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Intelligent Automation
Blog

A good niche to be in: Kofax delivers RPA with Intelligent Automation

I get it.  RPA is hot right now.  It’s the flavor of the month and attracting plenty of attention.  But to digitally transform, organizations need to automate end-to-end business operations.  RPA alone can’t do that – it never could.  Standalone RPA tools automate rules-based tasks, but enterprise business processes are made up of many tasks. That’s why RPA bots continuously break and require complementary technologies such as capture, OCR and workflow orchestration to scale.    

True digital automation requires more than just RPA. Customers need complementary technologies to automate the entire process journey – from content capture and data injection, to process orchestration, to advanced analytics informing business decisions. RPA is not the end-game; it’s just a piece in the intelligent automation puzzle.  

Kofax was never investing to be an RPA-only vendor. Customers need more to get the value they’re looking for. We boast 25K global customers, 600 worldwide partners, 2-3x more revenue than any RPA vendor and are the only profitable vendor when compared to all three lead RPA vendors. Some have said ‘that makes Kofax the grown up in the room.’ I won’t argue with that statement. This also means we are a stable company that can be depended on to be there for customers during any rough patch or economic downturn…and there will be one. 

Here are five examples that showcase our commitment to helping RPA customers with our Intelligent Automation platform:  

1. Fully integrating RPA with Capture and Document Transformation 

Sixty-two percent of all business processes rely on documents and records. So if a business wants to include a PDF or document as part of an RPA process they’re automating, they need the ability to perform document capture and transformation.  That’s a problem for standalone RPA vendors because their customers are left to struggle integrating and managing third-party capture and transformation services to fully automate document-centric processes. We are the only vendor that has fully integrated our market-leading capture and document transformation with Kofax RPA – no partnerships, multi-vendor product integrations or overhead required.

2. Fully integrating process orchestration and RPA on a single-vendor unified platform

Process orchestration is essential for automating defined business operations, but everything comes to a grinding halt when you hit a bottleneck. Human, task-oriented bottlenecks require integration of RPA with process orchestration.  Take onboarding, for example, which usually requires a complex, orchestrated process including an RPA robot.  For instance, an employee onboarding process may require data from an external website for validation – like credit score or address verification.  If that data can’t automatically be brought into the process orchestration tool, a bottleneck occurs. RPA tools can clear that bottleneck by executing the task that would otherwise require human intervention. Only Kofax can handle end-to-end automation of critical operations by offering both process orchestration and RPA solutions built on the same platform and tightly integrated – eliminating friction, cost and overhead otherwise required when taking a multi-solution, multi-vendor approach.

 

3. Delivering native AI built into Kofax RPA 

AI is a generic capability that must be tailored to specific business purposes. Designed-for-purpose AI means AI that is developed to address a specific business purpose – like automation of end-to-end business processes. The AI touted by standalone RPA vendors isn’t that.  It requires significant overhead – procuring outside AI technology and integrating it with the RPA solution.  This often means companies have to re-design their robots or recode their algorithms to fully leverage AI’s benefits within that RPA tool. Only Kofax delivers AI, Natural Language Processing, Machine learning, and Intelligent Screen Automation using Bayesian Classifiers built natively into our solution.  So customers requiring document recognition and classification, sentiment analysis and image recognition, for instance, can accomplish this natively within Kofax RPA.  Companies don’t have to acquire outside AI technology or train it to accomplish their specific automation need.

4. Embedding the ‘customer satisfaction loop’ into RPA 

RPA should be about customer satisfaction.  Many RPA operations can be enhanced if customer communications can be automated as part of a process, such as compliance notifications, billing notifications, onboarding notifications, etc. That’s simply not possible using standalone RPA products; customer satisfaction and customer communication are an afterthought customers have to figure out on their own.  So, for example, under GDPR or California law, if there’s a privacy breach, companies must immediately notify their customers. Failing to do so creates a terrible customer experience and can result in large fines. Only Kofax delivers native customer communications, mobility and electronic signature capabilities. Kofax RPA can not only validate the breach, but also can orchestrate the immediate communications to customers – slashing the time, cost and pain involved in GDPR/privacy compliance.  Customer satisfaction is integrated into the Kofax RPA implementation. 

5. RPA as an integrated Intelligent Automation Platform capability

The end-to-end Kofax Intelligent Automation Platform is ultimately what sets us apart from every other standalone RPA player.  Customers want to automate their end-to-end business operations in a way that scales to the needs of the business.  They don’t want to be forced to procure multiple solutions from multiple vendors and support a complex implementation to achieve that goal. That’s because RPA needs to be rapidly deployable, designed for immediate use, and capable of automating all points on the business process transformation journey – from capture, transformation and process orchestration to mobility and communication.  Moreover, organizations need to accomplish all this while minimizing the cost and complexity of the journey, while delighting customers and employees along the way. We are the only provider offering a comprehensive Intelligent Automation Platform delivering rules-based and AI-powered interoperable technologies essential for automating end-to-end business operations.  The Platform harnesses five highly integrated, unified, AI-driven capabilities including Cognitive Capture, RPA, Process Orchestration, Mobility & Engagement and Advanced Analytics.  This platform-centric approach eliminates the pain while delivering on the promise of digital transformation – helping increase competitiveness, accelerate time to value and lower total cost of ownership.

The battle over whose RPA tool has the most gadgets and widgets is hot right now – it’s a street fight.  But it misses the point.  RPA that’s not fully integrated with a broader set of complementary Intelligent Automation capabilities won’t scale.  It won’t solve the problem.  It’s not enough.  Kofax is the only RPA provider thinking bigger, thinking more broadly, about solving the real problem of end-to-end automation.  Now that’s a nice niche to lead.