well as high-volume
and repetitive tasks which were once carried out in person can
now be automated. Entire workflows across departments should
be mapped out to figure out their automation potential. All such
workflows should be automated to improve operational efficiency
and reduce processing time. IA is helping businesses to deal with
the crisis and find ways to move forward as more organisations
shift towards digital.

According to a survey conducted by PwC in August–September

2020, the crisis has brought automation technologies to the
forefront and led to a surge in automation investment. Furthermore,
the nature of challenges related to adoption has changed from
purely technical to business-related factors.14 Organisational
priorities have shifted, and more organisations have started
adopting digital tools and technologies. This initially helped support
basic business operations and is now allowing them to emerge with
more robust digitally empowered operating models:

Shifting priorities for IA adoption

Start of 2020 Now

1 1 Increasing productivity/improving process efficiency

2 2 Digital transformation/automation adoption

3 3 Need to cut costs

4 4 Employee upskilling and future sustainability

Source:
5 Gartner 2020 5 Improving technology infrastructure

6 6 Need to be better prepared for risks

7 7 Responding to regulatory change

8 8 Simplification - the need to reduce complexity in business

9 9 Merger or acquisition

10 10 Need to exploit opportunities for growth

11 11 Need for culture change

Source: PwC research and analysis

14 https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/data-and-analytics/ai-an-opportunity-amidst-a-crisis.pdf

12 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

 Organisations that were already ahead on the maturity curve were more resilient
throughout the disruption. One year into the crisis and with the pandemic far from
over, India is now going through a second wave of infections. Witnessing the
gaps between pioneers in automation and laggards is likely to have accelerated
the pace of adoption as organisations adapt to the new normal.

How we expect the IA market to evolve in

the future
IA is a dynamic technology which empowers businesses with advanced
capabilities to help carry out agile processes and enhance performance. IA
enables businesses to increase process efficiency and improve overall customer
experience. Organisations can also optimise operations, mitigate risks, reduce
costs and redeploy the workforce to focus on cognitive activities which create
strategic value.

Due to such vast applications and usability, the IA market is growing at an

unprecedented rate. According to Analytics Insight, the global IA market is
predicted to grow at a CAGR of 14.5%15 – from USD 13 billion to USD 25.7
billion and USD 50.5 billion by 2025 and 2030 respectively.16

Global IA market (in USD billion)

50.5
44.1
CAGR 14.6%
38.5
33.7
29.4
25.7
22.4
19.6
17.1
13.0 14.9
10.0 11.4

2018 (A) 2019 (A) 2020 (A) 2021 (F) 2022 (F) 2023 (F) 2024 (F) 2025 (F) 2026 (F) 2027 (F) 2028 (F) 2029 (F) 2030 (F)

Source: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/

A comparison between the different sectors that have adopted IA capabilities indicates that the banking, financial services and insurance
(BFSI) sector will lead the race with a CAGR of 16.1% in the next ten years. The BFSI sector is closely followed by the telecommunications
and healthcare sectors, which are predicted to grow at a CAGR of 16% and 15.1% respectively.

15 https://www.analyticsinsight.net/analytics-insight-predicts-north-america-europe-witness-maximum-growth-intelligent-automation-market/
16 Ibid

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 13

Growth drivers for IA
To understand what is causing this surge in IA adoption, it is
worthwhile to understand both how organisational requirements
are evolving and how product and services are becoming more
competent in addressing these needs. The demand is particularly
fuelled by business requirements that no longer operate in a
vacuum but must continuously adapt in line with the competitive
environment. On the supply side, both automation product vendors
and the service industry are working in tandem to deliver valuable
innovation continuously.

Demand-side drivers

• Rising organisational needs to achieve efficiency in operations

• Proven value of IA in various industries
• Focus on enriching customer experience and reducing
customer TAT

Operational efficiency: Automation enables businesses to

focus on strategic value-add activities, customer experience and
leadership, while robots perform supporting tasks effectively and
seamlessly. This can result in increased operational efficiency due
to better optimisation of resources.

Proven value of IA: BFSI has been one of the early adopters
of IA. Intelligent adoption has helped the sector to improve the
overall customer experience, enhance security, speed up account
processing, mitigate risk and reduce human hours spent on
addressing repetitive tasks. The visible benefits of IA have led to
growth in demand across industries.

Focus on enriching customer experience and reducing

customer TAT: A good customer experience maximises speed
and efficiency and builds a foundation for loyalty while maintaining
a human element that is embedded within automation, AI or other
technologies. It leaves consumers feeling content, satisfied and
appreciated, and has a tangible monetary impact on businesses.
Based on a survey conducted by PwC,17 75% of customers
indicated that they would want to interact with real people more as
technology improves. Automation reduced human effort on menial
tasks, enabling employees to be more engaged with customers,
provide better services and get necessary support from technology
to provide a truly seamless customer experience.

Supply-side drivers

• More sophisticated tools and products with better capabilities

• Low-code/no-code automation solutions
• Lower cost of licensing

17 https://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2018/experience-is-everything-heres-how-to-get-it-right.html

14 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

 More sophisticated tools and products with better
capabilities
The leading IA products are those that started as pure-play robotic
process automation (RPA) products but have continuously evolved
to bring in more capabilities. Leading RPA vendors have all started
to offer hyper automation capabilities. RPA serves as the starting
point for adopting cognitive technologies and other advanced tools
such as process mining tools, workforce enablement capabilities
and advanced analytics. With hyper automation, organisations can
achieve both scale and increase the speed of delivering automated
solutions into production. Enhanced capabilities through the use
of evolving AI technologies empower business, IT and citizen
developers to contribute to the automation transformation journey.
Robots thus act as complements to the existing workforce and
end-to-end processes can be automated more quickly instead of
following a band-aid approach.

Low-code/no-code automation solutions

Various automation solutions have been tailored to automate
repetitive, structured and non-cognitive processes. However, with
the emergence of technology where RPA is integrated with evolving
AI technologies, it is now possible to create a digital workforce for
end-to-end business automation. Moreover, the focus has shifted
to enabling citizen developers across the organisation to start
automating tasks they do repeatedly as a part of their routine work.

Easy drag-and-drop functionalities along with better tool capabilities

increase adoption across business teams, allowing the IT teams to
focus on providing the right infrastructure and managing reusable
components across functions and departments.

Lower cost of licensing

The adoption of IA is growing at an unprecedented rate. According
to PwC’s 24th Annual Global CEO Survey, 36% of CEOs are
focusing on productivity through automation and technology, a
124% increase compared to 2016.18 The IA software market is
expected to transform in the next five years, with large multinational
IT companies already entering the IA market through acquisitions
or partnerships. The increased competition among vendors
will force them to try and cement their position by acquiring a
sizeable customer base. One way to do that is by offering superior
capabilities at better licensing costs. As more and more players
enter the market, the licensing cost is expected to decrease, which
will further boost the adoption of IA.

Over the past few years, RPA has acted as a driving force that
allowed organisations to slowly experiment with software robotics
for straightforward, low-risk processes and gradually advance
towards cognitive automation technologies. As a non-intrusive,
standardised technology, organisations reaped quick gains from
RPA while also increasing their digital acumen. With the increasing
adoption of cognitive technologies, this line between RPA and IA
seems to be blurring. More and more organisations are skipping the
stepping stone of RPA to directly automate end-to-end processes
and pilot RPA, smart OCR, NLP and predictive analytics in the early
stages of automation technology adoption.

18 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2021/reports/pwc-24th-global-ceo-survey.pdf

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 15

 Moving ahead with IA

One of the major challenges for businesses when using IA to automate their business processes is how to scale up and sustain this
practice. In reality, many businesses are not able to really push their automation projects forward in the business ecosystem, but merely
use the technology in-house to operate a few automated processes. Businesses therefore require a holistic IA practice to deliver consistent
and continuous gains on an ongoing basis.

Challenges to scaling up automation

People fear change and accepting new technology can be stressful for
People and talent gap them as they may experience shifts in their responsibilities. The new normal
and adoption of digital tools have led to considerable changes in required
skillsets. Implementation of IA with an unstructured and unsustainable
approach leads to chaos and acceptance issues.

Lack of guidance on selection of processes for automation and assessment

Technology
Challenges to of suitable tools and RoI is still an inherent challenge for organisations.
scaling up Organisations need to build infrastructure that supports future growth and
can evolve as technology advances. Flexibility and adaptability to new
solutions/tools and technologies are important.

Increasing pressure to innovate and digitise processes are sometimes not

Governance and vision
accompanied by the oversight and protocols required to manage a digital
workforce.
Centralised control, a vital element of IA, is often overlooked by enterprises.
This may result in the achievement of short-term benefits, while the long-
term impact of a rapid scale up is neglected.

16 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

For a business to achieve maximum scale, it needs to go through various phases of automation. The figure below illustrates how
businesses unlock value as they go through each phase of automation:

Scaling up the automation programme

Initialise Industrialise Institutionalise

Establish IA CoE (hub and

IA is a core component of the
Define vision and target operating spoke model).
Strategy technology stack.
model for automation. Create group hub governance
Maximise use of digital workforce.
and implementation guidelines.

Define organisational roles as well as Future organisational design Bots created on demand and
broader changes to support RPA. decisions include embedding sold as a shared capability across
Establish governance, KPIs and digital workforce as an integral part functions/regions
Structure Split work between digital and
support model. of operating teams.
human workforce.

Set up and roll out standardised Showcase automation to the Run strategic automation
approach towards RPA broader organisation. campaigns focused on specific
Process implementation. Gamify the programme and use issues/key business drivers.
(Discover - design - develop - debug - benefit realisation as a measure Analytics-driven demand
deploy - maintain - decommission) for further traction. generation/reporting

Use core team to train and mentor

new team members in line with Upskill/reskill staff to enable
Identify and train core RPA team – team expansion.
People a cohesive human digital
set up CoE. Incentivise staff on contribution workforce.
towards automation.

Establish IA best practices (design,

Establish infrastructure, Fully virtual automation
coding standards, reusable
Technology environments and architecture to environment
components).
support initial process automation. Alignment between RPA and AI
Implement resilient BCP/DR capability.

RPA AI IA powered by data

Source: PwC analysis

To truly convert from a traditional enterprise to an intelligent providing a central library for knowledge management. Governance
enterprise, a robust methodology needs be adopted from the very via a CoE will also methodise tools and frameworks followed
beginning. Below are certain factors that can help businesses to for opportunity identification, process assessment and resource
scale up IA and derive ongoing value across various operations allocation.
and departments:
Assess opportunities: Assessing the technical feasibility and
Incorporate IA into business strategy: Businesses should complexity and identifying process automation opportunities that
implement a top-down approach where the leadership team sets will generate the maximum benefits is crucial for a successful
the stage for incorporating automation into every department. automation transformation journey. At the start, the focus should
To scale up and sustain IA adoption, a three-step approach is be on easily implementable processes which can generate high
required: (1) Define an automation approach that takes into benefits in terms of manual hours saved, cost cutting and improved
account the customer experience, resources, investments and customer experience. In due course, automation decisions should
performance for an end-to-end transformation. (2) Lay out a be aligned with the strategic business objectives while leveraging
roadmap for the automation journey, estimate the value generation reusable or existing technical and operational capabilities.
and define success metrics to track performance. (3) Lock the
commitment towards automation across departments, identify
Enable the workforce: For a successful IA transformation, it is
imperative to build new skill sets that may not be available at the
automation drivers and have an established priority mechanism.
start of the journey. Hence, it is important to set a strong foundation
Establish a robust IA ‘centre of excellence’ (CoE): A robust with specific automation capabilities, workforce and governance to
CoE will act as a central backbone for governance, helping the integrate the IA training and learning programme into the business
business achieve automation transformation at scale. Governance ecosystem. One such way to do that is through the citizen-led
facilitates scale by standardising automation processes and development approach.

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 17

Citizen-led development approach

The enterprise-led automation approach followed in the past has not been able to achieve the desirable scale. An alternative approach where an
organisation enables infrastructure that allows its people to play a significant role in the digital transformation is called citizen-led development.

Up-knowledge Upskill Up-perform

Create awareness Train the selected citizens Scale up the upskilling programme
Create a digital hub – a one-stop Provide virtual classroom and hands-on Design elements of governance which can
knowledge portal for details on the training on automation/transformation orchestrate the success of the programme.
programme, use cases, demos and tools.
thought leadership. Enable sharing of automation ideas and
Evaluate the participants through hands- solutions across the organisation through
Help the citizens understand the why- on assessments and offline assignments. a common platform.
what-how of the programme through Provide on-demand support/feedback.
orientation and awareness sessions,
thereby encouraging participation. Distribute badges and certificates of
completion to encourage citizens to keep
innovating.

Programme planning and set-up

• Programme charter • Create customised material for • Prepare customised material,

• Target and objectives orientation workshops. agenda and schedule.

• Launch and communication • Cover an introduction to the • Design the format of the
programme, art of possible, benefit knowledge-imparting sessions.
• Tracking and monitoring
to the individual and market
overview.

Cohort
Overall programme Orientation Virtual classroom Assignments and
Digital hub structure for
planning workshop sessions Assessments
upskilling

Source: PwC analysis

18 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

 Creating a future-ready
workforce
IA is being widely adopted across different sectors, transforming creativity and leadership will be sought after. Education systems
not only the nature of work but also the workplace itself. IA will take will need to evolve – policymakers/governments and education
over some tasks performed by humans and complement them on providers will have to work together to develop an education
others. It also has the potential to perform tasks beyond human system with more emphasis on human skills and prepare the
capabilities. As a result, employment opportunities in certain fields younger generation for the future. IA will push us to become
will decline, while others may see a growth in opportunities. skilled at being creative and acquiring the ability to create better
solutions by leveraging the many benefits these digital tools offer
Based on an analysis done by PwC UK,19 the impact of IA on jobs
at every step. As automation takes up more than just repetitive and
will vary across industries over time. The analysis shows that while
standardised tasks, there is bound to be an increase in meaningful
the finance and insurance industry will see the most impact on jobs
work for employees across the experience spectrum. This in turn
in the initial years, this impact will subsequently peak, with around
will lead to a better quality of jobs and work-life balance.
30% of potential jobs at risk. Similarly, the transportation industry
will see minimum impact on jobs in the near future, but will be the The trend of automation creating more jobs than it destroys has
most impacted (50% potential jobs at risk) in the latter half of the already been evident over the past few decades. According
2030s. The difference in potential jobs at risks across industries to a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), robots and
is driven by the composition of tasks that can be automated. automation are creating more jobs in Asia than they destroy. ADB’s
People employed in the manufacturing and transportation industry analysis also revealed that adoption of automation would eliminate
spend a major portion of their time on manual tasks that have 101 million jobs. But at the same time, ADB expects 134 million
high automation potential, and these tasks can be completed with new jobs to be created, meaning an overall addition of 33 million
increased speed and accuracy through automation. On the other jobs.20 As always, skills are critical for long-term employability.
hand, people employed in the education sector take on tasks
In the fast-evolving world of automation, an optimistic outlook
which require creativity and social skills and are less likely to be
is therefore well justified from the perspective of both efficiency
automated.
and employment. IA is key to augmenting business performance
The potential job losses will be offset by additional job opportunities with technology innovation and human capabilities, and to
in the form of new roles created from advancement of technologies. solving important problems today. The increasing switch to digital
These new job opportunities will require specific skill sets. technology is visible all around us, and it has become imperative
Employees working hand in hand with IA will see an increase in for organisations to effectively align business strategies, not only
their output and productivity, which can further lead to increased as a response to this change but also to pave the way for digital
earnings. As more and more tasks are automated, innate human transformation.
skills such as logical thinking, problem solving, decision making,

19 https://www.pwc.com/hu/hu/kiadvanyok/assets/pdf/impact_of_automation_on_jobs.pdf
20 https://internetofbusiness.com/robots-ai-creating-more-jobs-in-asia-than-they-destroy-repo

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 19

About IAMAI
Established in 2004, the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is a not-for-profit industry body and the
country’s only organization representing the digital services industry with over 320 Indian and multinational
corporations as its members, which include established companies in diverse sectors of the digital ecosystem
as well as start-ups. Its mandate is to expand and enhance the online and mobile value added services
sectors. It is dedicated to presenting a unified voice of the businesses it represents to the government,
investors, consumers and other stakeholders. IAMAI represents varied sectors like Digital Advertising, Digital
Entertainment, TravelTech, Online Gaming, Digital Payments, FinTech, Digital Commerce, Edutech, Healthtech,
Agritech, Blockchain, Big-data, ML, AI & IoT, AR/ VR, LogisticsTech etc.

Contact us
Gaurav Chopra
[email protected]

20 Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations

About PwC About PwC’s
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve
important problems. We’re a network of firms in 155
Intelligent
countries with over 284,000 people who are committed to
delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services.
PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its
Automation
(IA) practice
member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity.
Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

Find out more about PwC India and tell us what matters
to you by visiting us at www.pwc.in.
PwC India’s IA practice assists clients in their IA journey from
© 2021 PwC. All rights reserved. strategy through execution. With their extensive experience,
our professionals support a transformation approach to
automation, including continuous improvement and innovation
to create a cutting-edge ‘IA value proposition’. Our practice has
diverse service offerings covering strategy, governance set-up,
automation feasibility and tool selection, centre of excellence

Contact us
set-up, implementation and deployment, BOT-managed
services, functional and technical training, and risk assessment.
The practice has a wide range of domain professionals and
technical consultants with wide experience with global clients
and in multiple industries/domains. Further, our team has
Sumit Srivastav strategic partnerships with top-tier market-leading IA vendors
Partner, Intelligent Automation and has considerable experience in integrating bots with niche
[email protected] cognitive automation technologies, including smart OCR and
conversational bots.

Sagar Kothe
Associate Director, Intelligent Automation
[email protected]

Contributors
Surjit Panigrahi
Aadya Sanwal
Piyush Bule

Intelligent automation: The future of digitalisation in organisations 21

Data Classification: DC0 (Public)
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PD/May 2021-M&C 12160