“
FINAL WORD
IA OFFERS THE POTENTIAL
TO FREE UP WORKERS’ TIME WASTED
ON REPETITIVE MUNDANE TASKS. that they approach IA management and
implementation from an organisation-wide
perspective. In many cases, IA initiatives
are starting in a single business unit or
function looking to do automation specific
to their processes.
Artificial Intelligence and smart analytics.
While initial efforts are understandably
fragmented, organisations would be advised
to move quickly to understand how, when
and where to integrate technologies in order
to optimise their potential. Another challenge will be gaining the
buy-in and support of employees who face
changing roles and skill upgrading, or the
perceived risk of job loss. It takes patience
when pushing forward with IA efforts,
especially given that the transition may face
resistance from employees at all levels, who
may feel threatened by changes.
Why should companies invest in IA?
Overcoming the hurdles to
implement IA
As a common starting point for IA, RPA offers
the potential for significant cost savings and
streamlining via automation. But cost savings
alone should not drive companies to invest in
IA. KPMG’s survey found that more than one
third of today’s business leaders view IA as a
way to drive future revenue growth.
Indeed, for organisations that have achieved
enterprise-level approaches to IA, enhanced
customer experience and unleashing the
power of existing data to drive insights and
sales growth are among their top drivers.
While there is some concern around IA
leading to job losses, particularly when
it comes to RPA, the reality is that these
technologies will be key in accelerating
the upskilling of the current workforce,
enhancing worker productivity by
automating routine tasks.
IA offers the potential to free up workers’
time wasted on repetitive mundane tasks,
enabling them to focus on value-added
services, such as analysing rather than
processing data. In fact, less than one
percent of the companies surveyed by
KPMG indicated cost savings or headcount
reduction as a key operational goal.
Most IA initiatives are not yet scaled up, nor
do they operate on an end-to-end process
level. That being said, those surveyed believe
they can scale up their IA initiatives within
12 months.
Assessing the challenges of IA
Although companies have been testing
different IA pilot programmes, less than
20% of firms surveyed were beyond the
84
INTELLIGENTCIO
Matin Jouzdani, Associate Partner – Data
and Analytics at KPMG Lower Gulf
piloting stage. This may be attributed to
a variety of factors, including immature
technologies and cost of deployment.
It is more likely, however, that organisations
are uncertain about launching full-fledged
implementation, particularly those that
require coordination and integration (or
not) of disparate efforts leveraging point
technologies, and how to address IA’s
impact on both operations and employees.
For example, with RPA potentially
eliminating many work roles, organisations
must determine how to address the future
of their workforces, by retraining, reskilling or
redeploying affected employees.
At the same time however, organisations
are also faced with a lack of skilled
resources needed to design, build, deploy
and manage IA systems and initiatives-
especially in the areas of Machine Learning
and Artificial Intelligence.
One of the biggest roadblocks to the
widespread and rapid adoption of IA
seemingly remains a lack of an enterprise-
wide mandate, with less than 10% of
organisations surveyed by KPMG indicating
Regardless of challenges, it appears that
organisations will be required to press ahead
with their IA efforts or risk longer-term
marginalisation as their competitive peers
forge ahead. The evolution and adoption
of IA technologies is proceeding at such a
rapid pace that, while executives recognise
its game changing potential, many struggle
to understand its implications, as well as
determining where to place their own IA
bets and investments.
Key in this process is for organisations
to separate hype from reality, prioritising
IA investment areas and accepting that
all pilots are not equal in terms of return
on investment. The onus is on enterprises
to determine how best to integrate and
co-ordinate cross-organisational efforts
and ensure adequate change management
programmes and practices are in place to
address the disruption IA adoption
will entail.
In order to succeed, organisations must view
IA from an enterprise level to scale up its
usefulness within the business and broaden
its scope to various functions.
Without an organisational mandate
and guidance from senior management,
businesses run the risk of duplicated efforts,
diluted ROIs and underachieved benefit.
A co-ordinated enterprise approach has the
best hope of leading to consistent use of
technologies, resources, governance and
investment pools – and, in the end, will
elevate best practices. n
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