Quanton's World of Business Process Automation

Part one of a two-part feature. In an insightful conversation with Professor James Maclaurin from the University of Otago we look at New Zealand’s AI landscape, discussing the findings of two reports addressing the government use of AI and the impact of AI on the future of work.

Plus details of our next exclusive event taking place on August 26th. 

Colin Priest, VP of AI Strategy for DataRobot and evangelist for Intelligent Automation shares his perspectives on the future of business process automation with Intelligent Automation.

Technology advancements over the past two-three years mean that Intelligent Automation is more accessible and practical than ever; we have moved past the hype, but adoption is still limited to the innovators and there are barriers for businesses.

For the early adopters who are prepared to push the limits and boundaries, Colin offers his thoughts on what it takes to start with an IA journey.

Ever since Robotic Process Automation became widely understood people have been talking about the potential to combine automation capability with other smart technologies like AI and Machine Learning. As the ideas took shape the notion was referred to interchangeably as Intelligent or cognitive Automation.

At Quanton we believe Intelligent Automation is now a practical reality and represents considerable opportunity for organisations who are expediting digital transformation imperatives.

Automation is undoubtedly on the agenda of most executives in New Zealand. Enabled by a wider ecosystem of smart technologies, Intelligent Process Automation is the destination making AI one of the hottest words of 2019.

In September I travelled to America to attend the San Francisco Ai Summit – self-proclaimed the world’s largest AI event for business. At the event I joined several thousand attendees to hear from over 200 speakers and engage with over 200 exhibitors.

The aim was to bring back key learning to be translated into practical insights to share and help move New Zealand businesses forward in the adoption and application of smart technologies – something key to Quanton’s drive.

Quanton is excited to officially announce our partnership with ABBYY to provide New Zealand businesses Content Intelligence in Process Automation.

The new partnership will help New Zealand businesses gain the benefits of Optical Character Recognition, Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), which when combined with Robotic Process Automation, will extend the potential breadth and depth of automation and digitally transform operating models. 

On September 27^th, 2018 Quanton hosted our inaugural DX Seminar. One of the exciting speakers was Asa Cox who discussed the very exciting topic of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence.

Following the recent opinion piece on RPA as a foundation for AI by Garry Green we wanted to continue to address the conversation around RPA and AI with three ways AI and RPA will extend the reach of automation in our organisation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become two of the most hyped technologies of the year and for many, there’s confusion around how they differ from Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

There’s certainly plenty of overlap - RPA can include ML or AI. But there are also distinctly unique with significant differences and despite the hype around AI, much bigger strides are being made with automation technologies such as RPA. More importantly RPA will be a critical platform to help organisations prepare for the benefits of AI and ML. We hit this topic in an exclusive podcast below and we're looking forward to hearing Professor Willcocks get into the details at our exclusive event on November 29th.  

Organisations are rapidly moving towards Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and looking at the horizon for the future opportunities of AI and other advanced technologies as a means to enable digital transformation.

This idea was supported entirely by Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst at HfS Research when he said “RPA has breathed new life into business operations by speeding up processes, increasing access to crucial data and digitising workflows. However, as this capability become the norm, further value must be realised by integrating software robots into emerging AI platforms.”