AI at work: Turning AI’s potential into real results

There’s no argument that 2023 has been Generative AI’s breakout year. The year kicked off with record-breaking adoption rates for ChatGPT, hurling Gen AI into news headlines, C-suite conversations, and board imperatives.

Despite enthusiasm for AI, a July 16, 2023, article in The Economist declared that most employers are unprepared for AI. The article (aptly titled “Your employer is (probably) unprepared for artificial intelligence”) went on to explain how the lack of preparedness is bad news for both earnings and the broader economy.

“Speculation about the consequences of AI—for jobs, productivity and quality of life—is at fever pitch. The technology is awe-inspiring. And yet AI’s economic impact will be muted unless millions of firms beyond tech centers like Silicon Valley adopt it. That would mean far more than using the occasional chatbot.”

In the face of skepticism, concern, and lack of preparation, how long will it take most companies to capitalize on the full potential of AI?

While you may be willing to wait a few years, your competitors may not.

The Economist article also states, “Firms that embrace tech are pulling away from the competition.”

In a recent survey of 800 non-executive knowledge workers and 800 C-Suite executives (500 were CEOs), 77% of executives responded that “AI is disrupting their business strategy.” And 38% of executives stated that “they’re moving as quickly as possible to integrate AI into their business strategy.”

Despite organizations across industries looking to invest further in AI and eager to put it to use (even if they may not be entirely prepared to do so), there’s a substantial gap between wanting to implement AI and realizing actual value from AI.

How can organizations realize true value from AI now? And truly harness the transformative force of AI advancements?

Automation.

Automation is the best path to deliver on whatever AI sparks.

We think of it as AI at work (and it’s not by accident that AI at Work is the theme of UiPath FORWARD VI + TechEd Day in Las Vegas this week).

What it means for your organization

What does it mean to use automation to harness the transformative power of AI advancements today, not five years from now? Igniting ideas using automation as the path to deliver on whatever AI sparks means that you can use AI to execute on any idea or innovation you have. You’ll have increased workforce capacity and the flexibility to turn big ideas into reality.

Take Wesco, for example. By establishing a culture of citizen development, and leveraging UiPath products like Automation Hub, Wesco has put itself in a strong position to put AI-related ideas from its workforce into production quickly.

As mentioned earlier, the July 2023 article in The Economist article stated there are few firms beyond Silicon Valley that are ready to make an impact with AI. Wesco has put their organization in a position to be one of the exceptions. Rather than needing to figure out how to implement AI across the organization from the top down, they’re able to rely on employees to determine for themselves where AI could help them in their jobs. By meeting employees where they are through their center of excellence (CoE), they can capitalize on ideas from technical and non-technical employees alike.

The result? Sixty percent of executable automation ideas come from Wesco’s citizen developers.

Transform every facet of work

When automation allows you to realize true value from AI, you've got the power to transform countless tasks and numerous processes throughout your entire company. The result? Incredible cost savings.

A globally leading, complex company like Intel has seemingly infinite amounts of processes it could automate. One of the places they’ve deployed AI and automation is in the tedious process of classifying international shipments. The results were stunning—they classified over 56,000 products in just four months, with over 99% accuracy. UiPath AI Center helped them combine machine learning with automation to get the job done.

Unleash your workforce Using automation as the path to realize true value from AI has tremendous benefits for each and every one of your employees: rapidly increasing productivity, sparking innovation, and fueling their achievements.

You can see AI at work at Omega Healthcare. By deploying AI and automation across its organization, Omega Healthcare realized strong outcomes for its employees, investors, and customers. Investors won from supercharged employee productivity, which shot up 100%. Employees won by saving 6,700 hours a month and time spent on tedious customer correspondence. And customers won with process accuracy improving to 99.5% and turnaround time shrinking by 50%.

All of it was possible through the combination of AI and automation, powered by document understanding capabilities and UiPath Action Center via the UiPath Platform.

Thrill your customers

Yes, the benefits of combining automation and AI extend beyond the internal organization. Every customer encounter is enhanced. You’ll bring increased speed, responsiveness, and personalization to every interaction.

Net promoter score (NPS) is one of the most popular ways to gauge customer satisfaction—the higher the score, the better a brand is viewed by its customers. By using a range of tools across the UiPath Business Automation Platform, including chatbots and natural language processing capabilities, Flutter UK&I boosted its NPS from 10 to 40 and prevented price increases. Plus, they were able to serve customers better, empowering agents to handle escalations and reducing customer transfers from 20% to just 6%.

Throughout FORWARD VI, UiPath customers will take the stage, sharing how they’re using automation to unlock the transformative power of AI.

How to realize true value from AI today, not five years from now

Only UiPath combines the agility and speed of enterprise automation with machine learning, natural language processing, and new Generative AI and Specialized AI capabilities, delivering rapid business transformation for this new AI era.

Consider the robust communications mining capabilities available via the UiPath Business Automation Platform. Originally founded out of the renowned University College of London (UCL) Centre for AI Research, our communications mining capabilities remain at the forefront of machine learning, natural language processing, and AI.

For those of you joining us in person at FORWARD VI, be sure to join us in the Keynote Theater tomorrow at 9:40 am PDT. UiPath Chief Product Officer Graham Sheldon will walk us through what the UiPath product organization has done to ensure the UiPath Platform has the capabilities and technological advancements to truly deliver AI through automation across the enterprise. For every industry on the planet.

He’ll also introduce some exciting new AI-powered capabilities. Trust me, you don’t want to miss his announcements!

Talk one-on-one with UiPath AI product experts and partners in Expertsville, open from 11:00 am PDT to 3:30 pm PDT both days of FORWARD VI (October 10 and 11) in the Marquee Ballroom. Expertsville will also be open for the Unwind Happy Hour, 5:30-6:30 pm PDT on Wednesday.

If you’re not able to join us in Las Vegas, we invite you to tune in and watch the livestream of Graham’s keynote.

Next month, we’ll take a deeper dive into the 2023.10 release (our biggest release of the year!) and the new and updated platform capabilities empowering enterprises to harness the transformative power of AI. Stay tuned—here on the blog, we’ll share where you can find those deeper dives to see new capabilities in action.