Volatile customer demand. Disrupted industries. Remote work. New waves of operational challenges are impacting the productivity of workers and exposing gaps in their ability to serve customers.

At the same time, these challenges are creating new opportunities to build a more productive and adaptive workforce, with intelligent low-code automation at its core.

The IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is an intelligent automation software platform built to help businesses and IT teams quickly scale up or down to meet fluctuating customer demand, rapidly create new products and services for competitive advantage, and strategically support the productivity of remote and onsite workers. It’s one of the most complete and flexible sets of integrated automation software that you can deploy anywhere, on any cloud.

While this comprehensive platform is well suited for high-scale enterprise production use and for clients looking for a scalable IT automation platform, its modular design and low-code tooling is equally well suited for point projects that can have outsized, positive impacts on business operations and productivity.

Four intelligent low-code capabilities of the Cloud Pak for Automation were recently introduced to help clients address productivity and agility gaps right now:

1. Enable business users to build digital workers to help them flexibly focus on work that matters

By bringing together automation and AI in a low-code tooling environment, business users can build digital workers end-to-end. Digital workers are aligned to real job roles and can automate lower-impact work (like data entry and data extraction) and assist in higher-impact work (like task prioritization and decision-making).

Using the Skill Catalog, human workers can download a comprehensive list of job activities for common job roles and select what they want automated by a digital worker. They can also tailor the list if needed. Most important, using the tool’s business controls, or guardrails, business users can manage what digital workers can and can’t do.

2. Overcome IT backlogs by enabling business users to rapidly build business applications that deliver new products and services

A few months ago, Cloud Pak for Automation introduced a single authoring build experience for developing and integrating business services, applications, and digital workers—IBM Business Automation Studio. Studio includes a low-code application builder, App Designer, where business users can create and refine business automation-based applications—such as onboarding, invoicing, or preventative maintenance—giving them a direct role in digitizing their business.

3. Enable business teams to create simple workflows that address operational gaps and deliver business outcomes in minutes, with no technical skills or ramp-up required

Using IBM Automation Workstream Services, business teams can configure and initiate simple automated processes out of the box, such as approvals and assignments, or build their own.

Workstream Services is available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or as part of the IBM Cloud Pak for Automation. Through June 30, 2020, we’re offering a 90-day free subscription.

4. Eliminate paper-based processes by enabling customers to more conveniently and securely submit documents

Using machine learning and AI, IBM Automation Mobile Capture can take high quality photos of documents, read the documents, and then verify the information is correct before customers submit it. This takes the data validation stress off your business teams, saving time to focus on things that can’t be automated. It’s a more convenient and secure way to collect and submit content from mobile devices, with data validation done in real-time at the source. It’s one of the fastest ways to get rid of paper in “remote” times.

In sum, it remains our mission to help clients deliver resilient business operations for competitive advantage while controlling costs. To realize this mission, we built and continue to enhance this powerful, highly scalable platform to help you fill urgent tactical gaps while laying a solid foundation to future-proof your operations.  

While Cloud Pak for Automation is sold separately, it’s a key part of the IBM Services Essentials for Automation—a ready-to-go environment for automation that allows fast prototyping, rapid scaling, and management of digital operations for IT and business processes.