Adopting and implementing digital automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) models such as ChatGPT, robotic process automation (RPA), and other emerging AI technologies, will revolutionize many industries and business models. It is forecasted that the rise of AI will impact a wide range of job functions and roles. White-collar positions such as administrative, customer service, and back-office roles will all be impacted by AI-fueled digital automation. The adoption of digital workers is currently positioned in the early adopter phase of the product lifecycle.1 AI-driven digital workers are expected to substantially alter many white-collar tasks, including finance, customer support, human resources, sales, and marketing.42 A study from Oxford University and Deloitte predicts AI is a significant risk to the white-collar workforce.

The relatively new concept of intelligent workload balancing is an important one to consider when operating RPA, because it determines whether tasks are more suitable for human employees or their digital colleagues. With this in mind, five industry experts identify particular ways in which this can be applied to this space. Firstly, intelligent workload balancing can be used to check that bots can adhere to rules set up by the company. "The ability to automatically decide if an activity requires human intervention or if it can be performed by a bot is usually called'intelligent workload balancing'," said Sathya Srinivasan, vice-president, solutions consulting (Partners) at Appian. "The intelligence comes from the business rules that determine who is the best candidate to complete the work – human or bot. If human, which department, group, experience level or management is best to handle this case, and if bot, what does it take to bring a bot in, how flexible can a bot cater to different types of requests. Chris Duddridge, area vice president and managing director UKI at UiPath, explores the link between compliance and robotic process automation. "To be truly effective, a bot must be able to work across a wide set of parameters.

In the last decade, the arrival of AI and automation in the workplace hasn't always been a positive story Despite the benefits these technologies brought to businesses – and to workers themselves – the fear of job losses and lack of education around automation has marred the impact of these new innovations in the working world. In 2020, that will all change. A new model of partnership between humans and machines is emerging, focused on the value automation and humans working together can bring: augmented intelligence. In fact, Gartner believes that this will create up to $2.9 trillion of business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally by 2021. Businesses who don't take advantage of AI while keeping employee satisfaction front-of-mind are likely to fall far behind in the global race for productivity and business value in uncertain economic times.

Hannah Wilson with PSTG says the virtual workforce that comes with robotic process automation (RPA) can streamline processes and improve data security.

A perfect storm is engulfing the insurance industry. Incredible demand volatility and increasing claim complexity has provoked new, unprecedented – and unpredictable – spikes in workload. If leading players can't respond with agility to this short-notice, high-intensity demand for digital insurance workers, then service levels, customer loyalty, trust, reputation and operating margins are under threat. The pandemic has been a real eye-opener for insurers. Standard business continuity plans proved inadequate as business leaders faced dual imperatives of equipping and training a remote workforce – often within days – and dealing with huge spikes in demand for customer support.

Enterprises benefit from digital workforce management not just because it solves their scalability problem, but also because it helps them do a lot more, such as breaking down silos and reducing risk. The potential of RPA (robotic process automation) is harnessed by a low-code, configurable intelligent automation platform, allowing businesses to design and manage a digital workforce in which human and robot workers complement each other. RPA technologies are assisting business leaders in increasing efficiencies across the board. Early adopters, however, have had difficulty scaling their initiatives. The biggest barrier according to industry experts is process fragmentation. Human and digital resources performing the work still exist in silos.

So RPA has a lot of benefits, and mainly, it's about how many headcount can you reduce, because they [RPA bots] are truly digital workers. Because they are in effect sitting at a computer -- but digitally, of course -- like a human being would, you're just giving it robotic processes to do that are just routine, regular, not thinking through a lot of things, but tasks. So what you want to look at for what cost savings you're getting is how many headcount can you reduce with the digital workers for RPA. So you're starting to talk about measuring it in the cost of FTEs. While the technology is fairly expensive, when you start talking about, "I'm replacing one, two, three people's annual salaries," and that's just covering the first stage.

Artificial intelligence robots are slowly replacing blue collar and white collar workers. Go to the trading floors to find out that there are no human brokers. Algorithmic trading software makes money for most investment funds. It takes 0.2 seconds for a price quote to come from the exchange to your software vendor's data center (DC), 0.3 seconds from the data center to reach your trading screen, 0.1 seconds for your trading software to process this received quote, 0.3 seconds for it to analyze and place a trade, 0.2 seconds for your trade order to reach your broker, 0.3 seconds for your broker to route your order to the exchange. Total time elapsed 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.3 1.4 seconds.

Even after implementing process orchestration software, many key processes in companies are still manual. Because many of these processes directly impact the velocity and cost-efficiency of the business, some leadership teams are leveraging robotic process automation, intelligent process automation and other specialized artificial intelligence-based solutions to help. To reap the potential benefits of such solutions, however, I believe it is time for the rise of the CAO: chief automation officer. Sure, vice president-level automation jobs are available, and you might even be wondering, "Isn't this the CIO's job or the CDO's?" While both positions deal with tech and the position of chief digital officer was created to bring in new digital solutions, in my experience, neither role is focused on the strategy of automation.

Business leaders cannot lull themselves into complacency based on present conditions but must keep transforming for the future. As we look to embrace the new normal, we must still deal with the old! Digital transformation is first about the business and how it operates and then about the technology, but we should all be familiar with the trends and concepts. What I am referring to is human-machine collaboration in the new hybrid workforce. This is a new normal for successful businesses.