A new report from Kofax, an Intelligent Automation software provider and Forrester finds that while many enterprises have prioritized automation, they’re struggling to scale. It also finds taking an integrated approach to intelligent automation can result in accelerated ROI, enhanced customer success and employee satisfaction, and reduced technical debt.

One of the key findings of the report is “in their haste to keep up with external pressures, many organizations are adopting several disparate and poorly integrated automation technologies. Nearly half of respondents report their enterprises are taking an ad hoc approach to automation. And they’re quickly realizing siloed approaches are leading to technical debt, delays in successful outcomes, and several unexpected challenges.”

Chris Huff, Kofax’s Chief Strategy Officer says “The 2020 Benchmark data clearly tells a story of enterprises moving beyond siloed, ad hoc automation and toward integrated, single-vendor Intelligent Automation platforms. Boards and executives understand the value of a single platform that can digitally transform a multitude of processes while providing an open architecture capable of easily connecting to third-party applications. Our aggressive R&D has been aimed at cloud-enablement, embedding AI to handle unstructured data, and orchestrating downstream workflows – allowing customers to rapidly drive increased capacity, productivity, employee satisfaction and customer success.”

The report finds that organizations are making considerable headway automating key front- and back-office operations. Here are some of the findings:

58% of organizations have deployed automation technologies to digitize information
52% are using it to automate front-desk interaction
49% have implemented automation for fulfillment and verification
45% use it to perform rules-based tasks
44% use automation for business spend management
44% automate back-office tasks
38% automate decisioning
30% use it to automate Accounts Payable (AP) and orchestrate workflows

Despite automation gains, the report points to several factors preventing organizations from achieving transformative automation.

Siloed Automation Leads to Technical Debt and Delayed Success:
- Nearly all decision makers surveyed (98%) report adopting an unintegrated approach to automation resulted in unanticipated challenges.
- Two of the most significant challenges reported were high technical debt (46%) and delayed success (35%).
- Nearly half (45%) of enterprises report they’ve taken ad hoc approaches, automating their many use cases via siloed solutions from a multitude of vendors.
Integrated Intelligent Automation Accelerates Digital Transformation:
- 99% of decision makers believe there would be considerable value in working with a single automation vendor and automation platform.
- 52% of decision makers cite improved customer experience as the top benefit of leveraging a single-vendor platform.
- 78% of employees say a single-vendor automation platform provides greater efficiency of their daily tasks, and 65 percent say it allows them to be more productive.

The 2020 Kofax Intelligent Automation Benchmarking Report is based on a January 2020 survey of 450 automation and AI decision makers, and 450 individual contributors in North America, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Sweden and the UK. It provides insights into the current state of enterprise automation.

New Report: Ad-Hoc Approaches to Automation Delaying Digital Transformation