What is a digital worker?

More specifically, Forrester offers the following definition for digital worker automation: It is “a combination of intelligent automation (IA) building blocks, such as conversational intelligence and robotic process automation (RPA), that work alongside employees. They understand human intent, respond to questions, and act on the human's behalf, leaving humans with control, authority and an enhanced experience.”

IBM Automation® observes digital workers, defining them as software-based labor that can independently run meaningful parts of complex, end-to-end processes by applying a range of skills. They apply artificial intelligence capabilities, like machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing to perform a sequence of tasks within a workflow.

A digital accounts payable worker can autonomously perform parts of three traditional roles—customer service representative, billing agent and cash applicator or dispute resolver—to complete an order to cash (OTC) process. Because digital workers increase the bandwidth of their employees, they have largely been adopted through digital transformation efforts, allowing companies to reallocate their workforce to more strategic tasks.

When initiating a digital workforce, designers consider the processes that can be automated and the human element, specifically how the digital workers can interact with human workers to optimize the intelligent workflow.

From there, the process typically follows these steps:

1. Assess the need: The team should identify a process for a digital worker to own. During this stage, you might want to start more simply, such as incorporating intelligent data capture or basic business rules to enable better decision-making, adding complexity gradually.
   
   
2. Document the process: Detailed documentation of the process should exist to train new digital workers correctly.
   
   
3. Train digital workers: Once a documented process has been identified to transition over to a digital worker, they are trained to handle the tasks within the selected workflow. Bots are also instructed to identify and flag exceptions for their human counterparts, routing more complex use cases to them and freeing them from mundane monitoring activities.
   
   
4. Assess performance: During this step, teams can assess the performance of a given digital worker. This approach ensures it has generated an appropriate return on investment (ROI) for the business. By using process mining and process maps, teams can validate training efforts, but they can also use this opportunity to identify bottlenecks, further optimizing the process.

Ocash is a digital cash application specialist, the latest recruit for the finance and accounting function. It’s often helpful to consider and position your digital workers in the roles that they would fill within your enterprise’s operations.

To create Ocash, the IBM services team began with the workflow outcome in mind. They sourced data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to deconstruct the OTC process and identify its component parts. From there, the team focused on one of the more manual aspects of the process. They automated the tasks where they could, and augmented tasks that still required human workers.

Ocash was designed to run tasks that were best suited for automation, calling upon its human colleagues only when needed. But Ocash's designers used these interactions as opportunities to optimize processes. For example, automating the verification of invoice accuracy with a customer at the start of the process can significantly eliminate the number of payment disputes later on.

While digital workers can extend beyond digital tasks, they have primarily been used for support work across various business functions. Some examples include:

• Supply chain: Retailers, such as Amazon, are using robots to assist them in checking stock quantities and pricing.
  
  
• Human resources: Bots can answer benefits questions in real-time, collect employee data and route complex tasks to subject matter experts, evolving the employee experience within companies.
  
  
• Sales and product support: Bots can answer basic product questions to help customer success and sales teams manage prospective and existing clients. They can also route requests by level of urgency, so that high-priority tickets are addressed in a timely manner, improving the overall customer experience.

While digital workers provide process efficiency gains, there can be challenges in implementing a digital workforce. Some of these barriers to success include:

• Not enough tasks to automate, making it difficult to justify the cost of a digital worker.
  
  
• Technology might struggle with some unstructured data sources.
  
  
• Gathering information for documentation purposes can be costly and resource-intensive.
  
  
• Scaling can be difficult if digital workers are not designed to be configurable and adaptable.