OREANDA-NEWS. July 13, 2015. While the discussion around the benefits of automating some jobs continues, numerous businesses such as banks are already using software automation to improve operational processes and efficiency,” says Philippe Mallet. “The power of smart robots, which we at Cognizant refer to as Intelligent Process Automation (IPA), may in fact enhance today’s knowledge-based jobs and even create entirely new job categories.” Excerpts:

“With banks at the forefront of adopting software automation, one area that can be especially beneficial is wealth management, where providing prescient financial advice hinges on the ability to conduct real-time monitoring of risk.

While mapping and forecasting risk and quantifying customer pathways has the potential to yield specific positive outcomes for wealth managers, such as successful cross-selling, it also requires actionable analytics. Companies in the banking and financial sectors indicate that 10 percent of revenue and 10 percent of costs are directly affected by how well they understand and use the business information available to them.

While revenue, speed, efficiency and savings clearly drive banks to adopt software automation processes, the data generated by those same processes is potentially a bigger reward for banks and financial institutions in the long term. With advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data analytics, a bank’s ability to make predictions and offer tailored customer offerings can be greatly enhanced.

Across industries, the benefits of automation are obvious and there is a long tail of processes yet to be automated by a new generation of knowledge “robots”. As disruptive robot advisor start-ups transform the wealth management industry, adopting similar software automation services is quickly becoming a necessity for traditional banks. Nonetheless, in wealth management, as in nearly every other industry, there are some tasks that robots just can’t do and that’s where a blended model of automation augmenting talented people can provide extraordinary outcomes.”