Software bots could be the future of business automation – Axios

Businesses are building a new kind of assembly line and this one is digital, staffed by software bots.

Why it matters: For all the hopes and fears around industrial robots, more progress is being made in the realm of digital workers: Bots that can perform a growing number of often tedious and time-consuming tasks in an increasingly online business world.

How it works: Intelligent automation takes the logic of a physical assembly line where the work of making something is broken into discrete, individual tasks that can be done more efficiently in sequence and moves it into the digital world.

Details: Kingdon uses the example of how Blue Prism works with banks on reducing credit card fraud.

By the numbers: Gartner projects that business spending on robotic process automation a part of intelligent automation will grow by nearly $1.5 billion in 2021.

The big picture: Just as Henry Ford and his peers were able to revolutionize manufacturing in part by breaking tasks down into an assembly line, intelligent automation works best when knowledge work can be broken down into discrete micro-tasks that can be handled by bots.

The catch: Like any other form of automation, intelligent automation can make human workers more productive individually but it also carries with it the longer-term specter of job loss as the bots get more capable and companies look to cut payroll.

The bottom line: Most companies are "still very, very early in the journey" of intelligent automation, says Kingdon.

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Software bots could be the future of business automation - Axios