What is Automation Software | Automation Anywhere

At the most basic, automation software is designed to turn repeatable, routine tasks into automated actions. It’s used in Business Process Management (BPM) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), among others.

The next step up is process automation. Process automation uses automation software to manage business processes. It streamlines rudimentary, repetitive tasks, and can turn several similar business processes into a single action with a few quick keystrokes.

Well known benefits of process automation include increased productivity and efficiency because automation leaves the menial jobs to computers, such as process mining. This frees the human workforce to produce more in ways that require human logic, thinking, creativity and decision making.

Integration automation is higher up in the evolution of automation software. Known as “digital workers”, these software bots can be “trained” via recorded workflows. Once a process is built it requires very little human intervention. Digital Workers can become part of an integrated human/robotic workforce.

The final step of automation software is artificial intelligence (AI) automation. The added functionality of AI means the automation software can use past experience to improve how they perform the tasks required of them.

An example is AI-powered chatbots. Unlike basic chatbots, a software bot with AI ability is able to use natural language processing (NLP) to understand what a user is asking and give intelligent responses.

Throughout these four types of automation software, there are varying degrees. For example, you can have business process automation with a level of AI and machine learning. This allows the application to dig into your business processes and find other time-consuming tasks that could be better optimized.