This article was written by Greg Kihlström for MarTech. Read the original article here.
In this four-part series, we’re exploring four categories of artificial intelligence (AI), how they can meaningfully impact marketers and their customers and what to potentially avoid. So far, we’ve explored generative AI, predictive analytics and personalized customer journeys.
The last article of the series will look at workflow automation or robotic process automation (RPA), or AI-based tools that enable repetitive tasks to be performed by software rather than humans. This is the oldest and most mature form of artificial intelligence explored in this article series.
What it is and why it’s worth paying attention to today
Workflow or task automation, sometimes called robotic process automation (RPA), predates most artificial intelligence applications and can vary widely in its breadth and depth.
RPA as a term can be traced to the 1990s, most commonly used for automated testing of user interfaces, though it became more prominent starting in this century, and RPA’s definition expanded to many other types of use cases.
This area of AI includes:
- Automating and streamlining routine and/or repetitive tasks such as data entry.
- Task assignment and routing requests and other assignments from one role, task, team or system to another.
It is beneficial for highly repetitive functions that would otherwise require a team of humans an excessive amount of time to perform. From a marketing and customer experience perspective, workflow automation and RPA can be useful for:
- Lead scoring and segmentation.
- Automating messages and series of communications.
- Helping internal teams route tasks that are components of complex campaigns and efforts spanning teams, departments, channels and stages in the customer journey.
This article was written by Greg Kihlström for MarTech. Read the original article here.
