Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation have exploded onto the business technology scene over the last decade for good reason. Together, they are transforming organizations’ abilities to do more with less, discover greater profitability, and scale to meet fluctuating demand. It might seem like they share mutual technical capabilities because they’re so often referred to in tandem, but they are starkly different technologies.
It’s important to understand the distinction between AI and automation — specifically robotic process automation (RPA) — so you can grasp how they work in unique ways to deliver all kinds of business benefits. Read on to learn about them individually and how they pair so you can make the right technology choices for your business.
What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
SAP defines RPA as “a business process automation technology that uses virtual software robots, also known as digital robots or bots, to perform manual, time-consuming work or tasks.” Software bots are workflows that carry out tasks in a specific orderover and over.
Key features of RPA include:
- Task automation: RPA automates simple, repetitive tasks like data entry. These tasks typically don’t require human decision-making skills, and they are often tedious and error-prone when humans perform them.
- Rule-based processes: RPA excels at automating workflows that follow specific rules that are unlikely to change significantly over time or require exemptions or human intervention.
- No machine learning capabilities: Unlike AI, RPA does not learn based on previous processing actions.
RPA is commonly used in these cases:
- Data entry and extraction: Plugging volumes of values from spreadsheets into other spreadsheets or applications can be done in seconds.
- Downloading data and documents: RPA automates the retrieval and capture of documents from portals — and associated data entry — relieving staff from having to manually login, navigate to multiple web pages, download, and place data and documents into another system.
- Collecting data and documents: RPA can navigate to multiple web pages and applications gathering data and documents and centralizing into a single user interface for users to work from (think about those web sites getting you the lowest fares possible from all the airlines 🙂)
- Customer service automation: RPA helps customer support teams manage tickets, process data, and complete transactions by automating information retrieval, updating records, and more.
What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
AI is “technology that enables machines to demonstrate human-like reasoning and capabilities such as autonomous decision making,” according to SAP. AI leverages machine learning to process data and learn from it — making predictions, identifying patterns, solving problems, and performing decision-making.
Key features of AI include:
- Machine learning and deep learning: These technologies are subsets of AI that enable AI to learn from data. Machine learning (ML) applies algorithms to learning methods and can analyze large data sets. Deep learning is a subset of ML that uses neural networks to learn from data — automatically discovering patterns and relationships within the data.
- Decision-making and problem-solving capabilities: By analyzing vast volumes of data using ML and deep learning, AI identifies what the smartest decisions might be and offers answers to questions and solutions to problems.
- Ability to process and analyze large datasets: While AI can analyze immense amounts of data, its ability to analyze certain-sized data sets is dependent on a few factors, including the AI model’s architecture and computing resources.
Types of AI include:
- Decisioning : AI can make predictions much faster than humans and perform predictive analytics to identify the likelihood of outcomes based on data.
- Document: Machine learning will help find content and be taught how to find it in the future. Natural language processing (NLP) understands “intent” and can prioritize or route work based on that intent.
- Generative: Humans using natural language questions to augment development and information gathering. This leads to developer productivity, business insights, and summarizing content g.
Key Differences Between RPA and AI
The main difference between RPA and AI is that AI has the capability to learn and improve decision-making while RPA does not. RPA automates repetitive tasks while AI mimics human intelligence.
Additionally, RPA and AI differ in their support of an organization’s scalability and flexibility. RPA helps both by speeding up pre–defined work, and AI does so by adapting and evolving according to new data the organization takes in.
RPA is also typically used with legacy systems for integrations since these older systems do not have modern integration techniques.
AI also has the ability to interact with humans. Humans can ask regular questions which are then interpreted to perform one of more tasks rather than cycling through tasks like an RPA bot.
Synergy Between RPA and AI
RPA and AI work together to bolster each other’s unique capabilities. Here are a few examples of how:
- Customer service: As described above, RPA handles routine tasks like data entry, account information retrieval, password resets, and more, while AI enables chatbots to help customers complete self-service tasks.
- Fraud detection: AI is able to identify patterns in data to detect anomalies and suspicious behavior while RPA can take actions like automatically freezing an account.
- HR onboarding: RPA takes care of setting up accounts and sending routine emails while AI can suggest personalized training materials.
Explore RPA and AI for Your Organization
RPA and AI remain distinct, but they are a powerful pair. Together, these revolutionary technologies help organizations increase efficiency, accuracy, and overall decision-making to improve operations and scalability.
Whether you’re already using some level of automation or AI in your business or you are beginning your journey with these technologies, All Star can help. Our RPA and AI experts enable organizations to take advantage of these solutions to set a framework for long-term growth. Get in touch with us today to learn more.