Research highlights include

• 31% of organisations are already using intelligent automation and that number is set to more than double by 2020. (Click to tweet)
• 86% of global business leaders believe their organisation must deploy intelligent automation in the next five years to be a leader in its field.
• According to global business leaders, the top benefits of intelligent automation will be productivity (50%) and faster time-to-market (45%).
• Almost half of business leaders globally (43%) believe intelligent automation will make more workers available to focus on complex tasks and innovation.  
• Consumers surveyed by Avanade in the UK, US and Germany agreed with business leaders that intelligent automation will free employees to spend more time on complex tasks.  Unsurprisingly however, 60% of consumer respondents said that intelligent automation is more likely to replace jobs than create them.

So, what does this mean for leadership in the future? Per the research, leaders will need to embrace new capabilities to remain relevant in an AI-first world. Almost two thirds (60%) of business leaders surveyed believe an understanding of new and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and an ability to manage an augmented workforce (53%) will be more important for leadership within five years than traditional functional specialisations like sales and marketing.

Avanade CEO Adam Warby says, “Leaders recognise the potential for intelligent automation to accelerate productivity by driving more value from data, and freeing employees from mundane, repetitive tasks to focus on activities that require human intervention and/or add value, like innovation.

“However, while global business leaders have moved beyond the humans vs. machines fear factor, employees are yet to be convinced. To remain relevant, leaders need a vision for the AI-first world and must educate employees on the potential of intelligent automation to drive unprecedented personal and professional capabilities.” (Click to tweet)

Avanade recommends leaders have a roadmap in place to help guide high-level conversations, as well as discussions across the entire workforce about what intelligent automation means for the human workforce.

Intelligent automation was defined for survey respondents as a form of artificial intelligence where machines mimic the learning, decision-making and actions of humans through intelligence enabled by advanced analytics and cognitive services. Examples of intelligent automation include chat bots, object/speech recognition, and natural language processing. View our intelligent automation research findings.