The Automation Anywhere Imagine conference in Austin, Texas, kicked off its first day during one of the busiest months for technology and AI innovation, filled with numerous conferences across the globe.
It is also the year when we’ve reached more than 72,000 AI and machine learning startups in the market, with over 22,500 of them funded, as of March 2024.
Taking the stage, Mihir Shukla, CEO and co-founder of Automation Anywhere, shared that this year has marked an unprecedented collaboration with the company’s customers jointly working on hundreds of capabilities and groundbreaking AI innovations – “as 98 percent of you have chosen to be on our latest product releases, 98 percent… That’s an incredible number,” he said.
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With the company bringing 50 percent more customers than before to share their stories on the main stage, in breakout sessions, in communities and with partners, all eyes seem to be on how organizations can leverage the new opportunities to achieve better and faster results.
“If you take a look at a sample of the financial services industry, we have four customers presenting and 40 of the largest banks in the audience. [And with our] customers, we collectively have 350 million of them. That’s the size of the United States population.”
Similarly, looking at healthcare and life sciences, many of the companies presenting their stories consist of 25 of the most trusted healthcare brands.
New announcements
Automation Anywhere kicked off the event by unveiling its new AI + Automation Enterprise System, which sees the two elements join up to drive bigger outcomes for businesses.
The company’s new offering is infused with its second-generation GenAI Process Models to speed up discovery, development and deployment of AI process automation. Automation Anywhere also launched new AI Agents to manage complex cognitive tasks and automate more across enterprises.
The solutions promise to help organizations achieve efficiency improvements, driving process tasks that formerly took hours down to minutes, deliver 3x time to value and up to 10x business impact across business workflows that include customer service operations, finance, IT and HR.
With organizations on a quest to working smarter, not harder, Shukla, said that “automation is the foundation that’s gotten us partway there. But AI Agent-powered automation is the breakthrough that will take us beyond – to automate the seemingly impossible, create a new operating model for business and drive enterprise transformation with stunning results.”
A new feature includes the ability to build custom AI Agents with the new AI Agent Studio where AI Agents have the ability to learn from enterprise data, make informed decisions and take action responsibly across an enterprise system, speeding processes by up to 90 percent.
The new AI Agent Studio, which is generally available, provides developers with low-code tools to build, manage and govern custom AI Agents. Developers can start with the foundational model of choice, including models from AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
Enhanced Autopilot, which is also generally available, enables cross-functional teams to go from discovery to automation in record time by quickly converting process documentation into draft process automation using generative AI. Autopilot now allows for inputs from mining tools in BPMN format to build automation.
“Automation Anywhere continues to seamlessly integrate AI and automation to help customers get more out of their AI investments. These latest enhancements and platform capabilities, including AI Agents, make AI-powered automation even more accessible, empowering organizations and employees to leverage AI in new ways, helping them work smarter than ever before,” said Maureen Fleming, program vice president of intelligent process automation research at IDC.
The Automation Co-Pilot, an embed-anywhere enterprise assistant for organizations is now conversational (in preview status) amid a new integration with Amazon Q Service.
The copilot is now faster for business users to get work done across applications with chat capabilities for on-demand assistance to ask questions of knowledge bases, call on AI Agents or initiate automations.
